Thread

1. julesrms · 1790692000 · focus · HN ↗

   It's all very glitzy, but I'm failing to understand how "One prompt in. One result out." is of any importance.

   This and other recent AI hype-fests all seem to be obsessed with making agents do more work unattended.

   But surely in the real world, anyone who's got a real product to make is going to want to steer what's happening. It's ridiculous to think that anyone with a deadline would write a prompt so perfect that they walk away for 4 days and come back to find the finished product ready to ship.

   If you really can write a prompt so complete and perfect that it needs nothing further, then any regular harness could probably also do the job. But if like normal people you need to try something, think about it, iterate, and repeat.. then you also just need a regular harness.

   1. hughw · 1790692361 · focus · HN ↗

      Not saying you're wrong. But right now I'm trying to craft some skill prose to instruct an agent how to optimize a certain process based on my own heuristics, and it's failing. Maybe I can let a super agent divine the right skill prose, iterating to see what works. It's worth a try.

      1. julesrms · 1790693040 · focus · HN ↗

         OK, but by the time you've worked out the correct prompt to tell your meta-agent how to iterate on optimising the right prompt for your actual agent, perhaps you could have just tried a few things and got it going!

         1. conartist6 · 1790693874 · focus · HN ↗

            Nice try, but there's a meta-meta-agent that just tries a few things and gets it going while the other agents optimize the prompt.

            Or put another way: "You can't fool me, it's turtles all the way down!"

            1. visarga · 1790698612 · focus · HN ↗

               You can't fool me - this prompt refinement turtle stack only has 3 turtles. Not much way down.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.