4 ms·

I currently have a TUI addiction. Each time I want something to be easier, I open claude-code and ask for a TUI. Now I have a git worktree manager where I can a

by whazor 8mo ago

I currently have a TUI addiction. Each time I want something to be easier, I open claude-code and ask for a TUI. Now I have a git worktree manager where I can add/rebase/delete. As TUI library I use Textual which claude handles quite well, especially as it can test-run quite some Python code.

lionkor 8mo ago
That sounds like a complete waste of time and tokens to me, what is the benefit? So each time you do something, you let Claude one shot a tui? This seems like a waste of compute and your time
- MarsIronPI 8mo ago
  On the contrary. Once these tools exist they exist forever, independently of Claude or a Claude Code subscription. IMO this is the best way to use AI for personal use.
- duneisagoodbook 8mo ago
  yeah! they should focus on more productive pursuits, like telling people online what to do with their time and resources.
  - morissette 8mo ago
    And these are things outside of our control.
- htnthrow11220 8mo ago
  They said each time they want something to be easier, not each time they do something. And they didn’t mention it has to be one-shot. You might have read too quickly and you’ve responded to something that didn’t actually exist.
- bmacho 8mo ago
  Now that I think about it, if Claude can put most useful functions in a TUI and make them discoverable (show them in a list), than this could be better than asking for one-liners (and forgetting them) every single time. Maybe I'll try using small TUI too.
firesteelrain 8mo ago
Can you explain TUI? I have never heard this before
- ses1984 8mo ago
  Terminal UI.
  - CRConrad 7mo ago
    Textual / Text-based UI used to be more common. Makes more sense, too: Although you run TUI apps in it, the terminal itself is inherently more of a CLI than a TUI. Makes "terminal" rather misleading, IMO.
- Bjartr 8mo ago
  Terminal User Interface, contrasting with a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Most often applied to programs that use the terminal as a pseudo-graphical canvas that they draw on with characters to provide an interactive page that can be navigated around with the keyboard. Really, they're just a GUI drawn with Unicode instead of drawing primitives. Like many restrictions, limiting oneself to just a fixed grid of colored Unicode characters for drawing lends itself to more creative solutions to problems. Some people prefer such UIs, some people don't.
  - Muvasa 8mo ago
    I prefer tui's for two reasons. 1. Very used to vi keybindings 2. I like low resources software. I love the ability to open the software in less than a second in a second do what I needed using vi motions. And close it less than a second. Some people will be like you save two seconds trying to do something simple. You lose more time building the tool than you will use it in your life. It's not about saving time. It's about eliminating the mental toll from having to context switch(i know it sounds ai, reading so much ai text has gotten to me)
    - irl_zebra 8mo ago
      "It's not about saving time, it's about eliminating the mental toll from having to context switch" This broke my brain! Woah!
Trufa 8mo ago
The amount of little tools I'm creating for myself is incredible, 4.6 seems like it can properly one/two shot it now without my attention. Did you open source that one? I was thinking of this exact same thing but wanted to think a little about how to share deps, i.e. if I do quick worktree to try a branch I don't wanna npm i that takes forever. Also, if you share it with me, there's obviously no expectations, even it's a half backed vibecoded mess.
- elliotbnvl 8mo ago
  The deps question is huge, let me know if you solve it.
  - CalebJohn 8mo ago
    If I'm understanding the problem correctly, this should be solved by pnpm [1]. It stores packages in a global cache, and hardlinks to the local node_packages. So running install in a new worktree should be instant. [1]: https://pnpm.io/motivation https://pnpm.io/motivation
- SauntSolaire 8mo ago
  What's the point of open sourcing something you one shot with an LLM? At that point just open source the prompt you used to generate it.
  - freedomben 8mo ago
    Testing. If you share something you've tested and know works, that's way better than sharing a prompt which will generate untested code which then has to be tested. On top of that it seems wasteful to burn inference compute (and $) repeating the same thing when the previous output would be superior anyway. That said, I do think it would be awesome if including prompts/history in the repos somehow became a thing. Not only would it help people learn and improve, but it would allow tweaking.
  - NetOpWibby 8mo ago
    To save time and energy?
hattmall 8mo ago
What are some examples of useful TUI you made? I'm generally opposed to the concept
rw_panic0_0 8mo ago
how do you trust the code claude wrote? don't you get anxiety "what if there's an error in tui code and it would mess up my git repo"?
- sclangdon 8mo ago
  Isn't it this case no matter who wrote the code? How do you ever run anything if you're worried about bugs?
  - phailhaus 8mo ago
    When I write the code myself, I'm not worried that I snuck a `git reset --hard` somewhere.
    - coldtea 8mo ago
      Do you only run code you wrote yourself?
      - phailhaus 7mo ago
        I depend on the community to vet libraries that I add to my stack. The community of people. When I use AI to write code, I have absolutely no guarantee about what it just did, so I have to read through it all carefully.
  - hennell 8mo ago
    Different type of creator, different type of bugs. I'd assume a human giving me a way to delete merged branches has probably had the same issue, solved the same problem and understands unspecified context around the problem (e.g protect local data). They probably run it themselves so bugs are most likely to occur in edge cases around none standard use as it works for them. Ais are giving you what they get from common patterns, parsing documentation etc. Depending what you're asking this might be an entirely novel combination of commands never run before. And depending on the model/prompt it might solve in a way any human would balk at (push main to origin, delete .git, re-clone from origin. Merged local branches are gone!) It's like the ai art issues - people struggle with relative proportions and tones and making it look real. Ai has no issues with tones, but will add extra fingers or arms etc that humans rarely struggle with. You have to look for different things, and Ai bugs are definitely more dangerous than (most) human bugs. (Depends a little, it's pretty easy to tell if a human knows what they're talking about. There's for sure humans who could write super destructive code, but other elements usually make you suspicious and worried about the code before that)
eulers_secret 8mo ago
Tig is a nice and long-maintained git tui you might enjoy, then! If nothing else maybe for inspiration
kqr 8mo ago
In the case of Git, I can warmly recommend Magit as a TUI. Not only does it make frequent operations easier and rare operations doable -- it also teaches you Git! I have a draft here about one aspect of Magit I enjoy: https://entropicthoughts.com/rebasing-in-magit https://entropicthoughts.com/rebasing-in-magit
CRConrad 7mo ago
> Each time I want something to be easier, I open claude-code and ask for a TUI. WTF has happened to software development, that anyone thinks they need "AI" for that? Any self-respecting half-way decent IDE has had parameterized templates for that since at least the mid-1990s. (They used to be called "Wizards" on Windows, or "Experts" in the Borland tools.) Select "File", "New", "[Whatever]", answer a few questions in a (series of) dialog(s), click "Finish", and hey presto!, you had a new project, templated according to your preferences, with the UI scaffolding all finished. (Mostly GUI, of course, since that was the hot new thing back then; but could just as easily have been TUI, and I suppose some had that too.) All done locally on your stonking new 486 266 Mhz / 16 MB. No need to burn half the planet to run some LLM "in the cloud", i.e. on someone else's machine in a datacenter somewhere. Jeebus fuck, does one have to be labelled "old curmudgeon" just for thinking there's something seriously wrong going on here nowadays?

by whazor 8mo ago

lionkor 8mo ago

That sounds like a complete waste of time and tokens to me, what is the benefit? So each time you do something, you let Claude one shot a tui? This seems like a waste of compute and your time

MarsIronPI 8mo ago
On the contrary. Once these tools exist they exist forever, independently of Claude or a Claude Code subscription. IMO this is the best way to use AI for personal use.
duneisagoodbook 8mo ago
yeah! they should focus on more productive pursuits, like telling people online what to do with their time and resources.
- morissette 8mo ago
  And these are things outside of our control.
htnthrow11220 8mo ago
They said each time they want something to be easier, not each time they do something. And they didn’t mention it has to be one-shot. You might have read too quickly and you’ve responded to something that didn’t actually exist.
bmacho 8mo ago
Now that I think about it, if Claude can put most useful functions in a TUI and make them discoverable (show them in a list), than this could be better than asking for one-liners (and forgetting them) every single time. Maybe I'll try using small TUI too.

firesteelrain 8mo ago

Can you explain TUI? I have never heard this before

ses1984 8mo ago
Terminal UI.
- CRConrad 7mo ago
  Textual / Text-based UI used to be more common. Makes more sense, too: Although you run TUI apps in it, the terminal itself is inherently more of a CLI than a TUI. Makes "terminal" rather misleading, IMO.
Bjartr 8mo ago
Terminal User Interface, contrasting with a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Most often applied to programs that use the terminal as a pseudo-graphical canvas that they draw on with characters to provide an interactive page that can be navigated around with the keyboard. Really, they're just a GUI drawn with Unicode instead of drawing primitives. Like many restrictions, limiting oneself to just a fixed grid of colored Unicode characters for drawing lends itself to more creative solutions to problems. Some people prefer such UIs, some people don't.
- Muvasa 8mo ago
  I prefer tui's for two reasons. 1. Very used to vi keybindings 2. I like low resources software. I love the ability to open the software in less than a second in a second do what I needed using vi motions. And close it less than a second. Some people will be like you save two seconds trying to do something simple. You lose more time building the tool than you will use it in your life. It's not about saving time. It's about eliminating the mental toll from having to context switch(i know it sounds ai, reading so much ai text has gotten to me)
  - irl_zebra 8mo ago
    "It's not about saving time, it's about eliminating the mental toll from having to context switch" This broke my brain! Woah!

Trufa 8mo ago

The amount of little tools I'm creating for myself is incredible, 4.6 seems like it can properly one/two shot it now without my attention. Did you open source that one? I was thinking of this exact same thing but wanted to think a little about how to share deps, i.e. if I do quick worktree to try a branch I don't wanna npm i that takes forever. Also, if you share it with me, there's obviously no expectations, even it's a half backed vibecoded mess.

elliotbnvl 8mo ago
The deps question is huge, let me know if you solve it.
- CalebJohn 8mo ago
  If I'm understanding the problem correctly, this should be solved by pnpm [1]. It stores packages in a global cache, and hardlinks to the local node_packages. So running install in a new worktree should be instant. [1]: https://pnpm.io/motivation https://pnpm.io/motivation
SauntSolaire 8mo ago
What's the point of open sourcing something you one shot with an LLM? At that point just open source the prompt you used to generate it.
- freedomben 8mo ago
  Testing. If you share something you've tested and know works, that's way better than sharing a prompt which will generate untested code which then has to be tested. On top of that it seems wasteful to burn inference compute (and $) repeating the same thing when the previous output would be superior anyway. That said, I do think it would be awesome if including prompts/history in the repos somehow became a thing. Not only would it help people learn and improve, but it would allow tweaking.
- NetOpWibby 8mo ago
  To save time and energy?

hattmall 8mo ago

What are some examples of useful TUI you made? I'm generally opposed to the concept

rw_panic0_0 8mo ago

how do you trust the code claude wrote? don't you get anxiety "what if there's an error in tui code and it would mess up my git repo"?

sclangdon 8mo ago
Isn't it this case no matter who wrote the code? How do you ever run anything if you're worried about bugs?
- phailhaus 8mo ago
  When I write the code myself, I'm not worried that I snuck a `git reset --hard` somewhere.
  - coldtea 8mo ago
    Do you only run code you wrote yourself?
    - phailhaus 7mo ago
      I depend on the community to vet libraries that I add to my stack. The community of people. When I use AI to write code, I have absolutely no guarantee about what it just did, so I have to read through it all carefully.
- hennell 8mo ago
  Different type of creator, different type of bugs. I'd assume a human giving me a way to delete merged branches has probably had the same issue, solved the same problem and understands unspecified context around the problem (e.g protect local data). They probably run it themselves so bugs are most likely to occur in edge cases around none standard use as it works for them. Ais are giving you what they get from common patterns, parsing documentation etc. Depending what you're asking this might be an entirely novel combination of commands never run before. And depending on the model/prompt it might solve in a way any human would balk at (push main to origin, delete .git, re-clone from origin. Merged local branches are gone!) It's like the ai art issues - people struggle with relative proportions and tones and making it look real. Ai has no issues with tones, but will add extra fingers or arms etc that humans rarely struggle with. You have to look for different things, and Ai bugs are definitely more dangerous than (most) human bugs. (Depends a little, it's pretty easy to tell if a human knows what they're talking about. There's for sure humans who could write super destructive code, but other elements usually make you suspicious and worried about the code before that)

eulers_secret 8mo ago

Tig is a nice and long-maintained git tui you might enjoy, then! If nothing else maybe for inspiration

kqr 8mo ago

In the case of Git, I can warmly recommend Magit as a TUI. Not only does it make frequent operations easier and rare operations doable -- it also teaches you Git! I have a draft here about one aspect of Magit I enjoy: https://entropicthoughts.com/rebasing-in-magit https://entropicthoughts.com/rebasing-in-magit

CRConrad 7mo ago

> Each time I want something to be easier, I open claude-code and ask for a TUI. WTF has happened to software development, that anyone thinks they need "AI" for that? Any self-respecting half-way decent IDE has had parameterized templates for that since at least the mid-1990s. (They used to be called "Wizards" on Windows, or "Experts" in the Borland tools.) Select "File", "New", "[Whatever]", answer a few questions in a (series of) dialog(s), click "Finish", and hey presto!, you had a new project, templated according to your preferences, with the UI scaffolding all finished. (Mostly GUI, of course, since that was the hot new thing back then; but could just as easily have been TUI, and I suppose some had that too.) All done locally on your stonking new 486 266 Mhz / 16 MB. No need to burn half the planet to run some LLM "in the cloud", i.e. on someone else's machine in a datacenter somewhere. Jeebus fuck, does one have to be labelled "old curmudgeon" just for thinking there's something seriously wrong going on here nowadays?