3 ms·

I don't think it is AI, but I bet it has been through editing/review to match a corporate style. LLMs were trained on this.

by hahahaa 3mo ago

anon373839 3mo ago
The writing style, if not AI, is at least a bit tryhard. Turning to the substance of the article: why do people feel the need to run this fast? I have certainly experimented with letting coding agents run amok. The first few times you try it, it feels like a superpower. Then you start examining the icky choices they made in a codebase that is now a dense forest. Then you have to expend a bunch of effort beating it back into submission. Or I guess you can YOLO and throw more AI at it, but then I agree with the person quoted saying "at that point, what am I still doing here?" This is not a satisfying or sustainable way to build, and there really is no reason other than hype and FOMO to do it.
- bluefirebrand 3mo ago
  > why do people feel the need to run this fast Because if they don't they feel like they will be replaced by someone who will
  - discreteevent 3mo ago
    This happens all the time, even before LLMs. And it happens even when there is no threat. A lot of the time the race to the bottom is driven by anxious people running from imaginary threats. Which is why its often useful to have a person in a group who tells people not to panic (this is often an older person). But of course the AI guys are preying on this anxiety in order to dominate. They are all over HN, either personally or with their bots. Which is why HN is no longer a place that you could go to get mainly unbiased anecdotes and experience. That is still available but it is being drowned out by FUD because the average HN user is now the mark.
  - Schlagbohrer 3mo ago
    This attitude gets people to willingly engage in abusive crunch practices such as in the games industry. I think the people who are like this are the ones who later talk about crunch like it was good in some way or necessary. Basically a bad relation to labor and sustainable lifelong work.
    - bluefirebrand 3mo ago
      I agree with you completely and I push for saner work-life balance anywhere I work. Unfortunately this unhealthy work culture is really entrenched most places
- matltc 3mo ago
  I am with you but I inevitably think it's a skill issue. Some devs put a lot of work into the harness. I tried doing this, felt like running in place to me. the lack of RFC-tier standardization and ever-shifting api is demotivating as well since you might have written a harness that will be obsolete with next model gen/version bump There probably is a correct way to do this, but your average "vibe coder", or even a competent solo dev just yoloing a project, are not implementing such harnesses. In the former case, they may not be able to; in the latter, you're probably better off in 1:1 human to agent workflow due to indeterminate/bad outputs and the amount of back-and-forth in prompts/specs/reviews required to get high-quality work Then again, I saw Matz harness for his compiled ruby project was just like perms.allow find and grep. No skills, no agents.md or anything like that. Would love to see those prompts! I'm sure the fact that it was Matz had a lot to do with that working, though
ameliaquining 3mo ago
It's AI. https://www.pangram.com/history/09db86cf-37fb-4b27-94bf-a9f2d4cd2990 https://www.pangram.com/history/09db86cf-37fb-4b27-94bf-a9f2...
- onion2k 3mo ago
  If you switch on the 'Supporting Evidence' on that site, it seems to be basing it's opinion on three things: - Use a descriptive triad of "reviewing, directing, and course" (it incorrectly misunderstood 'course correcting'). That's not common in writing but humans do do it occasionally. - Using the word 'thoughtful'. I don't understand that as evidence of AI. - Using the words 'Book Apart' together, which would be a clear AI signal if it wasn't the name of a publisher of short books, and being used in that context in the article. I don't think you should put much stock in the output of pangram.com.
  - ameliaquining 3mo ago
    Pangram's "Supporting Evidence" feature is misleading and you should ignore it. It's entirely separate from the classifier that determines whether text is AI; it just takes text that's already been classified as AI and looks for some hardcoded AI tells in it. I kind of wish they'd get rid of it, but nontechnical users really like it. The classifier itself has a very low rate of false positives: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/BFI_WP_2025-116.pdf https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/BFI_WP_2...
    - onion2k 3mo ago
      It's so tempting to drop the text of that paper into Pangram. :)
  - johnfn 3mo ago
    Pangram clearly says "Remember, our results aren’t based on this evidence." when you turn on supporting evidence.
    - 3mo ago
lelanthran 3mo ago
> I don't think it is AI, but I bet it has been through editing/review to match a corporate style. LLMs were trained on this. My standard reply to claims like this is: post a pre-2022 link with an LLM style that matches your claims. Usually people claim "LLMs sound like the way they do because that's how people write". Your claim is only a little different: "LLMs sound like the way they do because that's how corporate writes". You may be correct, but I'd still like to see a pre-2022 link confirming this.
Schlagbohrer 3mo ago
I also thought "I'm so glad this isn't AI" but maybe I can only recognize ChatGPTs crappy writing style.
jillesvangurp 3mo ago
I just made chat gpt list all the key indications that this article was LLM generated. I'll spare you the details, it's a very long list. It's actually possible to counter some of this stuff with skills and guard rails. The author clearly has not mastered how to do that and sound more authentic. It's all a bit stunted, cringe, long winded, repetitive, etc.
vinodc 3mo ago
It's certainly AI. There are a ton of phrases that Claude loves to use: genuinely, trap, staccato phrases. continuous reframing, the list goes on. I find it very tiresome and repetitive and simply too grating to read at this point, after already working with Claude all day.

I don't think it is AI, but I bet it has been through editing/review to match a corporate style. LLMs were trained on this.

by hahahaa 3mo ago

I don't think it is AI, but I bet it has been through editing/review to match a corporate style. LLMs were trained on this.

anon373839 3mo ago

The writing style, if not AI, is at least a bit tryhard. Turning to the substance of the article: why do people feel the need to run this fast? I have certainly experimented with letting coding agents run amok. The first few times you try it, it feels like a superpower. Then you start examining the icky choices they made in a codebase that is now a dense forest. Then you have to expend a bunch of effort beating it back into submission. Or I guess you can YOLO and throw more AI at it, but then I agree with the person quoted saying "at that point, what am I still doing here?" This is not a satisfying or sustainable way to build, and there really is no reason other than hype and FOMO to do it.

bluefirebrand 3mo ago
> why do people feel the need to run this fast Because if they don't they feel like they will be replaced by someone who will
- discreteevent 3mo ago
  This happens all the time, even before LLMs. And it happens even when there is no threat. A lot of the time the race to the bottom is driven by anxious people running from imaginary threats. Which is why its often useful to have a person in a group who tells people not to panic (this is often an older person). But of course the AI guys are preying on this anxiety in order to dominate. They are all over HN, either personally or with their bots. Which is why HN is no longer a place that you could go to get mainly unbiased anecdotes and experience. That is still available but it is being drowned out by FUD because the average HN user is now the mark.
- Schlagbohrer 3mo ago
  This attitude gets people to willingly engage in abusive crunch practices such as in the games industry. I think the people who are like this are the ones who later talk about crunch like it was good in some way or necessary. Basically a bad relation to labor and sustainable lifelong work.
  - bluefirebrand 3mo ago
    I agree with you completely and I push for saner work-life balance anywhere I work. Unfortunately this unhealthy work culture is really entrenched most places
matltc 3mo ago
I am with you but I inevitably think it's a skill issue. Some devs put a lot of work into the harness. I tried doing this, felt like running in place to me. the lack of RFC-tier standardization and ever-shifting api is demotivating as well since you might have written a harness that will be obsolete with next model gen/version bump There probably is a correct way to do this, but your average "vibe coder", or even a competent solo dev just yoloing a project, are not implementing such harnesses. In the former case, they may not be able to; in the latter, you're probably better off in 1:1 human to agent workflow due to indeterminate/bad outputs and the amount of back-and-forth in prompts/specs/reviews required to get high-quality work Then again, I saw Matz harness for his compiled ruby project was just like perms.allow find and grep. No skills, no agents.md or anything like that. Would love to see those prompts! I'm sure the fact that it was Matz had a lot to do with that working, though

ameliaquining 3mo ago

It's AI. https://www.pangram.com/history/09db86cf-37fb-4b27-94bf-a9f2d4cd2990 https://www.pangram.com/history/09db86cf-37fb-4b27-94bf-a9f2...

onion2k 3mo ago
If you switch on the 'Supporting Evidence' on that site, it seems to be basing it's opinion on three things: - Use a descriptive triad of "reviewing, directing, and course" (it incorrectly misunderstood 'course correcting'). That's not common in writing but humans do do it occasionally. - Using the word 'thoughtful'. I don't understand that as evidence of AI. - Using the words 'Book Apart' together, which would be a clear AI signal if it wasn't the name of a publisher of short books, and being used in that context in the article. I don't think you should put much stock in the output of pangram.com.
- ameliaquining 3mo ago
  Pangram's "Supporting Evidence" feature is misleading and you should ignore it. It's entirely separate from the classifier that determines whether text is AI; it just takes text that's already been classified as AI and looks for some hardcoded AI tells in it. I kind of wish they'd get rid of it, but nontechnical users really like it. The classifier itself has a very low rate of false positives: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/BFI_WP_2025-116.pdf https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/BFI_WP_2...
  - onion2k 3mo ago
    It's so tempting to drop the text of that paper into Pangram. :)
- johnfn 3mo ago
  Pangram clearly says "Remember, our results aren’t based on this evidence." when you turn on supporting evidence.
  - 3mo ago

lelanthran 3mo ago

> I don't think it is AI, but I bet it has been through editing/review to match a corporate style. LLMs were trained on this. My standard reply to claims like this is: post a pre-2022 link with an LLM style that matches your claims. Usually people claim "LLMs sound like the way they do because that's how people write". Your claim is only a little different: "LLMs sound like the way they do because that's how corporate writes". You may be correct, but I'd still like to see a pre-2022 link confirming this.

Schlagbohrer 3mo ago

I also thought "I'm so glad this isn't AI" but maybe I can only recognize ChatGPTs crappy writing style.

jillesvangurp 3mo ago

I just made chat gpt list all the key indications that this article was LLM generated. I'll spare you the details, it's a very long list. It's actually possible to counter some of this stuff with skills and guard rails. The author clearly has not mastered how to do that and sound more authentic. It's all a bit stunted, cringe, long winded, repetitive, etc.

vinodc 3mo ago

It's certainly AI. There are a ton of phrases that Claude loves to use: genuinely, trap, staccato phrases. continuous reframing, the list goes on. I find it very tiresome and repetitive and simply too grating to read at this point, after already working with Claude all day.