5 ms·
What do you mean by "actually governing the agents at the system level", and how is it different from "herding cats"?
by bogdanoff_2 6mo ago
What do you mean by "actually governing the agents at the system level", and how is it different from "herding cats"?
- amangsingh 6mo agoHerding cats is treating the LLM's context window as your state machine. You're constantly prompt-engineering it to remember the rules, hoping it doesn't hallucinate or silently drop constraints over a long session. System-level governance means the LLM is completely stripped of orchestration rights. It becomes a stateless, untrusted function. The state lives in a rigid, external database (like SQLite). The database dictates the workflow, hands the LLM a highly constrained task, and runs external validation on the output before the state is ever allowed to advance. The LLM cannot unilaterally decide a task is done. I got so frustrated with the former while working on a complex project that I paused it to build a CLI to enforce the latter. Planning to drop a Show HN for it later today, actually.
- fallinditch 6mo agoSounds good, I'll keep an eye out.
- amangsingh 6mo agoJust dropped the Show HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601608. Would love to hear your thoughts on the architecture!
- mywacaday 6mo agoI started that very personal project on Monday, waiting with baited breath, make sure to add a sponsor me a coffee link.
- amangsingh 6mo agoJust posted it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601608 Thank you so much for the coffee offer, that genuinely made my day! I don't have a sponsor link set up. Honestly, the best support is just hearing if this actually helps you ship your personal project faster without losing your mind to prompt engineering. I really hope it gives you your sanity back. Let me know how it goes!
- Melatonic 6mo agoSome of your comments have already been marked as "dead" oddly enough that just seemed like normal comments explaining your rationale. edit: Also seems like peoples replies are getting downvoted to hell and getting marked as dead and dissapear. Someone must not like your idea :-)
- zargon 6mo agoComments are marked dead by automatic processes, not through downvotes. They're dead before anyone sees them, and you can't vote on a dead comment. amangsingh's comments have probably triggered some automated moderation. Probably at least partially because they sound LLM-generated.
- amangsingh 6mo agoSpot on regarding the automod. Unfortunately, the way I naturally structure my writing almost always triggers a 50/50 flag on AI content detectors. It is the absolute bane of my existence. The filter instantly shadowbanned the Show HN post when I submitted it, which is why the link was dead for a while. Thankfully, human mods reviewed it and restored it. The link is fully live for a while now!
- skeledrew 6mo ago> The database dictates the workflow, hands the LLM a highly constrained task, and runs external validation on the output before the state is ever allowed to advance. This sounds like where lat.md[0] is headed. Only thing is it doesn't do task constraint. Generally I find the path these tools are taking interesting. [0] https://github.com/1st1/lat.md https://github.com/1st1/lat.md
- amangsingh 6mo agoI looked into lat.md. They are definitely thinking in the same direction by using a CLI layer to govern the agent. The key difference is the state mechanism. They use markdown; I use an AES-encrypted SQLite database. Markdown is still just text an LLM can hallucinate over or ignore. A database behind a compiled binary acts as a physical constraint; the agent literally cannot advance a task without satisfying the cryptographic gates. I just dropped the Show HN for it here if you want to check out the architecture: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601608