alt Hacker NewsThis is awesome. At the same time I wonder if we are entering an era in which it’s just better to build your own tools
Need a 3D modeler? Use Claude or codex to build the 3D model first, then build the modeler around it as you iterate towards what you want to build
So many times I’ve had to spend hours learning a software, reading docs, doing tutorials, only to later be able to do a small basic idea of what I actually wanted to do in the first place
Now I can just build only the software I need, for the thing I need it for (or, ala REA, maybe either modify or reverse engineer some existing software, to better fit my workflows)
In that sense, it would also be cool to be able to drive KetchUp with an agent. I’m a big fan of what pen.dev has done (although now their tool is not free/open anymore)
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I really appreciate this sentiment, and at the same time there are real opportunity costs to building and maintaining your own tools. Even in the era of tokens.
I think it comes down to where you want to spend your time and attention.
Skip the 3D modeler and have the agent do the operations directly instead.
A good visualizer might be useful thought! If that part of the work needs to be validated.
> At the same time I wonder if we are entering an era in which it’s just better to build your own tools
I wonder if Claude Code and other similar tools start to maintain their own base apps that everyone keeps asking for? This would be like a "cache" that makes the requests cheaper/easier to deliver?
Then everyone's "own" apps is really just a customization layer on top of a solid base that already does all the heavy lifting.
So many people are building their own versions of:
- PDF editors
- Word processors
- 3D editors
- Video editors
- Pixel-based image editors
- Vector-based image editors
- CAD editors
etc.
In some of these there are a few flavors as well that are major architectural choices. But most of what people are doing is just playing around with UI and file formats. Much of the functionality is generally the same.