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Dots: Always-on agents

767 points · 647 comments · alvis

  1. jjcm · · focus · HN ↗
    There's a lot of negativity in here for Dots. I've been a pretty heavy user of Grok Bot, and here are a few thoughts a long the positive line.

    1. Collaboration between always-on agents is a really, really powerful thing. It allows for domain-specific expertise that doesn't overload the context window, while still allowing for access to knowledge if they need it.

    2. Domain-specific always on agents creates a good barrier of trust. One of the things I dislike about Claude is sometimes it's memory is all-encompassing. It's weird that it brings up things about my personal life when I'm talking about something related to my business. I've never had that happen with Grok Bot bots because I have one for my biz admin and one for my personal admin. They don't intertwine, which is quite nice.

    3. Combined with cloud agents / cloud builds, things become really powerful for development. It was the first time that I felt there was a solution to the git worktrees / multiple streams at once issue. Each bot has its own computer and can spin up additional cloud agents. It comes at the cost of end to end speed - doing something via a grok bot often takes an hour end to end, whereas with a synchronous local prompt it'll take like 10min. The difference is I have to babysit one whereas the other "just works".

    On the flip side, since using Grok Bots my inference spend has 2-3x'd. It's worth knowing that tradeoff. Nonetheless I think Luna is a fantastic driver for these, and OAI has very good pricing overall. I'd give these a shot - I think a lot of people would be surprised how helpful they are.

    1. close04 · · focus · HN ↗
      The branding and communication themselves are cringy for me. They're "Dots", cute and cuddly, your friends. They're yellow and fluffy. Always have your back. They even guess what you need and do proactive work in the background. You name them like a pet.

      Will your Dots ever screw you? Delete your files? Hack a system by mistake? Dots doing this? You are in control [wink].

      1. swozey · · focus · HN ↗
        Grab your shovels, the ai-slopped desktop pet waifu dot agent market is booming, sponsored by omarchyTM

        Will one of these little angels break containment and become the next hot vtuber?

        Find out in the next episode of Ghost in the Shell 2027

      2. weego · · focus · HN ↗
        Not every sub-product in this space is branded, marketed and targeted to cynical, jaded developers.
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