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hiAndrewQuinn06/24/20252 repliesview on HN

I like stuffing everything which might be important to the context window in there, personally. Saving 50ms on the prompt load sure beats a false negative when something goes wrong because I don't even think to ask whether I have the wrong Node version installed or something.


Replies

bayindirh06/24/2025

When starting to work on something, I generally do a sanity check to see that the fundamentals are there and correct versions, then throw that part of the context out of mind, knowing that I stand on firm ground.

I found out that with this verify-and-forget step, I work much more efficiently.

As a result, my workflow becomes independent of the machine I work on, because I become the tool, not my setup. After that point, only having a "$" at the beginning of the line is enough.

Of course everyone have their own choices, and YMMV.

bredren06/24/2025

Yes. I show the python or node version of currently active venv and venv name.

Also, I somehow worked in special characters for Python and other things that get screwed up if I don’t have the right nerd font installed on the system.

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