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Edit: for me the most practical insight to come out of these threads, so far, is that Show HNs for generated repos/sites/projects would be more interesting if s

by dang 9mo ago

Edit: for me the most practical insight to come out of these threads, so far, is that Show HNs for generated repos/sites/projects would be more interesting if submitters were required to share the prompts, and not just the generated output. For such projects, the prompts are the real source, while the GH repo or generated artifact is actually the object code, and if that's all that's shared, it's less interesting and there's less to discuss. I think we're going to implement this unless we hear strong reasons not to. The idea has already come up a lot, so there's demand for it, and it seems clear why. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22share%20the%20prompt%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22share%20the%20prompts%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47077840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47077840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47077555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47077555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47061571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47061571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47058187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47058187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47052452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47052452 --- original comment --- Recent and related: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47045804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47045804 - Feb 2026 (423 comments; subthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050421 is about what to do about it) AI makes you boring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47076966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47076966 - Feb 2026 (367 comments)

tombert 9mo ago
It's not a terrible idea, but I'm not sure how that would work logistically. When I use Codex to do vibe coding stuff, I don't usually have one big prompt, I usually have it do small things piecemeal and I iterate with it later. Maybe I'm using it wrong but it tends to be more "conversational" and I think that would be harder to share, especially considering I'll do things over dozens of sessions. I suppose I could keep an archive of every session I've ever opened with Codex and share that, but thus far I haven't really done that. Granted, I don't really share my stuff with "Show HN".
- PacificSpecific 9mo ago
  That's how I do it too. I haven't checked (and can't right now as I'm not at work) but does codex not have a feature that lets you download your codex chat logs? I would certainly hope so...
- dang 9mo ago
  I'm not sure how it would work. That would have to be figured out, so we would start with the simplest implementation that is not nothing. The limitations you're describing seem mostly to have to do with tooling, rather than objections in principle.
  - tombert 9mo ago
    I certainly don’t disagree with the idea; AI stuff can be so low-effort that requiring some how-to makes sense. I am just not 100% sure how it will be implemented. Maybe even a high-level overview of roughly what the conversation looks like.
selridge 9mo ago
“Share the prompts” How would that be feasible for a project of any complexity whatsoever?
- btrettel 9mo ago
  I'm reminded of something I read recently about disclosure of AI use in scientific papers [1]: > Authors should be asked to indicate categories of AI use (e.g., literature discovery, data analysis, code generation, language editing), not narrate workflows or share prompts. This standardization reduces ambiguity, minimizes burden, and creates consistent signals for editors without inviting overinterpretation. Crucially, such declarations should be routine and neutral, not framed as exceptional or suspicious. I think that sharing at least some of the prompts is a reasonable thing to do/require. I log every prompt to a LLM that I make. Still, I think this is a discussion worth having. [1] https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/02/03/why-authors-arent-disclosing-ai-use-and-what-publishers-should-not-do-about-it-part-2/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/02/03/why-authors-a...
  - selridge 9mo ago
    This is totally infeasible. If I have a vibe coded project with 175k lines of python, there would be genuinely thousands and thousands of prompts to hundreds of agents, some fed into one another. Whats the worth of digging through that? What do you learn? How would you know that I shared all of them?
  - selridge 9mo ago
    > I log every prompt to a LLM that I make. How many do you have in the log total?
    - btrettel 9mo ago
      I have a daily journal where I put every online post I make. I include anything I send to a LLM on my own time in there. (I have a separate work log on their computer, though I don't log my work prompts.) Likely I miss a few posts/prompts, but this should have the vast majority. A few caveats: I'm not a heavy LLM user (this is probably what you're getting at) and the following is a low estimate. Often, I'll save the URL only for the first prompt and just put all subsequent prompts under that one URL. Anyhow, running a simple grep command suggests that I have at least 82 prompts saved. In my view, it would be better to organize saved prompts by project. This system was not set up with prompt disclosure in mind, so getting prompts for any particular project would be annoying. The point is more to keep track of what I'm thinking of at a point in time. Right now, I don't think there are tools to properly "share the prompts" at the scale you mentioned in your other comment, but I think we will have those tools in the future. This is a real and tractable problem. > Whats the worth of digging through that? What do you learn? How would you know that I shared all of them? The same questions could be asked for the source code of any large scale project. The answers to the first two are going to depend on the project. I've learned quite a bit from looking at source code, personally, and I'm sure I could learn a lot from looking at prompts. As for the third question, there's no guarantee.
rspoerri 9mo ago
i can show you my prompt. it's a mess and only listing the major prompts. but it's interesting to look at (for me at least). archive: https://github.com/ludos1978/ludos-vscode-markdown-kanban/blob/main/TODOs-archive.md https://github.com/ludos1978/ludos-vscode-markdown-kanban/bl... in progress or undone: https://github.com/ludos1978/ludos-vscode-markdown-kanban/blob/main/TODOs-user.md https://github.com/ludos1978/ludos-vscode-markdown-kanban/bl... and there is much improvement, because if often watch videos next to vibe coding the project and do it in minutes i have time. so history is a huge mess. but i started 6 months ago, with most work done in the last 4 months. i spent about 1000$ of ai budget on it.
- dang 9mo ago
  Thanks—I agree that it's interesting to look at, and a submission of the project that included this would be much better than a submission of the same project that did not include it.
khalic 9mo ago
> Prompts are the real source LLMs are non deterministic…
- dang 9mo ago
  That's one of the major shifts happening with this technology, but I don't think it changes the point: the prompt is the input from which the output gets generated, and in that sense is the source—a generated repo is not. Technically I suppose one should say that the input is the tuple of (prompt, model, X) where X is some bundle of factors that nobody understands, but that formulation doesn't help me think about how we should adapt to this moment.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

by dang 9mo ago

tombert 9mo ago

It's not a terrible idea, but I'm not sure how that would work logistically. When I use Codex to do vibe coding stuff, I don't usually have one big prompt, I usually have it do small things piecemeal and I iterate with it later. Maybe I'm using it wrong but it tends to be more "conversational" and I think that would be harder to share, especially considering I'll do things over dozens of sessions. I suppose I could keep an archive of every session I've ever opened with Codex and share that, but thus far I haven't really done that. Granted, I don't really share my stuff with "Show HN".

PacificSpecific 9mo ago
That's how I do it too. I haven't checked (and can't right now as I'm not at work) but does codex not have a feature that lets you download your codex chat logs? I would certainly hope so...
dang 9mo ago
I'm not sure how it would work. That would have to be figured out, so we would start with the simplest implementation that is not nothing. The limitations you're describing seem mostly to have to do with tooling, rather than objections in principle.
- tombert 9mo ago
  I certainly don’t disagree with the idea; AI stuff can be so low-effort that requiring some how-to makes sense. I am just not 100% sure how it will be implemented. Maybe even a high-level overview of roughly what the conversation looks like.

selridge 9mo ago

“Share the prompts” How would that be feasible for a project of any complexity whatsoever?

btrettel 9mo ago
I'm reminded of something I read recently about disclosure of AI use in scientific papers [1]: > Authors should be asked to indicate categories of AI use (e.g., literature discovery, data analysis, code generation, language editing), not narrate workflows or share prompts. This standardization reduces ambiguity, minimizes burden, and creates consistent signals for editors without inviting overinterpretation. Crucially, such declarations should be routine and neutral, not framed as exceptional or suspicious. I think that sharing at least some of the prompts is a reasonable thing to do/require. I log every prompt to a LLM that I make. Still, I think this is a discussion worth having. [1] https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/02/03/why-authors-arent-disclosing-ai-use-and-what-publishers-should-not-do-about-it-part-2/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/02/03/why-authors-a...
- selridge 9mo ago
  This is totally infeasible. If I have a vibe coded project with 175k lines of python, there would be genuinely thousands and thousands of prompts to hundreds of agents, some fed into one another. Whats the worth of digging through that? What do you learn? How would you know that I shared all of them?
- selridge 9mo ago
  > I log every prompt to a LLM that I make. How many do you have in the log total?
  - btrettel 9mo ago
    I have a daily journal where I put every online post I make. I include anything I send to a LLM on my own time in there. (I have a separate work log on their computer, though I don't log my work prompts.) Likely I miss a few posts/prompts, but this should have the vast majority. A few caveats: I'm not a heavy LLM user (this is probably what you're getting at) and the following is a low estimate. Often, I'll save the URL only for the first prompt and just put all subsequent prompts under that one URL. Anyhow, running a simple grep command suggests that I have at least 82 prompts saved. In my view, it would be better to organize saved prompts by project. This system was not set up with prompt disclosure in mind, so getting prompts for any particular project would be annoying. The point is more to keep track of what I'm thinking of at a point in time. Right now, I don't think there are tools to properly "share the prompts" at the scale you mentioned in your other comment, but I think we will have those tools in the future. This is a real and tractable problem. > Whats the worth of digging through that? What do you learn? How would you know that I shared all of them? The same questions could be asked for the source code of any large scale project. The answers to the first two are going to depend on the project. I've learned quite a bit from looking at source code, personally, and I'm sure I could learn a lot from looking at prompts. As for the third question, there's no guarantee.

rspoerri 9mo ago

i can show you my prompt. it's a mess and only listing the major prompts. but it's interesting to look at (for me at least). archive: https://github.com/ludos1978/ludos-vscode-markdown-kanban/blob/main/TODOs-archive.md https://github.com/ludos1978/ludos-vscode-markdown-kanban/bl... in progress or undone: https://github.com/ludos1978/ludos-vscode-markdown-kanban/blob/main/TODOs-user.md https://github.com/ludos1978/ludos-vscode-markdown-kanban/bl... and there is much improvement, because if often watch videos next to vibe coding the project and do it in minutes i have time. so history is a huge mess. but i started 6 months ago, with most work done in the last 4 months. i spent about 1000$ of ai budget on it.

dang 9mo ago
Thanks—I agree that it's interesting to look at, and a submission of the project that included this would be much better than a submission of the same project that did not include it.

khalic 9mo ago

> Prompts are the real source LLMs are non deterministic…

dang 9mo ago
That's one of the major shifts happening with this technology, but I don't think it changes the point: the prompt is the input from which the output gets generated, and in that sense is the source—a generated repo is not. Technically I suppose one should say that the input is the tuple of (prompt, model, X) where X is some bundle of factors that nobody understands, but that formulation doesn't help me think about how we should adapt to this moment.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]