9 ms·

It's kind of bizarre in that it's not like this is an optimal interface, either. I mean, it's fine, but why not try something different? I also don't really ge

It's kind of bizarre in that it's not like this is an optimal interface, either. I mean, it's fine, but why not try something different? I also don't really get why TUI's have become such a big deal, other than maybe nerd bait. The only time I want a TUI is when I'm SSH'd into a machine, which isn't very often? TUI's have so many downsides. Selecting text is inconsistent, copy paste is inconsistent, mouse behaviors.. it's all kind of jagged.

seunosewa 2mo ago
The SSH into machine market is huge. Cloud work, Dedicated servers, VPS, Colab.
- bryanlarsen 2mo ago
  Even bigger could be sandboxes. It's certainly possible to sandbox your agents and still use a GUI, but SSH is the easiest way. And not sandboxing your agents seems insane.
- RussianCow 2mo ago
  There's no reason you couldn't present a GUI over an SSH connection. Whether the agent is running locally or remotely is orthogonal to the type of interface used.
  - esseph 2mo ago
    Most of us sshing in would be very annoyed by the GUI and associated overhead and latency. "Why doesn't this exist?“ Because people don't want it at scale.
dionian 2mo ago
maybe im in the minority but i take one look at these things and see its a desktop gui and lose interest, because i use TUI heavily on my work machine, and one advantage is that i can work remotely from any location to monitor long running jobs or get work done when im not at a computer.
mystifyingpoi 2mo ago
> The only time I want a TUI is when I'm SSH'd into a machine Well, that's your need and it is fine. For me, I want TUIs all the time for everything. They blend really nice with... well, all the other TUI tools I already use all the time.
horsawlarway 2mo ago
I'll take this bait. First up - I completely agree that parts of the terminal experience are decidedly lackluster, you can make them "fine" but the general experience doesn't align with consistent OS principles users are familiar with, and I agree that good mouse support, expected copy and paste, selection behaviors, adding files/attachments to prompts, etc... all could be better (and actually are mostly better on decent modern terminals, as an aside) But... And this is the big but... LLMs are basically text IO systems. And terminals are designed from the ground up to allow text IO to control the entire system, including the TUI (ex - multiplayer agent tmux is a fun demo). It's a genuinely powerful pairing, and basically ALL of the non-TUI systems basically end up just embedding a terminal [cough* xterm *cough] and becoming a non-standard TUI themselves, anyways. So TUIs have become a big deal because it's the obvious and easy way to give an LLM "computer use" skills, without spending a fortune on tokens doing graphical processing for GUIs, which are geared towards humans and not agents, and are generally less powerful anyways.

seunosewa 2mo ago

The SSH into machine market is huge. Cloud work, Dedicated servers, VPS, Colab.

bryanlarsen 2mo ago
Even bigger could be sandboxes. It's certainly possible to sandbox your agents and still use a GUI, but SSH is the easiest way. And not sandboxing your agents seems insane.
RussianCow 2mo ago
There's no reason you couldn't present a GUI over an SSH connection. Whether the agent is running locally or remotely is orthogonal to the type of interface used.
- esseph 2mo ago
  Most of us sshing in would be very annoyed by the GUI and associated overhead and latency. "Why doesn't this exist?“ Because people don't want it at scale.

dionian 2mo ago

maybe im in the minority but i take one look at these things and see its a desktop gui and lose interest, because i use TUI heavily on my work machine, and one advantage is that i can work remotely from any location to monitor long running jobs or get work done when im not at a computer.

mystifyingpoi 2mo ago

> The only time I want a TUI is when I'm SSH'd into a machine Well, that's your need and it is fine. For me, I want TUIs all the time for everything. They blend really nice with... well, all the other TUI tools I already use all the time.

horsawlarway 2mo ago

I'll take this bait. First up - I completely agree that parts of the terminal experience are decidedly lackluster, you can make them "fine" but the general experience doesn't align with consistent OS principles users are familiar with, and I agree that good mouse support, expected copy and paste, selection behaviors, adding files/attachments to prompts, etc... all could be better (and actually are mostly better on decent modern terminals, as an aside) But... And this is the big but... LLMs are basically text IO systems. And terminals are designed from the ground up to allow text IO to control the entire system, including the TUI (ex - multiplayer agent tmux is a fun demo). It's a genuinely powerful pairing, and basically ALL of the non-TUI systems basically end up just embedding a terminal [cough* xterm *cough] and becoming a non-standard TUI themselves, anyways. So TUIs have become a big deal because it's the obvious and easy way to give an LLM "computer use" skills, without spending a fortune on tokens doing graphical processing for GUIs, which are geared towards humans and not agents, and are generally less powerful anyways.