The main operating model with git is going to go back to decentralized. Setting up and managing something like https://forgejo.org/ is a way better experience than constant interruptions by a faulty service that can't meet demand.
The open source contribution model as we once knew it is dead; you're not going to accept patches from random agents. The risk is way too high. And you can see that increasingly "AI Slop" makes it difficult to be a maintainer of any semblance of a popular repo.
So what's the value? A durable place to store work? hah.
Discovery? That part of Github has always been shitty.
So that leaves.. Github Actions? The thing that is down every other day and has been the subject of a few ~rug pulls~/attempted price hikes that are almost surely coming back?
Swamp teaches your Agent to build and execute repeatable workflows, makes all the data they produce searchable, and enables your team to collaborate.
We also build swamp and swamp club using swamp. You can see that process in the lab[2]. This combines all of the creativity of the LLM for the parts that matter, while providing deterministic outcomes for the parts you need to be deterministic.
The degree of choice point-to-point in the skill tree is actually quite limited in most circumstances. There are obviously items, like thread of hope, intuitive leap, or inversion of choice items like unnatural instinct which change it slightly.
If the question is path optimization to utilizing these nodes, Path of Building already does a good job. If the question is "what single node will give me the most theoretical power." It also solves that.
That's actually the beauty of Path of Exile as a whole - the different systems works in combination to lead to an outcome. As an example, If you're a life stacking build, finding unique ways to get as many life/strength nodes as possible. That's your gear and your passive tree working in tandem.
Speaking about using AI to optimize characters - not just the skill tree - you'd need to build some pretty sophisticated tools which do not yet exist to make that happen. No AI alone would be able to do it.
We built something similar[1], including integrated memory for debugging. It is very useful to have repeatable artifacts left behind every time you use an agent to accomplish a task.
The main design decision we took was to integrate with your existing agent instead of building a new one. Your harness, swamp, and you're off.
As an aside, building software for agents is incredibly fun.
That's likely because it takes an entirely different approach to make it work. Augmenting your existing flow with "sophisticated auto complete" isn't as interesting and isn't actually using the tools how they were designed to be used.
I'm not going to pass judgement either way; we'll see how it all shakes out.
I just know for me, personally, I love computers and making them do what I want and in the AI era I am somehow using them even more and doing even more.
System Initiative was a thing for ~6.5 years. I talked to every person who ever used it or was interested in using it in the last 2.5 years. Thousands of them.
Swamp is better by every metric; has a lot more promise, is a lot more interesting.
I can't really speak to the sociotechnical proclamations, because I didn't make them.
What it does for you is simple: if you want to automate something, it does. Load the AI harness of your choice, tell it what to automate, swamp builds extensions for whatever it needs to to accomplish your task.
It keeps a perfect memory of everything that was done, manages secrets through vaults (which are themselves extensions it can write) and leaves behind repeatable workflows. People have built all sorts of shit - full vm lifecycle management, homelab setups, manage infrastructure in aws and azure.
What's also interesting is the way we're building it. I gave a brief description in my initial comment.
It feels so weird to me - people are exhausting their quotas while I am trying very hard to even reach mine with the $200 plan.
We're generating all of the code for swamp[1] with AI. We review all of that generated code with AI (this is done with the anthropic API.) Every part of our SDLC is pure AI + compute. Many feature requests every day. Bug fixes, etc.
Never hit the quota once. Something weird is definitely going on.