jacob019

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4 months agodiscuss

Anyone using it with nodejs to make a sandbox for code agents?

5 months agodiscuss

I also hate how tmux uses alt mode and can never remember all the shortcuts, copy paste is a PITA and just today I had to look up how to dump the scrollback buffer to a file. Named sessions without window management makes a lot more sense these days. Similarly, I'm not a fan of all the ANSI escape codes that CC uses to jump the cursor around and rewrite the display to look like a GUI. I prefer a TUI that doesn't mutate rows after writing them, that's what alt mode is for. CC often clears whatever was in the scrollback buffer before you opened it, it hides bracketed paste, and goes crazy sometimes when content overflows the window and I have to resize the terminal or get blasted with a wall of glitching characters--extra annoying if I'm working from a low bandwidth link. I develop my own agent framework and code agent, and while some features aren't as polished as CC, one of my explicit goals is to preserve the traditional CLI feel, like the python REPL (that's what it's based around). I'll give zmx a try tonight :)

6 months agodiscuss

I haven't had time to make a repo, so I'll just drop this here for you: https://jacobstoner.com/subrepl_mcp.py

Just make sure you have the deps installed and add it to CC as a stdio mcp server. Tested on Linux only. I use it daily.

6 months agodiscuss

^^

6 months agodiscuss

Is this satire? You don't need to bend over backwards to use CC/codex. There is a rich ecosystem of options for wiring up LLMs.

6 months agodiscuss

Okay, I will :)

I'll add a new repo for it, maybe this evening, and I'll reply here with a link.

6 months agodiscuss

Ohh, looks interesting, thanks for the tip!

Git as db is clever, and the sqlite cache is nice. I'd been sketching sqlite based memory features myself. So much of the current ecosystem is suboptimal just because it's new. The models are trained around immutable conversation ledgers with user/tool/assistant blocks, but there are compelling reasons to manipulate both sides at runtime and add synthetic exchanges. Priming with a synthetic failure and recovery is often more effective than a larger, more explicit system message. Same with memory, we just haven't figured out what works best.

For code agents specifically, I found myself wanting old style completion models without the structured turn training--doesn't exist for frontier models. Talking to Claude about its understanding of the input token stream was fascinating; it compared it to my visual cortex and said it'd be unreasonable to ask me to comment on raw optic nerve data.

"Tell it to reread it again"-exactly the problem. My bookkeeping/decision engine has so much documentation I'm running out of context, and every bit is necessary due to interconnected dependencies. Telling it to reread content already in the window feels wrong, that's when I refine the docs or adjust the framework. I've also found myself adding way more docstrings and inline docs than I'd ever write for myself. I prefer minimal, self-documenting code, so it's a learning process.

There's definitely an art to prompts, and it varies wildly by model, completely different edge cases across the leading ones. Thanks again for the tip; I suspect we'll see a lot of interesting memory developments this year.

6 months agodiscuss

https://github.com/jacobsparts/agentlib

See CodeAgent or subrepl.py if you're just interested in the REPL orchestration. I also have a Python REPL MCP server that works with CC. It isn't published, but I could share it by request.

My favorite part of code agent is the /repl command. I can drop into the REPL mid session and load modules, poke around with APIs and data, or just point Claude in the right direction. Sometimes a snippet of code is worth 1000 words.

6 months agodiscuss

Seems everyone is working on the same things these days. I built a persistent Python REPL subprocess as an MCP tool for CC, it worked so insanely well that I decided to go all the way. I already had an agentic framework built around tool calling (agentlib), so I adapted it for this new paradigm and code agent was born.

The agent "boots up" inside the REPL. Here's the beginning of the system prompt:

  >>> help(assistant)

  You are an interactive coding assistant operating within a Python REPL.
  Your responses ARE Python code—no markdown blocks, no prose preamble.
  The code you write is executed directly.

  >>> how_this_works()

  1. You write Python code as your response
  2. The code executes in a persistent REPL environment
  3. Output is shown back to you IN YOUR NEXT TURN
  4. Call `respond(text)` ...

You get the idea. No need for custom file editing tools--Python has all that built in and Claude knows it perfectly. No JSON marshaling or schema overhead. Tools are just Python functions injected into the REPL, zero context bloat.

I also built a browser control plugin that puts Claude directly into the heart of a live browser session. It can inject element pickers so I can click around and show it what I'm talking about. It can render prototype code before committing to disk, killing the annoying build-fix loop. I can even SSH in from my phone and use TTS instead of typing, surprisingly great for frontend design work. Knocked out a website for my father-in-law's law firm (gresksingleton.com) in a few hours that would've taken 10X that a couple years ago, and it was super fun.

The big win: complexity. CC has been a disaster on my bookkeeping system, there's a threshold past which Claude loses the forest for the trees and makes the same mistakes over and over. Code agent pushes that bar out significantly. Claude can build new tools on the fly when it needs them. Gemini works great too (larger context).

Have fun out there! /end-rant

7 months agodiscuss

I get where you're coming from, especially since role playing was so vital in early models in a way that is no longer necessary, or even harmful; however, when designing a complex system of interactions, there's really no way around it. And as humans we do this constantly, putting on a different hat for different jobs. When I'm wearing my developer hat, I have to reason about the role of each component in a system, and when I use an agent to serve in that role, by curating it's context and designating rules for how I want it to behave, I'm assigning it a persona. What's more, I may prime the context user and assistant messages, as examples of how I want it to respond. That context becomes the agent's personality--it's persona.

7 months agodiscuss

Funny you should mention this, I just added a simple filesystem sandbox to my coding agent.

Check it out: https://github.com/jacobsparts/agentlib/blob/main/src/agentl...

The framework is all python, but I used C for this helper. It uses unprivileged user namespaces to mount an overlay and run an arbitrary command, then when the command finishes, it writes a tarball of edits, which I use to create a unified diff. The framework orchestrates it all transparently, but the helper itself could be used standalone. Here's a short document about the sandbox in the context of it's use in my project:

https://github.com/jacobsparts/agentlib/blob/main/docs/sandb...

I also have a version that uses SUID instead of unprivileged user namespaces, available by request.

I often use claude code with --dangerously-skip-permissions but every once in a while it bites me. I've learned to use git for everything and put instructions to always commit BEFORE writes in CLAUDE.md. Claude can go off the rails on harder bug fixes, especially if there are multiple rounds of context compacting, it can really screw things up. It usually honors guidance not to modify outside of the project, but a simple sandbox adds so much, after the session is over you can see what changed and decide what to do with it. It really helps with the problem where it makes unexpected changes to the codebase, which you might not even notice otherwise, which can introduce serious bugs. The permission models of all the coding agents are rough--either you can't get anything done, or you throw caution to the wind. Full sandboxes are quite restrictive, which is why I rolled by own. Honestly your best option right now is just to have good version control and run coding agents in dedicated environments.

8 months agodiscuss

"The global North's carbon problem subsidizes the global South's energy access." This is problematic. The subsidized economy will grow inefficiently, the wealth transfer will inevitably result in a corrupt class of bureaucrats who seek to maintain the status quo even when it doesn't make sense. Time will pass and it will get worse until there is political will for change, and that change will result in the suffering of those whom the initial intent was to help.

last yeardiscuss

Do we know parameter counts? The reasoning models have typically been cheaper per token, but use more tokens. Latency is annoying. I'll keep using gpt-4.1 for day-to-day.

last yeardiscuss

I break out Gemini 2.5 pro when Claude gets stuck, it's just so slow and verbose. Claude follows instructions better and seems to better understand it's role in agentic workflows. Gemini does something different with the context, it has a deeper understanding of the control flow and can uncover edge case bugs that Claude misses. o3 seems better at high level thinking and planning, questioning if it should it be done and whether the challenge actually matches the need. They're kind of like colleagues with unique strengths. o3 does well with a lot of things, I just haven't used it as much because of the cost. Will probably use it more now.

6 years agodiscuss

Normally the LEDs are wired in series so that they all have the same current.

6 years agodiscuss

I have often seen resistors used as fuses in cheap designs, but I have never seen a wirewound resistor used in this way. It is for current limiting to reduce peak load on the cheap components. Although it would probably be the next thing to blow if the IC failed short.

9 years agodiscuss

I'm more comfortable using just two words.