[HN Gopher] Snorting the AGI with Claude Code
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Snorting the AGI with Claude Code
Author : beigebrucewayne
Score : 109 points
Date : 2025-06-16 11:01 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kadekillary.work)
(TXT) w3m dump (kadekillary.work)
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| On the one hand very cool.
|
| On the other hand, every time people are just spinning off sub-
| agents I am reminded of this:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kpPnReyBC54KESiSn/optimality...
|
| It's simultaneously the obvious next step and portends a
| potentially very dangerous future.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _It 's simultaneously the obvious next step_
|
| As it has been _over three years ago_ , when that was
| originally published.
|
| I'm continuously surprised both by how fast the models
| themselves evolve, and _how slow their use patterns are_. We
| 're still barely playing with the patterns that were obvious
| _and_ thoroughly discussed back before GPT-4 was a thing.
|
| Right now, the whole industry is obsessed with "agents", aka.
| giving LLMs function calls and _limited_ control over the loop
| they 're running under. How many years before the industry will
| get to the point of giving LLMs proper control over the top-
| level loop _and_ managing the context, plus an ability to
| "shell out" to "subagents" as a matter of course?
| qsort wrote:
| > How many years before the industry will get to the point
|
| When/if the underlying model gets good enough to support that
| pattern. As an extreme example, you aren't ever going to make
| even a basic agent with GPT-3 as the base model, the juice
| isn't worth the squeeze.
|
| Models have gotten way better and I'm now convinced (new data
| -> new opinion) that they are a major win for coding, but
| they still need a lot, _a lot_ of handholding, left to their
| own devices they just make a mess.
|
| The underlying capabilities of the model are the entire
| ballgame, the "use patterns" aren't exactly rocket science.
| benlivengood wrote:
| We haven't hit the RSI threshold yet and so evolution is so
| slow that it's usually terminated as not-useful or it solves
| a concrete problem and is terminated by itself or a human.
| Earlier model+frameworks merely petered out almost
| immediately. I'm guessing it's roughly correlated with the
| progress on METR.
| SamPatt wrote:
| >Claude code feels more powerful than cursor, but why? One of the
| reasons seems it's ability to be scripted. At the end of the day,
| cursor is an editor, while claude code is a swiss army knife (on
| steroids).
|
| Agreed, and I find that I use Claude Code on more than
| traditional code bases. I run it in my Obsidian vault for all
| kinds of things. I run it to build local custom keyboard bindings
| with scripts that publish screenshots to my CDN and give me a
| markdown link, or to build a program that talks to Ollama to
| summarize my terminal commands for the last day.
|
| I remember the old days of needing to figure out if the
| formatting changes I wanted to make to a file were sufficient to
| build a script or just do them manually - now I just run Claude
| in the directory and have it done for me. It's useful for so many
| things.
| jjice wrote:
| I'm very interested to hear what your uses cases are when using
| it in your Obsidian Vault
| Aeolun wrote:
| The thing is, Claude Code only works if you have the plan. It's
| impossible to use it on the API, and it makes me wonder if
| $100/month is truly enough. I use it all day every day now, and
| I must be consuming a whole lot more than my $100 is worth.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| > It's impossible to use it on the API
|
| What does this mean?
| ggsp wrote:
| You can definitely use Claude Code via the API
| practal wrote:
| I think it is available on Claude Pro now, so just $20.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| This article is a bit all over the place. First, a slide deck to
| describe a codebase is not that useful. There's a reason why no
| one ever uses a slide deck for anything besides supporting an
| oral presentation.
|
| Most of these things in the post aren't new capabilities. The
| automation of workflows is indeed valuable and cool. Not sure
| what AGI has anything to do with it.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Also I don't trust it. They touched on that I think (I only
| skimmed).
|
| Plus you shouldn't need an LLM to understand a codebase. Just
| make it more understandable! Of course capital likes shortcuts
| and hacks to get the next feature out in Q3.
| imiric wrote:
| > Plus you shouldn't need an LLM to understand a codebase.
| Just make it more understandable!
|
| The kind of person who prefers this setup wants to read (and
| write) the least amount of code on their own. So their ideal
| workflow is one where they get to make programs through
| natural language. Making codebases understandable for this
| group is mostly a waste of effort.
|
| It's a wild twist of fate that programming languages were
| intended to make programming friendly to humans, and now
| humans don't want to read them at all. Code is becoming just
| an intermediary artifact useless to machines, which can
| instead write machine code directly.
|
| I wish someone could put this genie back in the bottle.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| There is no amount of static material that will perfectly
| conform to the shape and contours of every mind that consumes
| that static material such that they can learn what they want
| to learn when they want to learn it.
|
| Having a thing that is interactive and which can answer
| questions is a very useful thing. A slide deck that sits
| around for the next person is probably not that great, I
| agree. But if you desperately want a slide deck, then an
| agent like Claude which can create it on demand is pretty
| good. If you want summaries of changes over time, or to know
| "what's the _overall_ approach at a jargon-filled but still
| overview level explanation of how feature /behavior X is
| implemented?", an agent can generate a mediocre (but probably
| serviceable) answer to any of those by reading the repo.
| That's an amazing swiss-army knife to have in your pocket.
|
| I really used to be a hater, and I really did not trust it,
| but just using the thing has left me unable to deny its
| utility.
| Uehreka wrote:
| > Not sure what AGI has anything to do with it.
|
| Judging from the tone of the article, they're using the term
| AGI in a jokey way and not taking themselves too seriously,
| which is refreshing.
|
| I mean like, it wouldn't be refreshing if the article didn't
| also have useful information, but I do actually think a slide
| deck could be a useful way to understand a codebase. It's
| exactly the kind of nice-to-have that I'd never want a junior
| wasting time on, but if it costs like $5 and gets me something
| minorly useful, that's pretty cool.
|
| Part of the mind-expanding transition to using LLMs involves
| recognizing that there are some things we used to dislike
| because of how much effort they took relative to their worth.
| But if you don't need to do the thing yourself or burn through
| a team member's time/sanity doing it, it can make you start to
| go "yeah fuck it, trawl the codebase and try to write a
| markdown document describing all of the features and
| requirements in a tabular format. Maybe it'll go better than I
| expect, and if it doesn't then on to something else."
| abhisheksp1993 wrote:
| ``` claude --dangerously-skip-permissions # science mode ```
|
| This made me chuckle
| 42lux wrote:
| If people would be as patient and inventive to teach junior devs
| as they are with llms the whole industry would be better of.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| You pay junior devs way way way more money for the privilege of
| them being bad.
|
| And since they're human, the juniors themselves do not have the
| patience of an LLM.
|
| I _really_ would not want to be a junior dev right now... Very
| unfair and undesirable situation they 've landed in.
| mentos wrote:
| At least it's easier to teach yourself anything now with an
| LLM? So maybe it balances out.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| I think it's actually even worse: it's easier to _trick
| yourself_ into thinking you 're teaching yourself anything.
|
| Learning comes from grinding and LLMs are the ultimate
| anti-intellectual-grind machines. Which is great for when
| you're not trying to learn a skill!
| jyounker wrote:
| Yeah, you have to be really careful about how you use
| LLMs. I've been finding it very useful to use them as
| teachers, or to use them in the same way that I'd use a
| coworker. "What's the idiomatic ways to write this python
| comprehension in javascript?" Or, "Hey, do you remember
| what you call it when..." And when I request these things
| I'll try to ask in the most generic way possible so that
| I then get retype the relevant code, filling in the
| blanks with my own values.
|
| That's just one use though. The other is treating it like
| it's a jr developer, which has its own shift in thinking.
| Practice in writing details specs goes a long way here.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| 100% agreed.
|
| > Practice in writing details specs goes a long way here.
|
| This is an additional asymmetric advantage to more senior
| engineers as they use these tools
| drewlesueur wrote:
| I think it would be great to be a junior dev now and be able
| to learn quickly with llms.
| godelski wrote:
| A constant reminder: you can't have wizards without having
| noobs.
|
| Every wizard was once a noob. No one is born that way, they
| were forged. It's in everybody's interest to train them. If
| they leave, you still benefit from the other companies who
| trained them, making the cost equal. Though if they leave,
| there's probably better ways to make them stay that you haven't
| considered (e.g. have you considered not paying new juniors
| more than your current junior that has been with the company
| for a few years? They should be able to get a pay bump without
| leaving)
| QuantumGood wrote:
| I think too many see it more as "every stem cell has the
| potential to be any [something]", but it's generally better
| to let them self differentiate until survivors with more
| potential exist.
| lunarboy wrote:
| I'm sure people (esp engineers) know this. But imagine you're
| starting a company: would you try to deploy N agents (even if
| shitty), or take a financial/time/legal/social risk with a
| new hire. When you consider short-term costs, the math just
| never works out in favor of real humans.
| geraneum wrote:
| Well, in the beginning, the math doesn't work out in favor
| of building the software (or the thing you want to sell)
| either.
| qsort wrote:
| The vilification of juniors and the abandonment of the idea
| that teaching and mentoring are worthwhile are single-handedly
| making me speedrun burnout. May a hundred years of Microsoft
| Visio befall anybody who thinks that way.
| handfuloflight wrote:
| Took a junior dev under my wings recently and the more time and
| energy and resources I spent on on him, the more expectation
| and disrespect I was shown.
|
| "Familiarity breeds contempt."
|
| None of my instances with AI have shown me contempt.
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| The terminal really is sort of the perfect interface for an LLM;
| I wonder whether this approach will become favored over the
| custom IDE integrations.
| drcode wrote:
| sort of, except I think the future of llms will be to to have
| the llm try 5 separate attempts to create a fix in parallel,
| since llm time is cheaper than human time... and once you
| introduce this aspect into the workflow, you'll want to spin up
| multiple containers, and the benefits of the terminal aren't as
| strong anymore.
| jyounker wrote:
| Having command line tools to spin up multiple containers and
| then to collect their results seems like it would be a pretty
| natural fit.
| intralogic wrote:
| How can I make this page easier to read in chrome? The gray-on-
| gray doesn't have enough contrast for me to read easily.
| bionhoward wrote:
| Assuming attention to detail is one of the best signs people give
| a fuck about craftsmanship, isn't the fact the Anthropic legal
| terms are logically impossible to satisfy a bad sign for their
| ability to be trusted as careful stewards of ASI?
|
| Not exactly "three laws safe" if we can't use the thing for work
| without violating their competitive use prohibition
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