3 ms·

You can’t easily snapshot the current state of an OS and restore to that state like with git.

Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
Well there is cri-u for what its worth on linux which can atleast snapshot the state of an application and I suppose something must be similar available for filesystems as well Also one can simply run a virtual machine which can do that but then the issue becomes in how apps from outside connect to vm inside
- nicoty 9mo ago
  Filesystems like zfs, btrfs and bcachefs have snapshot creation and rollbacks as features.
viraptor 9mo ago
Sure you can. Filesystem snapshotting is available on all OSes now.
alwillis 9mo ago
At least on macOS, an OS snapshot is a thing [1]; I suspect Cowork will mostly run in a sandbox, which Claude Code does now. [1]: https://www.cleverfiles.com/help/apfs-snapshots.html https://www.cleverfiles.com/help/apfs-snapshots.html
- nikkwong 9mo ago
  Ok, you can "easily", but how quickly can you revert to a snapshot? I would guess creating a snapshot for each turn change with an LLM become too burdensome to allow you to iterate quickly.
  - alwillis 9mo ago
    For the vast majority, this won't be an issue. This is essentially a UI on top of Claude Code, which supports running in a sandbox on macOS.
- bigyabai 9mo ago
  All major OSes support snapshotting, and it's not a panacea on any of them.
madeofpalk 9mo ago
Maybe not for very broad definitions of OS state, but for specific files/folders/filesystems, this is trivial with FS-level snapshots and copy-on-write.
Analemma_ 9mo ago
I wonder if in the long run this will lead to the ascent of NixOS. They seem perfect for each other: if you have git and/or a snapshotting filesystem, together with the entire system state being downstram of your .nix file, then go ahead and let the LLM make changes willy-nilly, you can always roll back to a known good version. NixOS still isn't ready for this world, but if it becomes the natural counterpart to LLM OS tooling, maybe that will speed up development.
incr_me 9mo ago
Let's assume that you can. For disaster recovery, this is probably acceptable, but it's unacceptable for basically any other purpose. Reverting the whole state of the machine because the AI agent (a single tenant in what is effectively a multi-tenant system) did something thing incorrect is unacceptable. Managing undo/redo in a multiplayer environment is horrific.

Well there is cri-u for what its worth on linux which can atleast snapshot the state of an application and I suppose something must be similar available for filesystems as well Also one can simply run a virtual machine which can do that but then the issue becomes in how apps from outside connect to vm inside

nicoty 9mo ago
Filesystems like zfs, btrfs and bcachefs have snapshot creation and rollbacks as features.

viraptor 9mo ago

Sure you can. Filesystem snapshotting is available on all OSes now.

alwillis 9mo ago

At least on macOS, an OS snapshot is a thing [1]; I suspect Cowork will mostly run in a sandbox, which Claude Code does now. [1]: https://www.cleverfiles.com/help/apfs-snapshots.html https://www.cleverfiles.com/help/apfs-snapshots.html

nikkwong 9mo ago
Ok, you can "easily", but how quickly can you revert to a snapshot? I would guess creating a snapshot for each turn change with an LLM become too burdensome to allow you to iterate quickly.
- alwillis 9mo ago
  For the vast majority, this won't be an issue. This is essentially a UI on top of Claude Code, which supports running in a sandbox on macOS.
bigyabai 9mo ago
All major OSes support snapshotting, and it's not a panacea on any of them.

madeofpalk 9mo ago

Maybe not for very broad definitions of OS state, but for specific files/folders/filesystems, this is trivial with FS-level snapshots and copy-on-write.

Analemma_ 9mo ago

I wonder if in the long run this will lead to the ascent of NixOS. They seem perfect for each other: if you have git and/or a snapshotting filesystem, together with the entire system state being downstram of your .nix file, then go ahead and let the LLM make changes willy-nilly, you can always roll back to a known good version. NixOS still isn't ready for this world, but if it becomes the natural counterpart to LLM OS tooling, maybe that will speed up development.

incr_me 9mo ago

Let's assume that you can. For disaster recovery, this is probably acceptable, but it's unacceptable for basically any other purpose. Reverting the whole state of the machine because the AI agent (a single tenant in what is effectively a multi-tenant system) did something thing incorrect is unacceptable. Managing undo/redo in a multiplayer environment is horrific.