logoalt Hacker News

comboy • yesterday at 6:07 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

Hey, you seem to have similar view on this. I know ideas are cheap but hear me out:

You talk with agent A it only modifies this spec, you still chat and can say "make it prettier" but that agent only modifies the spec, the spec could also separate "explicit" from "inferred".

And of course agent B which builds only sees the spec.

User actually can care about diffs generated by agent A again, because nobody wants to verify diffs on agents generated code full of repetition and created by search and replace. I believe if somebody implements this right it will be the way things are done.

And of course with better models spec can be used to actually meaningfully improve the product.

Long story short what industry misses currently and what you seem to be understanding is that intent is sacred. It should be always stored, preferably verbatim and always with relevant context ("yes exactly" is obviously not enough). Current generation of LLMs can already handle all that. It would mean like 2-3x cost but seem so much worth it (and the cost on the long run could likely go below 1x given typical workflows and repetitions)

Replies

miki123211 • today at 6:43 AM

See also: https://juxt.github.io/allium/ (not affiliated in any way, just an interesting project)

I'm using something similar-ish that I build for myself (much smaller, less interesting, not yet published and with prettier syntax). Something like:

    a->b # b must always be true if a is true
    a<->b # works both ways
    a=>b # when a happens, b must happen
    a->fail, a=> fail # a can never be true / can never happen
    a # a is always true
So you can write:

    Product.alcoholic? Product in Order.lineItems -> Order.customer.can_buy_alcohol?
    u1 = User(), u2=User(), u1 in u2.friends -> u2 in u1.friends
    new Source() => new Subscription(user=Source.owner, source=Source)
    Source.subscriptions.count>0 # delete otherwise
This is a much more compact way to write desired system properties than writing them out in English (or Allium), but helps you reason better about what you actually want.
beshrkayali • yesterday at 7:52 PM

Right, the spec/build separation is exactly the idea and Ossature is already built that way on the build side.

I agree a dedicated layer for intent capture makes a lot of sense. I thought about that as well, I am just not fully convinced it has to be conversational (or free-form conversational). Writing a prompt to get the right spec change is still a skill in itself, and it feels like it'd just be shifting the problem upstream rather than actually solving it. A structured editing experience over specs feels like it'd be more tractable to me. But the explicit vs inferred distinction you mention is interesting and worth thinking through more.

➕ show 3 replies
4b11b4 • today at 12:01 AM

yep but spec isn't the root

viktorianer • yesterday at 8:20 PM

[dead]