3 ms·

Can you describe your setup on how you use LLMs within Emacs?

iLemming 5mo ago
Of course. I've tried different AI packages and currently gptel and ECA remain the main ingredients. This is a quickly changing landscape, and things may change, but for now it feels very good. I like gptel because it's enormously extendable and exploitable - it allows me to send LLM requests from just about anywhere - I could be typing a message (like this very one) and suddenly in need of ideas for how to phrase something better, or explain simply, or fact-check my assumptions, whatever. Quick & dirty interaction that gets discarded in the same buffer. For longer investigations and research I would use a dedicated gptel buffer. Those get automatically saved. I don't use gptel as a coding assistant, even though you can do that, it's not really optimized for that kind of work. I use ECA. It works much better for me than every other alternative I tried, and I tried more than a few. What's crazy that I sometimes would type a prompt in ECA, then ask gptel (with a different model) to make it more "AI-friendly" changing the prompt in-place and then send it. All my MCPs are coded in Clojure (mostly babashka)¹ - because (like I said) giving an AI a Lisp REPL makes much more sense (maybe even more than using a statically typed language). I had to employ a few tricks so all the tools, skills and instructions can be shared between gptel, eca-emacs, ECA Desktop, Claude Code CLI, Claude Desktop App, and Copilot CLI. Even though I mostly use gptel and ECA, it's good to keep other options around, just in case. All the AI-related Emacs settings are in my config². Is this helpful, or you want some more concrete examples? — ¹ https://github.com/agzam/death-contraptions https://github.com/agzam/death-contraptions ² https://github.com/agzam/.doom.d/tree/main/modules/custom/ai https://github.com/agzam/.doom.d/tree/main/modules/custom/ai
- pandakar 5mo ago
  This is good stuff :) Honestly, I am having a lot of fun just using org mode files as prompts and eventually output for a Claude Code instance in vterm. All these files get saved with the output and magit is of course amazing, just good affordances and history keeping.
  - iLemming 5mo ago
    (setopt gptel-default-mode 'org-mode) For persistence: https://github.com/agzam/.doom.d/blob/main/modules/custom/ai/autoload/gptel.el#L360 https://github.com/agzam/.doom.d/blob/main/modules/custom/ai...
- zingar 5mo ago
  I’d like a concrete example on how you’re actually controlling emacs with LLMs. Is ECA the part that does that?
  - iLemming 5mo ago
    gptel has the built-in elisp eval tool. ECA doesn't have it built-in, I use my custom MCP (I posted the link in the comment above).

Of course. I've tried different AI packages and currently gptel and ECA remain the main ingredients. This is a quickly changing landscape, and things may change, but for now it feels very good. I like gptel because it's enormously extendable and exploitable - it allows me to send LLM requests from just about anywhere - I could be typing a message (like this very one) and suddenly in need of ideas for how to phrase something better, or explain simply, or fact-check my assumptions, whatever. Quick & dirty interaction that gets discarded in the same buffer. For longer investigations and research I would use a dedicated gptel buffer. Those get automatically saved. I don't use gptel as a coding assistant, even though you can do that, it's not really optimized for that kind of work. I use ECA. It works much better for me than every other alternative I tried, and I tried more than a few. What's crazy that I sometimes would type a prompt in ECA, then ask gptel (with a different model) to make it more "AI-friendly" changing the prompt in-place and then send it. All my MCPs are coded in Clojure (mostly babashka)¹ - because (like I said) giving an AI a Lisp REPL makes much more sense (maybe even more than using a statically typed language). I had to employ a few tricks so all the tools, skills and instructions can be shared between gptel, eca-emacs, ECA Desktop, Claude Code CLI, Claude Desktop App, and Copilot CLI. Even though I mostly use gptel and ECA, it's good to keep other options around, just in case. All the AI-related Emacs settings are in my config². Is this helpful, or you want some more concrete examples? — ¹ https://github.com/agzam/death-contraptions https://github.com/agzam/death-contraptions ² https://github.com/agzam/.doom.d/tree/main/modules/custom/ai https://github.com/agzam/.doom.d/tree/main/modules/custom/ai

pandakar 5mo ago
This is good stuff :) Honestly, I am having a lot of fun just using org mode files as prompts and eventually output for a Claude Code instance in vterm. All these files get saved with the output and magit is of course amazing, just good affordances and history keeping.
- iLemming 5mo ago
  (setopt gptel-default-mode 'org-mode) For persistence: https://github.com/agzam/.doom.d/blob/main/modules/custom/ai/autoload/gptel.el#L360 https://github.com/agzam/.doom.d/blob/main/modules/custom/ai...
zingar 5mo ago
I’d like a concrete example on how you’re actually controlling emacs with LLMs. Is ECA the part that does that?
- iLemming 5mo ago
  gptel has the built-in elisp eval tool. ECA doesn't have it built-in, I use my custom MCP (I posted the link in the comment above).