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Terrettalast Sunday at 4:33 PM2 repliesview on HN

Love the idea and the approach, both. Intend to try it.

Dislike READMEs written by or with the LLM.

They're filled with tropes and absolutes, as if written by a PdM to pitch his budget rather than for engineers needing to make it work.

At some point, reading these becomes like hearing a rhythm in daily life (riding subway, grinding espresso, typing in a cafe) and a rhythm-matched earwig inserts itself in your brain. Now you aren't hearing whatever made that rhythmic sound, but the unrelated earwig. Trying to think about your README or AskHN, instead thinking about LLM slop and confabulation and trust.

(Just like new account ChatEngineer's comment opening with “The [hard thing] is real.” which leaves the otherwise natural rest of comment more sus.)

Unsolicited opinion: Shouldn't be called total-recall, but curated-recall or selective-recall (prefer this one) or partial-recall or anything that doesn't confuse users or LLM as to (trope incoming, because where did they learn tropes anyway?): what it is (and isn't)


Replies

Bolwintoday at 5:23 PM

Great explanation for why AI slop is so distracting. It's actively hurting my ability to find high quality things, because it's a strong signal for low effort, and yet so many good projects are starting to use it on readmes.

I have no idea if OPs project is good, but the idea is.

davegoldblattyesterday at 11:30 PM

roger that! good point on the readme, was aiming for velocity of shipping. will re work

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