I’m genuinely worried that we’re the last generation who will study and appreciate this craft. Because now a kid learning to program will just say “Write me a terminal spreadsheet app in plain C.”
Which is somewhat akin to downloading one today. If, however, that same kid started small, with a data model, then added calculation, and UI and stepped through everything designing, reviewing, and testing as they went, they would learn a lot, and at a faster pace than if they wrote it character by character.
The thing is, any generation can say something similar. Just look at the article: it manages to produce and describe the creation of a simple spreadsheet, yet the code and accompanying description would only fill a small pamphlet.
There are various reasons for that, and those reasons extend beyond leaving out vital functionality. While C is archaic by our standards, and existed at the time VisiCalc was developed, it was programmed in assembly language. It pretty much had to be, simply to hold the program and a reasonable amount of data in memory. That, in turn, meant understanding the machine: what the processor was capable of, the particular computer's memory map, how to interface with the various peripherals. You sure weren't going to be reaching for a library like curses. While it, like C, existed by the time of VisiCalc's release, it was the domain of minicomputers.
I mean, can the current generation truly understand the craft when the hard work is being done my compilers and libraries?
On asking for user input during implementation, it's best to use this when you have a plan sufficiently written up that you can point it to. To prep that plan, you can also use cook to iterate on the plan for you. Having Claude Code use `/cook` directly is nice because it watches what the subagents are up to and can speak for them, although Claude can't speak to the subagents running through cook.
On permissions, by default, when it runs instances of Claude they will inherit your Claude's permissions. So if there is no permission to `rm -rf /`, Claude will just get denied and move on. Using the docker sandbox option (see bottom of page), then it runs inside that `--dangerously-skip-permissions` and get more stuff done (my preferred option). The hard part about that is it means you need to set up the Docker sandbox with any dependencies your project needs. Run `cook init` and edit the `.cook/Dockerfile` to set those up.
I would be interested in which stories you are thinking of. Stories of Claude breaking out of the restrictions set in its sandbox or stories of people not configuring Claude's sandbox correctly?
> We told Claude Code to block npx using its own denylist. The agent found another way to run it and copied the binary to a new path using /proc/self/root to bypass the deny pattern. When Anthropic's sandbox caught that, the agent disabled the sandbox. No jailbreak, no special prompting. The agent just wanted to eagerly finish the task.
If you impl this as a backend and connect to Telegram bots, agents can just do `$ ask "Should I do this?"` for agent→human and `$ alert "this thing blocked me"` for coder→planner. That's what I'm actually doing — I have 1 manager + 3 designers + 1 researcher + 2 debugger + 1 communicator + any number of temporal coders/reviewers in my setup, all connected to taskwarrior for task-driven-dev
That is pretty cool building the whole dev team of agents and is it still with a star topology of a Manager agent interacting with all the other subagents?
I usually spawn 1 Mother Agent in a star topology with 3 subagents Planner, Reviewer, Implementer and them let them talk using Claude built-in agent tool. But the best thing I think was probably that a "do-nothing" setup wizard is part of the workflow.
Yeah the pipeline runs effectively and I'm able to be in the loop when the loop needs me.
In my setup there are two planes — manager and worker. On the manager plane, all primary agents form a mesh with p2p communication. Each designer connects to 1 or more workers in a star topology, since workers may have questions or get blocked while executing a plan.
The limitation of the built-in agent tool is it doesn't allow nested subagent spawning. But it's normal for a designer or researcher to need subagents — when a plan is done, I use a plan-review-leader agent to review it. If you try mother → planner → plan-review-leader → plan-vs-reality-validator, the nesting gets deep fast and blocks your manager from doing other work.
I like your 2-plane mesh setup with multiple top-level agents and 'you' on the manager plane mesh that are able to communicate via a daemon mediated communication.
The daemon is the Telegram bridge, the tmux router, the CI status deliverer, and the cleanup coordinator all in one process. It allows for cross star topology communication unlike MoMa that basically just corresponds to a single manager and is similar to your plan-review-leader agent living in the manager plane if that one was isolated.
My previous concern was that maybe you would face a timeout in case user input was needed during a pipeline run, and in a case where the user was too slow to provide an answer through telegram (I imagine during the night), but maybe even github pipelines can be set to wait unlimited.
I really like the setup, and exactly I also faced the no nested agent spawning limit by Anthropic for Claude Code built-in agent tooling, that dictates the star topology in the first place.
I use the git worktree as well for every MoMa agent and they all live in Linux screen session. Maybe I should consider going to tmux myself instead of screen as I understand all your agents in top-level manager plane also are just tmux sessions.
using a single plan-reviewer would be slow when there are multiple aspects to review. That's why a local star topology with a plan-review-leader is needed: it spawns multiple reviewers in parallel, each focused on a different aspect.
Yeah, with a 2 plane topology you are able to inherit concurrency as you for instance just hand off work from a designer agent to the plan-review-leader that spawns any number of reviewers in a star topology.
By default it's locked down to the permissions you have granted in your Claude config. If you use the docker sandbox mode, then you can really let it fly as it can issue more commands in a safer environment.
I can easily name amazing movies in the last couple of years and in the last decade. I think we're actually in a bit of a movie renaissance right in cinematic craft and storytelling.
I enjoy going to the theater to hear the guy next to me eating popcorn with his mouth open and maximum mandibular crunch. Also, I do enjoy the woman behind me that with her constant non-stop vocal reactions to everything onscreen (anything mildly sad --> "awww"; anything vaguely surprising --> "oooh"; ...).
Other highlights include the super bright EXIT signs flanking both sides of the screen -- helps me get immersed in the scene. The occasional loud bass rumble from the action movie playing one theater over also helps.
Trump doesn't pretend to be whatever he is. That is literally what sets him apart.
The Democrats accuse the opponents of being undemocratic while they themself don't have primary and have a candidate selected by their elite. There are plenty of "criminal/fabulist/sex" pests on the other side too.
The best politicians understand the value of being perceived as authentic. Pushing the VP at the last minute and pretending nothing was wrong just felt incredibly stilted and insincere. Politicians like Trump are popular because they "tell it like it is" and not the media trained evasive responses you typically get from politicians.
I would have voted for a partially sentient dung heap over Trump, which at the current rate is probably in the cards as a next GOP candidate.
Absolutely. For more progressive democrat voters already been harbouring bad feelings around the legitimacy of the establishment candidate from previous elections. The two party system already loses a ton of the feeling of choice and participation in Americans. The primary is the escape valve. It is supposed to be when people that care about politics get to argue about policy, direction, etc. Even if you don't agree with the final candidate, you feel like you helped shape the direction of the process. By skipping this, even if there were other circumstances, it feels like a huge turn off for that base of the party.
And then for other democrats, the feeling when you have an unpopular president like Biden was seen at the time is to go anti estabilishment. But Kamala was Bidens VP. She couldnt run an anti estabilishment campaign when she was part of the estabilishment.
If there had been a primary, whoever was the candidate, even if it was Kamala herself, would have been much better positioned for the General Election.
You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency. You run the incumbent (especially against a candidate they've already beaten) or the VP - the two most famous people in the party. All Harris had to do was read the room and she would have won.
Literally every other possible option would have been a nobody with none of the advantages Biden or Harris had and would have only risked splitting the ticket, whereas every Republican was already going vote for Trump. I can't think of a worse way for the Democrats to fail than that... except for the way they actually failed.
And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was and no one seems to care.
> And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was
Incorrect. Trump 2024 was as looney as Trump 2016 and all the years in between, so that doesn't qualify as mental decline. He'd lost some spring in his step but overall was physically in much the same shape as 8 years prior. Meanwhile Biden went from active cyclist to a slow elderly gait. It was plain to see.
> You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency.
Following that traditional playbook in the face of his obvious physical condition, is why we have today's SCOTUS, DOW, Trump Kennedy Center, ...
Both Trump and Biden had their issues, but Trump has lost far more than "some spring in his step," the man is sundowning publicly, barely coherent, and it's obvious some serious medical condition is being covered up by his staff. Anyone seeing him can tell he's far worse off than Biden ever was. "Active cyclist to a slow elderly gait" versus "appeared to have a stroke on camera." Trump literally shat himself in public.
Again, it's baffling that it's only a problem when it's Biden.
>Following that traditional playbook in the face of his obvious physical condition, is why we have today's SCOTUS, DOW, Trump Kennedy Center, ...
Trump's SCOTUS picks happened during is first term. It seems like you're just ranting now.
The fact is Kamala Harris could have won. At the end, the race came down to a fraction of a percent difference between her and Trump. Following the traditional playbook would have worked if only Kamala Harris would have walked away from supporting an active genocide. The lesson of Trump is as much about the right's success as the left's failure. Not of policy, but strategy. The right simply holds the line as the left constantly self-sabotages, giving up real power for the sake of moral victory.
It doesn't help that the "Leftist" party in American politics (at least the only relevant party) is anything but. The success of leftist politics in the US requires a complete restructuring of an inherently fascistic and white supremacist system and culture to break the two party system, campaign finance reform, ending first past the post and the electoral college, and tons of other things. Years-long projects laying out the political and cultural infrastructure. That isn't something you can solve with a panic vote for a third party candidate a couple of months before the election, or by just opting out.
You’re obviously right about SCOTUS. I guess there I was more thinking about the even-longer conservative lock-in with his next appointee.
But I really do disagree on the physical decline though. Put simply, the things people see are: weight, posture, quickness and stability of movement, strength of voice, hair, face (and a few others).
If you compare T16 vs T24, and B16 vs B24, the B delta is much bigger on any of those factors.
Everyone(ish) hits a cliff where they start quickly getting weaker, gaunt, frail, shorter, slower. Where you look at a picture from the year before and think “wow they looked young by comparison just a year ago.” Biden hit that cliff, Trump somehow hasn’t
Trump's posture is terrible. Numerous people have noticed the way he leans, can't stay standing, and the way he walks all suggest signs of fronto-temporal dementia. His movement is unstable. His face droops like he had a stroke. His speech is slurred and confused. His face and hands are covered in weird bruises. He falls asleep in meetings. He wanders off.
Many, many people have noticed Trump's obvious decline. I don't know why you haven't. You're either trolling or you're blind.
Again, I’m obviously not being clear. Yeah, his posture is terrible —- but it was also terrible in 2016. He was doing that weird lumbering walk way back his during the Hillary debate. Ditto his rambling speech.
Are you really saying that Trump in 2024 was an order of magnitude more “elderly” than in 2016? Didn’t look that way to me, at all.
I do agree the falling asleep and bruises are a sign he’s entering final phase. But he’s not fully there yet. In 5 years he’ll have dropped 40 pounds, his cheeks will be sunken in, and he’ll walk at half speed as today, and then he will be in “obvious physical decline”
Side note, just occurred to me: Biden did himself a big disservice by getting facelifts. His face got weird and stretched tight. I think it had the opposite effect of what he wanted, and made him look older still.
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