> Lack of iteration

What makes you think that agents can't iterate?

> I'm going to throw them out if they are just constantly showering me with praise and telling me how much of a genius I am

You can tell the agent to have the persona of an arrogant ass if you prefer it.

▲ godelski 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

  > What makes you think that agents can't iterate?

Please RTFA or RTF top most comment in the thread.

Can they? Yes. Will they reliably? If so, why would it be better to restart...

But the real answer to your question: personal experience

▲ thunky 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Please RTFA

TFA says:

Engineers use Claude Code for rapid prototyping by enabling "auto-accept mode" (shift+tab) and setting up autonomous loops in which Claude writes code, runs tests, and iterates continuously.

The tool rapidly prototypes features and iterates on ideas without getting bogged down in implementation details

▲ godelski a day ago | parent [-]

Don't cherry-pick, act in good faith. I know you can also read the top comment I suggested.

I know it's a long article and the top comment is hard to find, so allow me to help

  > Treat it like a slot machine
  >
  > Save your state before letting Claude work, let it run for 30 minutes, then either accept the result or start fresh rather than trying to wrestle with corrections. ***Starting over often has a higher success rate than trying to fix Claude's mistakes.***

*YOU* might be able to iterate well with Claude but I really don't think a slot machine is consistent with the type of iteration we're discussing here. You can figure out what things mean in context or you can keep intentionally misinterpreting. At least the LLM isn't intentionally misinterpreting

	▲	nojito a day ago \| parent [-]
		That’s actually an old workflow. Nowadays you spin up a thin container and let it go wild. If it messes up you simply just destroy the container, undo the git history and try again. Takes no time at all.

▲ tayo42 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Llms only work in one direction, they produce the next token only. It can't go back and edit. They would need to be able to back track and edit in place somehow

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thunky 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Loops.

Plus, the entire session/task history goes into every LLM prompt, not just the last message. So for every turn of the loop the LLM has the entire context with everything that previously happened in it, along with added "memories" and instructions.

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DANmode 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"Somehow", like caching multiple layers of context, like all the free tools are now doing?

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tayo42 2 days ago | parent [-]

That's different then seeing if it's current output made a mistake or not. It's not editing in place. Your just rolling the dice again with a different prompt

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thunky 2 days ago | parent [-]

No, the session history is all in the prompt, including the LLM's previous responses.

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tayo42 2 days ago | parent [-]

Appending more context to the existing prompt means it's a different prompt still... The text isn't the same

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thunky 2 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure what your point is?

Think of it like an append only journal. To correct an entry you add a new one with the correction. The LLM sees the mistake and the correction. That's no worse then mutating the history.

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tayo42 a day ago | parent [-]

thats not how it works.

You put in its context window some more information, then roll the dice again. And it produces text again token by token. Its still not planning ahead and its not looking back at what was just generated. There's no guarantee everything stays the same except the mistake. This is different then editing in place. you are rolling the dice again.

	▲	thunky a day ago \| parent [-]
		> its not looking back at what was just generated It is, though. The LLM gets the full history in every prompt until you start a new session. That's why it gets slower as the conversation/context gets big. The developer could choose to rewrite or edit the history before sending it back to the LLM but the user typically can't. > There's no guarantee everything stays the same except the mistake Sure, but there's no guarantee about anything it will generate. But that's a separate issue.