Thread

1. 2001zhaozhao · 1790273836 · focus · HN ↗

   This is definitely getting at least some things right about how we work with agents today, specifically that we often work at the architecture level, and we need a better alternative to the current Plan Mode offered by coding agents to efficiently architect software at a high level, which is more visual and offers better back-and-forth incrementation with the agent than simply "reject final plan with X message".

   From the website demos i definitely think this is a clean interface, although I don't know how much better this is compared to some simple custom Mermaid format, which the agent can write as artifact files and present to users. Zooming out, this app seems like 1 feature (a MCP with a GUI attached to it) rather than an entire product.

   Also, I don't know if asking the agent to write specific code changes into the plan is a good idea. I think maybe that a "plan -> approve -> write code" would let the agent write higher quality code than "plan which contains code -> approve". But maybe you can make it work when combined with some specific prompting marking the code as clearly work-in-progress and subject to change, and that the agent should surface any parts implemented differently relative to the plan to the user, etc.

   1. verdverm · 1790280012 · focus · HN ↗

      > a better alternative to the current Plan Mode

      An easy upgrade (ime) is to be intentional about a process, move the planning artifact to a file, use multiple research/propose/review sessions to dial it in. Still tuning my vibes for when to add in some actual exploratory implementation elements, because there's always something you didn't foresee when getting to the actual implementation, while also not having them implement the solution as a "plan" in markdown

      1. 2001zhaozhao · 1790285141 · focus · HN ↗

         > be intentional about a process, move the planning artifact to a file, use multiple research/propose/review sessions to dial it in

         Yeah, I think we need something like that as well. I am actually working on an virtual artifact filesystem in my orchestrator to enable this. So agents can create a persistent, versioned plan artifact separate from the codebase (maybe a HTML) and iterate it alongside the user, much like what ChatGPT/claude.ai can already do but for a coding agent. Then you'd need to define a process and get the agent to follow it, but that's much easier and mostly a mix of prompt and orchestration primitives.

         > exploratory implementation elements

         This is a good point, I've ran into a lot of instances as well where my agents in plan mode would like to explore something but can't because of permissions. I wonder if there should be some kind of system like a "experiment subagent" to handle it.

         1. verdverm · 1790285653 · focus · HN ↗

            > separate from the codebase

            Commit it to git, it's not far off from an llm-wiki

            I have no orchestration primitives, just a skill tied to a .design/*.md

            Unless we consider opencode sometimes using a subagent as a primitive? Maybe the problem is leaving the clankers to their own devices for too long/much

            I intentionally block almost every tool for the design/review agents, letting them "do" things is a distraction. I will use the build agent and tell it what to do if I need that experiment. I don't want to have to read through the wasted tokens a bunch of dumb bots burned through to create walls of markdown. They go on way too many side quests

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