In game design we used to call this opacity “hunt the verb” in text adventures.

All chat bots suffer this flaw.

GUIs solve it.

CLIs could be said to have it, but there is no invitation to guess, and no one pretends you don’t need the manual.

QuercusMax 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For CLIs - most reasonable commands either have a `-h`, `--help`, `-help`, `/?`, or what have you. And manpages exist. Hunt the verb isn't really a problem for CLIs.

And furthermore - aren't there shells that will give you the --help if you try to tab-complete certain commands? Obviously there's the issue of a lack of standardization for how command-line switches work, but broadly speaking it's not difficult to have a list of common (or even uncommon) commands and how their args work.

(spends a few minutes researching...)

This project evidently exists, and I think it's even fairly well supported in e.g. Debian-based systems: https://github.com/scop/bash-completion.

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bangonkeyboard 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> For CLIs - most reasonable commands either have a `-h`, `--help`, `-help`, `/?`, or what have you. And manpages exist. Hunt the verb isn't really a problem for CLIs.

"Hunt the verb" means that the user doesn't know which commands (verbs) exist. Which a neophyte at a blank console will not. This absolutely is a problem with CLIs.

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npunt 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Discoverability is quite literally the textbook problem with CLIs, in that many textbooks on UI & human factors research over the last 50 years discuss the problem.

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mingus88 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Per the thread OP, nobody pretends that CLIs do not need a manual.

Many users like myself enjoy a good manual and will lean into a CLI at every opportunity. This is absolutely counter to the value proposition of a natural language assistant.

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dididn284d 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think this is a naming problem. CLI is usually the name for the interface to an application. A Shell is the interface to the OS. Nonetheless agree with your post but this might be part of the difficulty in the discussion

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buildbot 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To be super pedantic, wouldn’t the interface to a shell itself be a Command Line Interface? ;)

	▲	dididn284d 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		that’s the ambiguity that I think is tripping the discussion up a little. Also the idea of a CLI/Shell/Terminal is also quite coupled to a system, rather than services. Hence the whole ‘web service’ hope to normalise remote APIs that if you squint hard enough become ‘curl’ on the command line But the point is none of that is intrinsic or interesting to the underlying idea, it’s just of annoying practical relevance to interfacing with APIs today

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projektfu 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wow, I now feel old.

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dhussoe 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

the comment you're replying to said:

> but there is no invitation to guess, and no one pretends you don’t need the manual

which is basically what you're saying too? the problem with voice UIs and some LLM tools is that it's unclear which options and tools exist and there's no documentation of it.

	▲	nneonneo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Siri does have documentation: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/ipha48873ed6/io.... This list (recursively) contains more things than probably 95% of users ever do with Siri. The problem really boils down to the fact that a CLI is imposing enough that someone will need a manual (or a teacher), whereas a natural language interface looks like it should support "basically any query" but in practice does not (and cannot) due to fundamental limitations. Those limitations are not obvious, especially to lay users, making it impossible in practice to know what can and cannot be done.

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esafak 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's called discoverability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discoverability

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PunchyHamster 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

CLI + small LLM (I am aware of the oxymoron) trained on docs could be fun

	▲	bmandale 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you like deleting all your files, sure. LLMs, especially small ones, have far too high a propensity for consequential mistakes to risk them on something like that.

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xnx 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The lack of an advertised set of capabilities is intentional so that data can be gathered on what users want the system to do (even if it can't). Unfortunately, this is a terrible experience for the user as they are frustrated over and over again.

	▲	setr 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Given that they made no apparent use of such information in practice, the unfortunate thing is that they had the idea to begin with.

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sakesun 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's explain why there is a limited set of recommended verbs in PowerShell.

	▲	_ikke_ 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Instead, you get to hunt the nouns.

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pxtail 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Very well written, I'm wondering when current "cli haxxxor assistant" FAD will fade away and focus will move into proper, well thought out and adjusted to changed paradigm IDEs instead of wasting resources. Well, maybe not completely wasting as this is probably still part of discovery process.

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bane 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A lot of AI models also suffer this flaw.