5 ms·

People use agents to deploy sites all the time. Buying a domain is part of that if you want to build a site that's beyond a toy. Allowing agents to do a task is

People use agents to deploy sites all the time. Buying a domain is part of that if you want to build a site that's beyond a toy. Allowing agents to do a task isn't just for things you do every day – it's also for things you do rarely and need agents' help. It's not just devs using agents to perform these sort of tasks anymore. Stripe Atlas makes it massively easier for startups to incorporate in Delaware. This is particularly hard for non-US founders. It solves a real problem. I don't think this part will be done by agents though! Disclaimer: I work at Cloudflare but not on this

makeitdouble 5mo ago
Wouldn't it be critical if the agent botched the domain purchase in weird ways ? Short of throwaway sites (spam etc) it's hard to imagine skimping time on this specific, mostly painless part.
- ascorbic 5mo ago
  If the rest of your deployment flow is via the agent, needing to switch over to a different context and open up a browser and login (or create an account) and buy the domain absolutely is a bump in the road.
  - makeitdouble 5mo ago
    [dead]
- barnabee 5mo ago
  People are skimping time in every part. I am watching people who can't code build and deploy dashboards and sites with Claude Code (desktop app - they don't use the CLI), then go cap in hand to developer friends to get it hosted on a domain (rather than some Vercel or whatever URL). Those people absolutely want to risk letting an agent buy and set up the domain. This is not necessarily as blindly stupid as you might think. Many of these people know that this workflow is no good for writing code that does anything serious (i.e. storing data for people, taking payments, etc.) but there are a huge number of projects that are just websites, dashboard, data visualisations, etc. with static content and public APIs (Twitter is awash with them) and domains are cheap. A decent minority of these are even quite cool or interesting. So a lot of people want to put their vibe-coded weekend project behind a nice domain. Why not?
  - makeitdouble 5mo ago
    > why not? Let's say they buy a first time discounted $5 domain with a $9000 renewal (could the first renewals be made contractually mandatory?), potentially some other weird terms that the agent agreed to for them. If I was ill spirited I'd go look at how the agents try to buy and setup juicy traps to milk it as much as I can for the first wave.
- rsanek 5mo ago
  I would expect the value of a domain purchase + setup handled by an agent is the highest for people that are not very technical. I'd say that a well-engineered agent will do a better job avoiding botching it than your average non-dev.
lejalv 5mo ago
Lets remind the purpose of incorporating in Delaware is legal tax evasion, so that we don't not have pensions, health insurance or anything nice, really. Rename to Greedware.
- ascorbic 5mo ago
  Investors usually expect that non-US founders incorporate in the US, and usually expect Delaware. There are other states that are more friendly to tax avoidance. Delaware is mostly preferred because it's a known quantity with mature regulation. Investors don't want to deal with dozens of different legal regimes, they want the one that they know about.
  - jrflowers 5mo ago
    do you work on a cloudflare delaware-awareness project? Delawareness?
    - ascorbic 5mo ago
      Nope, nothing like it. I'm an Astro maintainer and I work on web frameworks.
- pembrook 5mo ago
  No, it’s not. Companies have to pay taxes where they operate regardless of what state they incorporated in. Stop spreading populist internet bullshit. Incorporating in Delaware is like 95% about being in a predictable legal framework for any business related dispute imaginable.
  - Yizahi 5mo ago
    Uhuh. And in other places, companies are incorporating in Ireland or Luxembourg or other similar tax evasion heavens because of the "predictable legal framework" too. Lol.
    - 5mo ago
sshine 5mo ago
> it's also for things you do rarely and need agents' help I recently set up DNSSEC for the first time. It really was just a bunch of copy-paste from one provider to another. I like to understand what I'm doing, and LLMs helped greatly with that. But it was copy-pasting screenshots into chat, so not really agentic.
- ElFitz 5mo ago
  Last time (after years of doing it manually every once in a while) I just gave codex an ephemeral restricted Cloudflare API Token / key / whatever, the screenshot, and it set up all the records on its own.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

makeitdouble 5mo ago

Wouldn't it be critical if the agent botched the domain purchase in weird ways ? Short of throwaway sites (spam etc) it's hard to imagine skimping time on this specific, mostly painless part.

ascorbic 5mo ago
If the rest of your deployment flow is via the agent, needing to switch over to a different context and open up a browser and login (or create an account) and buy the domain absolutely is a bump in the road.
- makeitdouble 5mo ago
  [dead]
barnabee 5mo ago
People are skimping time in every part. I am watching people who can't code build and deploy dashboards and sites with Claude Code (desktop app - they don't use the CLI), then go cap in hand to developer friends to get it hosted on a domain (rather than some Vercel or whatever URL). Those people absolutely want to risk letting an agent buy and set up the domain. This is not necessarily as blindly stupid as you might think. Many of these people know that this workflow is no good for writing code that does anything serious (i.e. storing data for people, taking payments, etc.) but there are a huge number of projects that are just websites, dashboard, data visualisations, etc. with static content and public APIs (Twitter is awash with them) and domains are cheap. A decent minority of these are even quite cool or interesting. So a lot of people want to put their vibe-coded weekend project behind a nice domain. Why not?
- makeitdouble 5mo ago
  > why not? Let's say they buy a first time discounted $5 domain with a $9000 renewal (could the first renewals be made contractually mandatory?), potentially some other weird terms that the agent agreed to for them. If I was ill spirited I'd go look at how the agents try to buy and setup juicy traps to milk it as much as I can for the first wave.
rsanek 5mo ago
I would expect the value of a domain purchase + setup handled by an agent is the highest for people that are not very technical. I'd say that a well-engineered agent will do a better job avoiding botching it than your average non-dev.

lejalv 5mo ago

Lets remind the purpose of incorporating in Delaware is legal tax evasion, so that we don't not have pensions, health insurance or anything nice, really. Rename to Greedware.

ascorbic 5mo ago
Investors usually expect that non-US founders incorporate in the US, and usually expect Delaware. There are other states that are more friendly to tax avoidance. Delaware is mostly preferred because it's a known quantity with mature regulation. Investors don't want to deal with dozens of different legal regimes, they want the one that they know about.
- jrflowers 5mo ago
  do you work on a cloudflare delaware-awareness project? Delawareness?
  - ascorbic 5mo ago
    Nope, nothing like it. I'm an Astro maintainer and I work on web frameworks.
pembrook 5mo ago
No, it’s not. Companies have to pay taxes where they operate regardless of what state they incorporated in. Stop spreading populist internet bullshit. Incorporating in Delaware is like 95% about being in a predictable legal framework for any business related dispute imaginable.
- Yizahi 5mo ago
  Uhuh. And in other places, companies are incorporating in Ireland or Luxembourg or other similar tax evasion heavens because of the "predictable legal framework" too. Lol.
  - 5mo ago

sshine 5mo ago

> it's also for things you do rarely and need agents' help I recently set up DNSSEC for the first time. It really was just a bunch of copy-paste from one provider to another. I like to understand what I'm doing, and LLMs helped greatly with that. But it was copy-pasting screenshots into chat, so not really agentic.

ElFitz 5mo ago
Last time (after years of doing it manually every once in a while) I just gave codex an ephemeral restricted Cloudflare API Token / key / whatever, the screenshot, and it set up all the records on its own.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]