Ten days ago I had an experience with Gemini 3.8 flash that made me wonder if I was being routed to a different model under test. I was trying to use rocm with llama.cpp on my 128gb Strix Halo but could only get it to run Vulkan. I pasted the error message into agy and it proceeded to attach GDB to my GPU driver, reverse-engineer the kernel queue ioctl interface, and author an LD_PRELOAD C shim to get ROCm llama.cpp working on my Strix Halo. My jaw was hanging open the whole time.
Edit to add the fix: <a href="https://gist.github.com/birep/6f2c8d490c7a29820997d57bd654c351" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/birep/6f2c8d490c7a29820997d57bd654c3...
3.8 Flash is just quite good, and so is the Antigravity harness.
I use a mix of Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, and Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini holds it's own. Especially in writing, frontend, and sysadmin work. agy for configuring a NixOS system has been truly incredible.
What basic features are missing from agy? I've been using it and cli-cc + web-cc for months (among a few other random harnesses to test here and there) and they all seem roughly comparable to me.
I actually just cancelled Ultra also because I couldn't subscribe to a YouTube Family plan while I had it active (Google... :[) but trying to use Codex as a replacement while I testdrive Astra makes me yearn for agy again.
You're a software engineer living in a middle of an AI revolution and you confuse what IS with what CAN BE? GUI can be good people just didn't do them because it took time and the foundation was shit (for the options that didn't take time). That all changes now when a new class of software can be generated with AI. Unfortunately the people generating software and their users still base the decision on what IS (with highly technical reasoning such as "infinitely better"). People literally have the power to define what IS these days. I've only recently switched from claude and codex cli to their respective apps and those apps while not the best gui apps, already infinitely better than tui. The tui is actually hurting my main usage of them which is controlling agent programmatically.
The only really point I'd give for TUI is compatibility. Running coding agent directly on android/ios is nice sometimes.
> That all changes now when a new class of software can be generated with AI.
All the AI-generated UIs I've seen have been very derivative, certainly not eliminating any of the disadvantages of typical GUI interfaces.
Realistically, the whole "overlapping windows" GUI model, and everything that derives from that, was a metaphor geared towards people who'd never seen a computer before. It fit the increasing consumer focus of computing interfaces. It's no wonder that technical people often prefer TUIs.
Maybe AI will bring real advancements in GUIs, but someone's still going to have to make it happen.
GUI is not just your "overlapping windows" straw man, it's interactivity, plus graphical display. Yes via a taxonomy hack TUI is not GUI and there are technical hacks that bring graphics to TUIs these days, but the point remains that we need complex (but not overlapping windows, sure!) interactivity and rich display capability.
That is what we need, and if you're making the argument that a terminal shell is the best place to provide them then I don't know what to say.
I'm pointing out that current GUIs are pretty primitive and haven't undergone much serious thought about functional improvement since Xerox PARC in the late 1970s, and that's why TUIs can still have an edge with technically-inclined people.
It's not that GUIs are inherently worse in principle, but in practice they often are.
The point about overlapping windows is that that "desktop" model permeates the thinking about GUI design, but it's fundamentally limiting and misguided.
> we need complex (but not overlapping windows, sure!) interactivity and rich display capability.
This is not about vision or anything like that it's about thinking like actual engineers and understand that what accidentally IS will always be inferior to what is designated to (can) be. TUIs will always be a hack and good by accident.
“ 39. Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.”
Perlis has an aphorism for this, as he does every important problem [0].
taylorfinley · · focus · HN ↗
Edit to add the fix: <a href="https://gist.github.com/birep/6f2c8d490c7a29820997d57bd654c351" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/birep/6f2c8d490c7a29820997d57bd654c3...
spankalee · · focus · HN ↗
I use a mix of Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, and Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini holds it's own. Especially in writing, frontend, and sysadmin work. agy for configuring a NixOS system has been truly incredible.
mapontosevenths · · focus · HN ↗
I cancelled Ultra because they forced me into their harness like I should adapt to them, rather than the other way around.
drusepth · · focus · HN ↗
I actually just cancelled Ultra also because I couldn't subscribe to a YouTube Family plan while I had it active (Google... :[) but trying to use Codex as a replacement while I testdrive Astra makes me yearn for agy again.
edg5000 · · focus · HN ↗
krzyk · · focus · HN ↗
esafak · · focus · HN ↗
krzyk · · focus · HN ↗
I like CLI more than TUI, and TUI more than GUI where appropriate. For working with text TUI is better, for e.g. images GUI (GIMP).
crossroadsguy · · focus · HN ↗
nsonha · · focus · HN ↗
antonvs · · focus · HN ↗
All the AI-generated UIs I've seen have been very derivative, certainly not eliminating any of the disadvantages of typical GUI interfaces.
Realistically, the whole "overlapping windows" GUI model, and everything that derives from that, was a metaphor geared towards people who'd never seen a computer before. It fit the increasing consumer focus of computing interfaces. It's no wonder that technical people often prefer TUIs.
Maybe AI will bring real advancements in GUIs, but someone's still going to have to make it happen.
nsonha · · focus · HN ↗
That is what we need, and if you're making the argument that a terminal shell is the best place to provide them then I don't know what to say.
antonvs · · focus · HN ↗
It's not that GUIs are inherently worse in principle, but in practice they often are.
The point about overlapping windows is that that "desktop" model permeates the thinking about GUI design, but it's fundamentally limiting and misguided.
> we need complex (but not overlapping windows, sure!) interactivity and rich display capability.
Yep. Pity today's GUIs can't deliver that.
crossroadsguy · · focus · HN ↗
nsonha · · focus · HN ↗
agentcoops · · focus · HN ↗
Perlis has an aphorism for this, as he does every important problem [0].
[0] <a href="https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html