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Gotta be honest, almost every "how to use AI" resource seems pointless to me. I'm either going to ask the AI how to do it, or if it's about using the AI then we
by mindwok 3mo ago
Gotta be honest, almost every "how to use AI" resource seems pointless to me. I'm either going to ask the AI how to do it, or if it's about using the AI then we can just bake it into the harness or wait for Anthropic/OpenAI to do it for me because they're always trivial.
All of these resources on agentic workflows, managing agent memory, harness engineering, etc. appear to just be theatre to me.
- deepfriedbits 3mo agoNot only that, but all of this tooling around models has such a short shelf life as the models themselves grow in capabilities, they absorb the tooling. We've already seen it over and over again.
- mexicocitinluez 3mo agoAmen on both your and OP's comments. These tools work pretty well out-of-the-box. I'm sure I could squeeze out better token usage or streamline some tool calls, but it's not something I really want to focus on. Just like I don't want to endlessly configure my IDE, I don't really have patience with spending time on anything besides actually building something.
- john___matrix 3mo agoThis is how I've gone about it with my Shopify site. I appreciate there may be more efficient ways to do things if you're an actual developer or engineer but I'm not and the tools I've been able to build so far have been both fun to make and add value to our workflow as a small 2 person ecommerce business. I do at least have a background in web as a designer for many years and having worked with developers I can at least spec and understand how a product might work which is one thing Claude/AI isn't hugely helpful with and often it's the testing and QA phase as always where the problems and shortcomings expose themselves.
- NooneAtAll3 3mo agoif you know how to ask Ai about how to use Ai, you already know how to use Ai the point of guides is to provide assurance for people unfamiliar to the process in the first place
- mindwok 3mo agoIf the bar is knowing how to type a question into a box, I'm confident almost everyone is better off starting with that then reading a "cookbook" that starts with installing python packages.
- hiccuphippo 3mo agoI've see people write "broooo pleaseeee!" into the box. Something about the universe providing better fools.
- jagenabler2 3mo agoI do this often, I manage to get the results I’m looking for
- chasd00 3mo agothat probably has the same effect as "think harder" which is a legitimate prompt. The models are fairly could at interpreting intent.
- retnull 3mo agoOn several occasions when Opus is trying to justify it’s solution is correct even after several rounds of steering, any ridiculous frustrated prompt seems to do the trick. For example ”come on” and then the model will just do the reasonable thing instead of disobedience. I imagine that ” broooo pleaseeee!” would work just as well. Though sometimes I just clear the context or fork from the past, but this might or might not give any better results. At least cognitive load is higher for me especially with forking so I prefer not to do it
- oggreen 3mo agoThanks for saying the quiet part out loud. Everytime I do a demo it seems like a waste of time compared to just actually building. Unless I'm doing something super complicated even taking time to set things up like subagents, etc. seems like a waste compared to just building. The only things that really seem beneficial (for Claude Code) seems to be learning to set up loops, memory and finding relevant MCP servers.
- cloakandswagger 3mo agoRemember in 2023 when people thought "prompt engineering" would be the new software engineering and invested tons of time into learning CoT, ReAct, thread-of-thoughts, etc? Those were mostly obviated by reasoning models and harness updates by 2024. It seems pointless to invest energy into the latest/greatest AI technique or framework when they're going to either be absorbed or replaced on a 3 month cycle.
- dymk 3mo agoUnderstanding how to write good prompts (prompt engineering) is still very much a relevant skill if you want to effectively use LLMs. Harnesses aren't magic.
- embedding-shape 3mo agoIsn't it clear that some people are better at working with/prompting LLMs than other people? Or is the idea that what you write to them and how you use them doesn't matter, it's all up to the model/harness? To me this seems clear, so then clearly this is a skill, which typically is called "prompt engineering". Specifically CoT or the other things you mention wasn't referred to as "prompt engineering" as far as I know, that skill is more about how you communicate with the LLMs and how you use them, rather than what specific processes/workflows/technologies you use.
- omega3 3mo agoWhat's clear is that there is a lot of hype around LLM and people who were previously valued for their IC are now in the business of shilling.
- CuriouslyC 3mo agoRL has basically killed prompt engineering. You still need to provide the right context and process, but how you communicate with them beyond that is no longer so important.
- sjh9714 3mo ago
- throwatdem12311 3mo agoIf these things are so smart why do I have to coax it to be useful with all these magic spells scrawled on markdown parchment.
- jie-yang 3mo ago[flagged]
- knollimar 3mo ago>I'm either going to ask the AI how to do it LLMs seem terrible at using LLMs in harnesses. Have you seen how they rot their context with the stuff they put in .md files if you let them? You'd have to have the LLMs search, and thus these resources could be for them more than you
- esperent 3mo agoYes, but I have had moderate luck with creating an "agent-instructor" skill that has strict instructions around keeping language strong, unambiguous, concise, and always presenting me with exact diffs to review before writing anything. Another thing in it is a strict line count. Any increase in line count requires my approval. That last one is important because it plays well with two biases: models don't tend to create long lines so they won't try to cheat that way, and they're strongly inclined to keep churning out lines so I take that away from them.
- fwip 3mo agoDid you tell Claude "make an agent instructor skill, whatever you think is good, go for it," or did you use the knowledge you had gained about how AI works and how to write good instructions for it?
- esperent 3mo agoNo, I typed this one by hand as if it was 2019. But I don't write all agent instructions by hand because I don't think that I have any particularly high skill at doing that. I review carefully to ensure that my exact requirements are being expressed, hence why I said it must present me with exact diffs to review. But when it comes up the exact structure and wording I suspect me and the agent are equally bad at it.
- knollimar 3mo agoMy assertion is that LLMs tend to add info that makes them hyperfixate on errors.
- OtherShrezzing 3mo agoI think the main thing of interest in the linked site is the dates. You can quickly get a view of what was possible and when.
- tclancy 3mo agoOk, thanks, because I looked at one example and was like, “I am supposed to take someone’s OpenAPI doc and translate it back to English for the model?” And if they’re implying I should have an AI do that, why don’t they just build that step into the models rather than having someone prompt an AI to write these half-ass docs?
- CuriouslyC 3mo agoIt was more important with earlier models, as they were less RL'd to golden paths, so the context could steer them more. Now process engineering is more important than prompt engineering.
- Xalutiono 3mo agoYou don't learn about progress if you don't take part in it. Before /goal was ralph-wiggum it was def an interesting learning experience, it was interesting to see how Claude became a lot better doing this itself but it still took 6 Month and more. You can wait and sit it out and suddenly you get fired if you miss the point when to start spending more time and energy on topics like this.
- edot 3mo agoExactly. I think we all have to come to this conclusion ourselves, because the message we’ve been getting from the LLM companies is “sweet user, you DO add value to the LLM, you gave it that custom subagent, remember?”, and then they go and roll that idea into the next version. Once they do that a few times you go “eh why would I bother, this will be a default soon. I’ll just prompt it like normal”. Just use the vanilla settings.
- bad_username 3mo ago> I'm either going to ask the AI how to do it First you have to know that "it" exists and is possible. A cookbook like this introduces readers to concepts and features they didn't know were there in the first place.
- mindwok 3mo agoThat's a fair response. I could see how some folks would benefit. I suppose what bothers me more is that they don't actually seem pedagogical in nature, they seem promotional.
- tedggh 3mo agoThere was an article by Vercel on how ineffective tool calling is compared to just a single md file with clearly defined instructions. They showed a clever way on how to use compressed indexes. My experience with tool calling was similar to what Vercel described, and I spent hours trying to perfect it. Since reading Vercel’s findings, Claude.md and Agents.md, maybe a Project.md it’s all I use.
- giancarlostoro 3mo agoNot only that, but they change on a whim with new ideas on how to do things every few weeks.
- dec0dedab0de 3mo agoI suspect certain workflows like langchain and others like it will retain usefulness into the future. Having deterministic steps before and after the llm is the way to go for anything that might be potentially harmful. Which I guess is what the harness does, but why be limited to a generic harness when we can use it to make specific ones for our needs.
- coldtrait 3mo agoYea i do the same. I can't be bothered to watch videos and courses on how to use claude better when I can simply ask it myself.
- rowanseymour 3mo agoRight now I feel like I'm getting so much value out of working daily with Fable, but I'd be embarrassed to share my sessions because they're pretty much how I would talk to a colleague. Spelling mistakes and half-baked thoughts included. Gone are the formal sounding prompts and specs I was proudly writing 6 months ago. But it's getting the results.
- LogicFailsMe 3mo agoOnce you understand enough to spawn independent agents for discrete tasks, it's hard to justify investing brain space into some harness that will likely be obsolete next week, if not tomorrow. And by the time the harness game converges, I suspect most of the high-end models will behave like them! Intrinsically.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- sashank_1509 3mo agoI agree, there isn’t much of a skill to using AI. And the model keeps changing so frequently anyway making any/ old skills redundant.
- mhluongo 3mo agoI think there's "how to use AI" and "how to make frequent AI use economical in systems". Different things?
- kkukshtel 3mo agoThis is also where I'm at. "Just ask the model stuff" continues to be the best, most durable advice. Karpathy himself had something recently about this on Twitter.
- Jubijub 3mo ago+1, by the time everybody sworn about MCPs, skills became a more efficient alternative. People learned to aggressively context manage, then longer context windows and agentic made that a lot less important. If the technique is any good, it will be baked in the next version. My philosophy is to avoid plugins / MCPs unless strictly required, and to have thorough prompts. This way I’ve successfully avoided to be in the way of progress by forcing obsolete optimisations on my LLMs
- duxup 3mo agoI found them handy to bring along coworkers who aren’t quite up to speed.
- game_the0ry 3mo agoI appreciate the cookbooks bc sometimes I learn about ways to use ai that I did no know before.
- onetrickwolf 3mo agoYeah 100% agree, I would even go as far as it's kind of harmful it seems to just pollute the context or stagnant as the models and tooling changes so rapidly or it is just better to do something bespoke for your own project.
- DrJid 3mo agoMaybe this “how to use ai” isn’t written for you, but for the agents who then have many ideas on what to do.