[HN Gopher] Show HN: Clippy - 90s UI for local LLMs
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Show HN: Clippy - 90s UI for local LLMs
Author : felixrieseberg
Score : 566 points
Date : 2025-05-06 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (felixrieseberg.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (felixrieseberg.github.io)
| Jagerbizzle wrote:
| Man do I ever miss this UI design. Nice work!
| kuberwastaken wrote:
| Is it insane that I tried to make a version of this exactly a
| week ago!? This is freakin awesome, congratulations!
| dehrmann wrote:
| Can you add narration in Gilbert Gottfried's voice?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu_Pzuwy-JY
| alkh wrote:
| Great job! Having ollama support would be useful as well[1]!
| [1]https://github.com/ollama/ollama
| ale42 wrote:
| Great idea and design, thanks for this! I was hoping since some
| time to see this :-D
|
| I hope that one day a non-Electron app (to minimize resource
| usage when idle) will also appear!
| talkinghead wrote:
| yes yes yes!!!
| rangerelf wrote:
| This is a thing of beauty, thank you!! :-D
| tasn wrote:
| I love the terrible font rendering! Is it a special font, or some
| CSS?
| rhet0rica wrote:
| Looks like it's a special font provided by
| https://github.com/jdan/98.css (Which has come a long way in
| the past couple of years, despite still being 0.1.x)
|
| Although there _is_ a CSS rule for manipulating how fonts are
| anti-aliased, it was never standardized, and Firefox doesn 't
| implement the vital no-smoothing option:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-smooth
|
| Maybe with enough retro revivals it will receive attention.
| prezjordan wrote:
| I should probably 1.0 it and call it a day, it's pretty much
| done. In the back of my mind I've thought of making the
| markup more amenable to LLMs like Sonnet (maybe with tailwind
| style utility classes)
| nullchan wrote:
| Pretty sure Clippy is trademarked. Had the same idea but did not
| go through with it because of the TM.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Trademarks have to actually be used to remain enforceable, I
| think. Not sure MS could claim Clippy after all this time, not
| that they might not try.
| mook wrote:
| Three fact that it's not a product anymore doesn't mean it's
| unused; a quick search says they at a minimum used it in
| 2021: https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/07/0...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Wow, had no idea. Like a bad penny.
| shrinks99 wrote:
| Microsoft uses Clippy for the paperclip emoji in the Fluent
| Emoji set. The trademark is why the open source version of
| Fluent Emoji doesn't use Clippy's likeness.
| muwtyhg wrote:
| The character is actually named Clippit. Although maybe MS
| trademarked Clippy after it became the more common name.
| maxwell wrote:
| Correct.
|
| https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=90782096&caseSearchType=U...
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| Actually this says the trademark is pending them proving they
| are using it and they aren't so they keep filing extensions.
| Also it's limited in scope to word processing (at there is
| lots of back and forth with the trademark office about that)
| pier25 wrote:
| I seriously doubt Microsoft would enforce it for a non-
| commercial side project.
| basketbla wrote:
| Pretty fantastic follow-up to https://www.latent.space/p/clippy-
| v-anton
| _pdp_ wrote:
| Super cool. Serious 90s vibes. I also tried to make a super
| clippy here. https://chatbotkit.com/examples/super-clippy I think
| I match the color shema perfectly but does not have the same
| feeling as the original.
| stavros wrote:
| It's way too high resolution!
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Animations are missing too.
| rafram wrote:
| This is cool, but does no one even look at what libraries they're
| shipping anymore? I mean, why does this Clippy-style LLM
| interface bundle:
|
| - A JavaScript implementation of the Jinja templating language
|
| - A full GitHub API client
|
| - A library that takes a string and tells you if it's a valid npm
| package name
|
| - A useless shim for the JavaScript Math module
|
| And 119 other libraries? This thing would have taken up 10% of
| the maximum disk space available on a Windows 95 FAT16 volume.
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe it was vibe coded and the libraries were added while
| going down paths that turned out to be dead ends and the LLM
| never cleaned up after itself?
| coder543 wrote:
| People have been perfectly capable of making that mistake
| themselves since long before "vibe coding" existed.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > A JavaScript implementation of the Jinja templating language
|
| A guess without looking into the code: Jinja templating is used
| to define how to prompt the model (i.e. system first, then this
| specific character / token, then user, then if it's a tool
| prepend this and append that, etc.)
| xyc wrote:
| It seems that this is possibly not necessary, since LLaMA.cpp
| already integrates Jinja with CPP implementation (through
| minja)
| anaisbetts wrote:
| So to be clear, your complaint is that the nostalgia Clippy app
| that puts a cartoon paper clip on your desktop, isn't
| _efficient_ enough?
| rafram wrote:
| I think it's legitimate to ask why these dependencies are
| necessary. LLMs have created whole new classes of
| vulnerabilities, and things like a GitHub client (which
| downloads arbitrary data/code) and a templating engine (which
| executes it) expose an even larger attack surface.
|
| If someone's going to get RCE on my machine, I don't want it
| to be through the silly Clippy LLM UI, you know?
| felixrieseberg wrote:
| The real answer is that some of us (the Electron maintainers)
| have been playing with local LLMs in desktop apps and right
| now, node-llama-cpp is by far the easiest way to experiment -
| but it's also not meant for desktop apps and hence has _a lot_
| of dependencies.
|
| In general, pruning libraries in Electron isn't as easy as it
| should be - it's probably something for us to work on.
| pvg wrote:
| I think this is explained on the linked project page:
|
| _This project isn 't trying to be your best chat bot. I'd like
| you to enjoy a weird mix of nostalgia for 1990s technology
| paired with one the most magical technologies we can run on our
| computers in 2025._
|
| You might be looking for the more minimalist Grumpy which is
| hand-hewn from a pure silicon monocrystal.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| It's weird that when clippy was new I found it to be everything
| that's wrong with UI design, and today I'm nostalgic for it
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Nah, it's not weird. You said it yourself: nostalgia. It's
| human nature to romanticise the past. I bet you would hate it
| again if you used it today.
| concerndc1tizen wrote:
| I hope people realize that this is an easy way to get a virus.
|
| Don't install third party software except from highly trusted
| sources.
| raydiak wrote:
| You sure wouldn't want them spying on you, stealing your data,
| chewing up your resources for shady profit schemes, or making
| your machine unbootable. Better to leave that to the experts at
| Microsoft and FAANG since all those features come preinstalled
| nowadays.
|
| Snark aside, given the context, this really seems like a
| baseless attack on independent open source developers, who
| represent a significant potion of this site's subject matter
| and target audience. Genuine question: why do you feel that
| this warning is appropriate here but not the dozens of other
| solo github projects that make it to the HN front page every
| week?
| bigbuppo wrote:
| But BonzaiBuddy is your friend.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Microsoft Defender didn't find anything
| mkgeorge7 wrote:
| Question for the devs in here...something I've been thinking
| about a lot recently. So I see that OP linked out to a public
| github repo...but when downloading the actual bundle, what's a
| quick way for me to determine that what I'm installing on my mac
| is actually the same as what's in the public repo? It's always
| seemed like a loophole to me ready for (potential) exploitation.
|
| >> Ship project. >> Link out Github repo on the static site
| somewhere >> Gain trust instantly as users presume the public
| repo is what's used behind the scenes
|
| Disclaimer: I'm a web dev and don't know a single thing about
| native MacOS software
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| you don't, that is what reproducible builds are trying to
| solve, but even then it would still need someone to compile and
| check.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds
| felixrieseberg wrote:
| Yeah, reproducible builds would be fantastic.
|
| I sign my binaries on macOS with Apple codesign and notarize -
| and with Microsoft's Azure trusted signing for Windows. Both
| operating systems will actually show you a lot of warning
| dialogs before running anything unsigned. It's far from perfect
| - but I do wish we'd get more into the habit of signing
| binaries, even if open source.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| BonziBuddy next?
| roskelld wrote:
| Followed by Tiny Elvis?
|
| https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/tiny-elvis/
| ayaros wrote:
| I love your website design.
| aligundogdu wrote:
| This is such an amazing piece of work -- truly impressive! Hats
| off to you If it supports Ollama and local LLMs too, it'll be
| absolutely unbeatable!
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Like phoenix, it rises from the ashes..
| jl6 wrote:
| IIRC correctly, Clippy's most famous feature was interrupting you
| to offer advice. The advice was usually basic/useless/annoying,
| hence Clippy's reputation, but a powerful LLM could actually make
| the original concept work. It would not be simply a chatbot that
| responds to text, but rather would observe your screen,
| understand it through a vision model, and give appropriate
| advice. Things like "did you know there's an easier way to do
| what you're doing". I don't think the necessary trust exists yet
| to do this using public LLM APIs, nor does the hardware to do it
| locally, but crack either of those and I could see ClipGPT being
| genuinely useful.
| vunderba wrote:
| We are probably getting closer to that with the newer
| multimodal LLMs, but you'd almost need to take a screenshot on
| intervals fed directly to the LLM to provide a sort of
| chronological context to help it understand what the user is
| trying to do and gauge the users intentions.
|
| As you say though, I don't know how many people would be
| comfortable having screenshots of their computer sent
| arbitrarily to a non-local LLM.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > As you say though, I don't know how many people would be
| comfortable having screenshots of their computer sent
| arbitrarily to a non-local LLM.
|
| Of the technical, hang-out-on-HN crowd? Ya, probably not
| many.
|
| Of the other 99.99% of computer users? The majority of them
| wouldn't even think about it, let alone care. To quote a
| phrase, "the user is going to pick dancing pigs over security
| every time".
|
| Even without the non-chalent attitude towards security, the
| majority of the population has been so conditioned that
| everything they do on a computer is already being sent to 1)
| Apple, 2) Google, 3) Microsoft, or 4) their employer, that
| they're burnt-out of caring.
|
| All that is to say that if you can make a widely-available
| real-time LLM assistant that appeals to non-technical users,
| please invite me to your private-island-celebrity-filled-
| yacht-parties.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I think we're well into the paradigm of "hidden employee
| activity monitoring software" already taking periodic
| screenshots and sending it to an LLM somewhere, which then
| generates aggregate performance metrics and dashboards for
| managers. I've heard of multiple companies working on this
| for $bigcorp environments, customer service/call center
| workstation PCs, etc.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| So, the Replay feature being slowly rolled out in Win11?
| johnisgood wrote:
| > I don't know how many people would be comfortable having
| screenshots of their computer sent arbitrarily to a non-local
| LLM
|
| _shudders_.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| >and give appropriate advice
|
| "It's time to work, Dave"
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I'm sorry, I can't do that Hal
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The way I remember it a lot of software had "help"
| documentation with full text search in the late 1980s and early
| 1990s but the common denominator was that it didn't work in the
| sense that you got useful answers less than 10% of the time.
| Until Google came along, users got trained to avoid full text
| search facilities.
|
| The full text facility attached to Clippy really _was_ helpful,
| getting useful answers around 50% of the time. I thought the
| whole point of making him an engaging cartoon character was to
| overcome the prejudice mid-1990s users had towards full-text
| search in help.
| freedomben wrote:
| It looks like you're writing a letter.
|
| Would you like help?
|
| * Get help with writing the letter
|
| * Just type the letter without help
|
| |_| Don't show me this tip again
| 6510 wrote:
| It can still be annoying; I feel it is part of his personality.
|
| It looks like you are writing a comment on Hacker News.
|
| Would you like help with:
|
| - Commas? There shouldn't be one behind "responds to text"
|
| - Capitalization? You've missed a D in "did you know..."
|
| - Punctuation? You've missed a question mark behind "what
| you're doing". It goes inside the quotes, of course!
|
| [] Don't ever suggest anything like this ever again.
| hbn wrote:
| Microsoft infamously is adding AI to Windows to constantly
| watch your screen and people understandably are not super
| excited for it.
| basch wrote:
| I personally can't wait to ask to recall something I saw
| before but can't quite remember where.
|
| Pretty soon I won't even need biological memory.
| kurisufag wrote:
| i added a minutely scrot cronjob about a year ago and
| haven't used it once. remembering "that website i was on
| last week" is apparently not a real problem I was having
| jayGlow wrote:
| if it ran entirely on the local machine and didn't send
| information back to Microsoft I think people would be far
| more accepting of it.
| rossant wrote:
| Even funnier would be to make it unnecessarily mean and vexing.
|
| Wait, are you really looking this up? You don't even know how
| to do this? Are you kidding me?
|
| Gosh, it's been an hour and you still haven't fixed this bug?
| Are you retarded or something? You don't deserve this job.
| jahewson wrote:
| I already have a little voice in my head that tells me those
| things!
|
| That said, if we could automate it, it might free up more of
| my brain for productivity...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Next up, "Rover" the dog from Microsoft Bob
|
| https://fabulous.systems/posts/2024/06/if-i-ever-get-a-dog-i...
| tzury wrote:
| This is a clear case of "Build Something People Want".
|
| After all it was requested almost daily over at x.com
|
| https://x.com/search?q=ai%20bring%20clippy%20back&src=typed_...
| xyc wrote:
| Actually this is a good way to find product ideas. I placed a
| query in Grok to find posts about what people want, similar to
| this. Then it performs multiple searches on X including
| embedding search, and suggested people want stuff like
| tamagotchi, ICQ etc. back.
| ummonk wrote:
| Awesome! Now I just want Perplexity to acquire the AskJeeves
| brand.
| 0points wrote:
| Will this properly interrupt me in the middle of flow and ask
| unrelated questions, or is it just another clippy knock-off?
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Funny. But you know, with multimodal models perhaps someone
| will finally crack when it is appropriate to interrupt someone
| with a _relevant_ suggestion. I think I would like a personal
| assistant that would be able to say, "Hey, you have been
| debugging this one function for 5 hours and you still have 3
| more to fix by EOB. Would it make sense to pause for a bit and
| see if other fixes could be done quickly?"
| mrandish wrote:
| Great idea! I've been humorously referring to chat agents as next
| gen Clippy because of their chipper, talky default personas which
| I find insufferably annoying.
|
| I'm kind of shocked Microsoft didn't already do this as an alt
| version of their CoPilot UI. Really a huge miss on their part
| because I hate the overbearingly intrusive way they keep forcing
| it into their OS, apps and my fucking laptop keyboard. If they at
| least acknowledged their behavior and owned it (with a sly wink),
| I'd hate it a little less. I might even be up for a "Clippy is my
| CoPilot" sticker on my laptop (calling back to the old 80s "Jesus
| is my Copilot" bumper stickers).
| freedomben wrote:
| > _I 'm kind of shocked Microsoft didn't already do this as an
| alt version of their CoPilot UI._
|
| Seriously! This makes me think nobody at Microsoft with the
| authority to approve something like that has a sense of humor
| and/or good business sense. The nostalgia would be _enormous_.
| Hell I 'm a linux person now and I'd install Clippy if it
| supported Fedora
| 6510 wrote:
| yeah, make it give edgy suggestions like: Do you want to find
| a new job?
| snoman wrote:
| Clippy was a laughing stock and target of derisive comedy for
| years. It has such bad brand recognition that nobody should
| be surprised that they aren't using it.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I think that is what makes it a humor goldmine.
|
| Clippy was useless.
|
| But attaching a Clippy to a language model? Still nominally
| useless, but mindfully so!
|
| It would be self-deprecating (un-deprecated???) humor for
| Microsoft, which would take the edge off of the often pushy
| and tone-deaf corporate look they continually and crassly
| paint themselves into by default.
|
| And actually potentially useful as a branding touchstone: a
| visual and interface link across otherwise seemingly
| disparate model interfaces. Clearly delineating and
| bridging MS AI tools from all the other mixes of tools we
| are accumulating.
|
| They could lean into the "clip" in Clippy with a side app
| for saving and organizing clippings and logs of notable
| interactions with any MS model, akin to a notes app. With
| features for compressing convos into compact topic cheat
| sheets (with retained sources & convos), lists and other
| helpful info gathering and leveraging tasks.
|
| An ongoing accumulated compressed common core of context
| for both (hu)man and machine, er ... Clippy.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| But pushy and tone-deaf is what they _are_. Unless they
| change their whole corporate structure for this, it'd be
| equally tone-deaf for someone from their marketing
| department to pretend that Microsoft is hip and self-
| aware now. Better to be honest.
| richardw wrote:
| Do it on April 1. With a "we told you so" tagline. Have a
| few 2025/6 templates, like writing a presidential executive
| order because there are so many of them.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It was, but as someone without a dog in the hunt, I loved
| that ol' Clipmeister.
|
| Especially the old 'suicide note' joke image... guess would
| be called a meme today.
| pragma_x wrote:
| There's a lot of missed opportunities out there. For example,
| AskJeeves is still just a vanilla search engine (Google front-
| end).
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| That kind of sucks, because there's AI LLM's just about
| everywhere else now. Even those customer service "live chat"
| windows are typically AI first. What are Ask Jeeves doing?
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Customers I build AI chat features for also liken it to clippy.
| I think it's a very common association.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I hope you accept that likening how it is intended, and I
| can't imagine that being a good thing. Clippy was universally
| panned. To me, I wouldn't be telling people that the thing
| I'm spending time working on was received as this
| generation's Clippy.
| Levitz wrote:
| Clippy was panned because it was intrusive and offered very
| little real help, but the design and concept themselves
| were always popular.
| dylan604 wrote:
| you just described modern LLM bots as well
| nightski wrote:
| They did though, I swear it was in a presentation you could
| select clippy as an avatar.
|
| Edit: yes found it.
|
| [1] https://windowsreport.com/with-copilot-avatar-microsoft-
| will...
| bstsb wrote:
| clicked this link on mobile and every page scroll caused
| another malicious ad redirect (??) there's also a huge
| bouncing "remove ads" button with an X that opens an advert
| in the background. can't tell if the ads are on purpose or if
| the owners have just ticked every ad network box
| nightski wrote:
| Sorry didn't notice, it was the top google result. I have
| ublock origin and firefox so I tend not to see many ads.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| You're not wrong, but both mullvad's free DNS base filter
| (here: https://github.com/mullvad/encrypted-dns-profiles )
| and Wipr blocked it on my iphone. Android just use ublock
| origin with firefox or another variant.
| Spare_account wrote:
| Genuine question, if you're willing to indulge me: Why
| aren't you using ad-blocking of one type or another?
|
| _(Assumption: You 're tech literate, given the audience of
| this website. So I tend to assume it must be a conscious
| decision not to use adblocking)_
|
| I don't browse without it these days.
| bstsb wrote:
| _> mobile_
|
| i have ublock origin on my pc and macbook. trying firefox
| mobile with ublock but it's still habit to open chrome on
| my phone
| Spare_account wrote:
| Strong recommend for Android, Firefox and uBlock Origin
|
| I also have these Extensions: ClearURLs
| Decentraleyes Privacy Badger I
| still don't care about cookies
| JCattheATM wrote:
| Privacy Badger and UBlock Origin don't work well
| together, and LocalCDN is better than Decentraleyes
| indrora wrote:
| I'm firmly of the opinion that if they had shipped what is
| copilot as Cortana, they'd have seen little to no backlash.
| joeyagreco wrote:
| Just had ChatGPT make this: https://ibb.co/pB4SPJBW
| fallinditch wrote:
| Am I right to feel wary of clicking this link? My spidy sense
| says 'don't do it'.
| bstsb wrote:
| it's an ibb.co link; ibb.co is just an free online image
| host (the link lets you preview the uploaded image)
| basch wrote:
| They will. It's a no brainer to add a visual to the
| personality.
|
| They can bring back clippy, Cortana, and all the other
| variants, in classic or modern mode. Hell why not a BonziBuddy
| knockoff.
|
| An opportunity for Carmen Sandiego as well.
| jahewson wrote:
| That's a lot of hate you're channeling there.
| legohead wrote:
| Early on I gave it a custom instruction: Be
| informal, and make responses as short and concise as possible.
| Do not waste words apologizing.
| system2 wrote:
| That's a fantastic question! I see you think like a pro!
| sigmaisaletter wrote:
| It looks like you're talking about a cartoon assistant character.
| Would you like help?
|
| ICYDN: The proper name of Clippy is actually "Clippit", as
| introduced in Office 97.
| artursapek wrote:
| I thought Clippy first shipped in XP
| mig39 wrote:
| Nope, I remember it in Office 97. Which was released in 1996,
| of course.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| "...they didn't stop to think if they should."
| _-_-__-_-_- wrote:
| Wow. The ease-of-use is insanely good. I haven't figured out yet
| how to move clippy to a different location on the screen (rather
| than centred), but it works well. I have multiple models
| downloaded and am chatting already!
| siryeetey wrote:
| click and drag on the bottom right corner of clippy to drag
| batch12 wrote:
| Makes me think of this short story.
|
| https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy
| elia_42 wrote:
| Really interesting project. I love the combination of LLM with a
| 90s aesthetic. Great that it works with a really simple
| configuration and runs offline
| DigiEggz wrote:
| Accept my deepest gratitudes for creating this functional art.
| Love the idea and execution and can't wait to use it!
| dismalaf wrote:
| Clippy was peak Windows. Everything went downhill since...
| breppp wrote:
| They definitely missed on using underlines for headings
| rileytg wrote:
| I recently did this in our main system that we recently added an
| LLM feature to (for fun internally, not sending to prod) using
|
| https://github.com/pi0/clippyjs
| hnlmorg wrote:
| One of my very first AI projects was in the late 90s and used the
| Microsoft Agent API (which Clippy uses) as the interface.
|
| It used Merlin rather than Clippy and was extremely basic as AI.
| But it was a fun project.
| UncleNoob wrote:
| I'm waiting for BonziBuddy AI
| Telemakhos wrote:
| I can't get this to work on my aging 2017 Intel work mac.
|
| > Error: Error invoking remote method 'ELECTRON_LLM_CREATE':
| Error: Error: NoBinaryFoundError
| felixrieseberg wrote:
| Ah, shoot, I had an error in my build script. That's now fixed!
|
| https://github.com/felixrieseberg/clippy/releases/tag/v0.4.1
| AvAn12 wrote:
| Any love for the other avatars? Power Pup? I think there were a
| few... Otherwise, thanks, this is great.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| Revenge of the paperclips
| margorczynski wrote:
| "I can fix him"
| raydiak wrote:
| I'm all for these prepackaged local-only AI projects. Much more
| my speed than corporate cloud services. Real shame this one went
| down the path of choosing an embodiment that makes me want to
| shoot holes in my screen. It's even worse than those pixel art
| cats that chase my cursor on certain blogs. I miss plenty of
| things about the 90s, but I seriously doubt I'll live long enough
| to forget how much Clippy is not one of those things. Clippy
| would be more suitable for a horror game than an assistant. Going
| out of their way in the README to profusely thank Microsoft for
| summoning that hellspawn is just icing on the cake.
|
| I hate to put down anyone's open source hobby project, and the
| guy looks so friendly and happy in his picture. But my honest
| reaction is fear of what further nightmares people are going to
| start animating with AI. I'd rather be hunted by a Boston
| Dynamics robot than have to face Clippy on my screen every day.
| Might as well add Rover from Microsoft Bob, some blink/marquee
| tags, a MIDI file playing in the background, and a minigame about
| diagnosing DMA conflicts in mixed plug and play and non-PnP
| systems. Some parts of the 90s should stay in the 90s.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| is it possible you're not the target audience?
| raydiak wrote:
| Which part of my original comment made that a question worth
| asking? Thought I had already expressed that fairly clearly.
| mrandish wrote:
| > I'd rather be hunted by a Boston Dynamics robot than have to
| face Clippy on my screen every day.
|
| This is the _first_ AI thing I 've actually bothered to install
| on my computer. Until today, despite being a technologist, I've
| only played with AIs via browser. I think AIs are interesting
| and can be useful but, having retired early, I'm not writing
| code or work emails so there hasn't been any compelling need.
|
| I've thought about installing a local LLM to just play around
| with, but I have a long list of other things to play with
| (pinball machines, music making, photography, vintage video
| games) and AI just never got to the top of the list. I think I
| was also resistant because chat interfaces tend to be so
| annoying. I hate it when they LARP being a human. Giving a chat
| agent a retro 90s UX that's legendary for being annoying and
| clueless just seems so... on message, I thought "Yeah, I can
| probably not hate using this..."
| raydiak wrote:
| I'm in the exact same boat as you describe, except it was
| some other precompiled local-only project instead of this one
| that I tried a few months ago. That's why I said I like
| projects like these, because it's a fully private hassle free
| way to try out LLMs. Haven't really figured out any good
| purposes for it in my life, but I like to see these tools
| being made available to people without the
| time/motivation/savvy to jump through a bunch of hoops.
|
| The Clippy character specifically is the part I find off-
| putting, but perhaps that's just an excess of relevant
| experience. How many times I had to explain to confused
| people that it's not saying anything you have to care about,
| or disable it for them when they're cursing at their screen
| because the "hide" option doesn't actually disable it you
| have to go into the settings for that or it keeps popping up.
| Which made it just another config burden when I'd be
| installing office on many computers in a day.
|
| Now, a strong argument could be made that those experiences
| have made me unreasonable and bigoted against animated
| paperclips, because this is not the original Clippy. I can
| live with that.
| mrandish wrote:
| > Which made it just another config burden when I'd be
| installing office on many computers in a day.
|
| Ah, well that does explain why you have some... baggage. My
| experience was different as I wasn't supporting or
| interfacing regularly back then with anyone who wasn't tech
| savvy. I endured Clippy for about 30 seconds, realized it
| was a stupid idea only a big corporation would think was
| cool or useful, turned it off and moved on with my day.
| volkk wrote:
| i'm not sure if this post was written with humor as intent, but
| i found it hilarious. ive never heard someone talk about clippy
| with such disdain.
|
| > I'd rather be hunted by a Boston Dynamics robot than have to
| face Clippy on my screen every day.
|
| this is something else. i dealt with clippy when i was younger
| but i only have fond memories. it was useless, but it brought
| personality to an otherwise fairly mundane product.
| raydiak wrote:
| I'm glad! :) I do actually feel some less exaggerated version
| of what I wrote, but the excess in the verbiage was largely
| comedic. If you look it up pretty much anywhere, you'll find
| that there's a very large camp of us Clippy haters who never
| recovered. I was doing some amount of IT support at the time,
| and one of the main problems was all the popping up and
| asking questions confused people in various ways, and if you
| hid it the obvious way it'd just pop up again. Back when
| computers were still a new and novel thing for many people,
| having constant offers of "help" popping up when you're just
| trying to type a letter introduced counterproductive amounts
| of cognitive load for some frustrated users I got to deal
| with.
| basch wrote:
| I'd prefer it be an OS API.
|
| You link your os to a local or cloud llm, and a local program
| asking the OS for a response and can't even tell which one
| you're using or whether it's on the machine or not. It should
| all be abstracted away.
| hadlock wrote:
| There's a number of standard APIs already, OpenAI supports
| Anthopic's MCP, LM studio supports both their proprietary API
| as well as OpenAI's API. OpenAI has open sourced their
| realtime API (https://github.com/openai/openai-realtime-
| console/tree/webso...) and others. Most local clients just
| have a https://URL:port and then a drop down box for which
| RESTful API you want to use (for 88% of use cases they all
| support the same stuff, for realtime it's not quite settled
| yet), plus a field for an API key if needed.
| raydiak wrote:
| To me, the value of these types of projects is specifically
| that they are self-contained and local-only. That's the only
| kind of interaction with it I'm comfortable with right now. I
| mostly jumped ship on commercial software a long time ago, so
| I'm hoping there will still be some AI-free linux distros for
| a good long time. Different strokes for different folks, I
| suppose. At the point that the type of AI integration you're
| imagining becomes ubiquitous and mandatory, I may or may not
| stop working with computers entirely, depending on the state
| of the tech and the state of society by then.
| fallinditch wrote:
| Eloquently put.
|
| ... but I think we may be heading for a new 'golden age' of web
| animation and _gratuitous creativity_. Personally, I 'm happy
| to see more crazy animated stuff, it's the corporate dark
| patterns and bad UX that I hate.
| novaRom wrote:
| Finally a useful UI for llama.cpp!
|
| Thank you Felix! This is extremely cool! Can you please make a
| short blog post explaining how is it technically implemented?
| SLWW wrote:
| When do we get the BonziBuddy reskin?
| mbowcut2 wrote:
| Pack it up boys, they finally made the killer app.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| Fun fact: clippy came from Microsoft Bob, which Melinda Gates was
| the marketing manager for.
|
| I have often wondered what role their relationship played in
| keeping Clippy around. And now I wonder if Clippy makes Bill
| Gates sad since the divorce.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >And now I wonder if Clippy makes Bill Gates sad since the
| divorce
|
| I doubt he thinks about clippy much at all.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > I doubt he thinks about clippy much at all
|
| Guys I think I found Bill's HN handle
| rukuu001 wrote:
| It was great / depressing to mention Clippy at a recent meetup
| and see the generational divide between those who groaned and
| everyone who looked confused.
| byearthithatius wrote:
| Fun fact: the newest generation (such as myself, a 23 year old
| programmer) were actually not even alive when Clippy existed. I
| only know of it from an Office reference. One day I will have
| something like that -- maybe MSN or internet explorer?
| lolinder wrote:
| It's not quite that bad! The last version of Office released
| with Clippy was in May 2003! So you would have been born, if
| only just.
| byearthithatius wrote:
| Yeah I was a tiny little two year old:) Definitely wasn't
| coding yet hahaha
| rerdavies wrote:
| I still haven't gotten over the trauma of Clippy 1.0.
| Hadriel wrote:
| Feedback: I think it would be very helpful for users to know
| ahead of time what kinda performance they can expect based on
| their system.
| amiantos wrote:
| a very basic app getting a bunch of undue attention thanks to
| nostalgia for someone else's IP, classic
| urbandw311er wrote:
| You almost sound bitter about it
| amiantos wrote:
| and...? it does not change the fact that this "app" would get
| 0 attention if it wasn't using nostalgic IP that does not
| belong to the developer. their are undoubtedly better, more
| original apps being posted to HN right now that likely
| deserve the attention more, but they're not using stolen IP
| to get attention, so they don't.
| gitroom wrote:
| Man, brings back memories I didnt even think I still hadClippy
| was kinda ridiculous back then but Id 100% mess with this now
| tbh.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Amazing, we also have CowPilot now
| https://github.com/agentsea/cowpilot
| endlessvoid94 wrote:
| Love it.
|
| On macOS it always launches in the middle of the screen - is
| there a way to move it around?
| cbhl wrote:
| To move clippy you want to drag the piece of paper on which
| clippy sits -- clicking clippy himself will hide and show the
| chat window.
| amelius wrote:
| Do this one next: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
| willejs wrote:
| Can this keep popping up, interrupt you, and have the most
| annoying voice ever added please?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I couldn't find how to get back to the normal chat screen from
| settings easily, and loading the same model file that works in LM
| studio crashed my computer.
|
| I like the idea, though.
| daviding wrote:
| A nice addition (unless I missed it) would be to add an existing
| API key for remote model access?
| danielhanchen wrote:
| Wow fantastic website!! Love the Windows old aesthetic!
| omneity wrote:
| The idea is great but its personality needs some more sass. And
| maybe some contextual cues just so that it does the exact
| opposite of what would have been most helpful then :)
|
| I feel like a text editor + clippy would be an even more potent
| combo! After all, that was clippy's original context.
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