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Munder Difflin – Agent harness to run an office of your clones(munderdiffl.in)
167 points by simonpure 6 hours ago | 68 comments
joshstrange an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Ok, I've been running it for a couple hours and below are my thoughts. Please note that I do find it fascinating even if most of what I'm about to say is complaining about the parts I like less.

- Pipelines, not agents. Roles, not agents. I really don't like the idea of defined agents with their own prompt. I want to define roles and spin up N agents with that role. Furthermore I want pipelines "Plan -> Review Plan -> Approval Gate -> Develop -> Code Review + Fix loop -> QA -> Approval Gate -> Merge -> [Ship]". I don't like the work just bouncing around seemingly randomly

- Settings don't seem to save/persist? Or some of them don't. I couldn't let "Michael" spin up agents on "his" own and then randomly he did it even though the setting was still off. Settings has the normal LLM jank I've seen.

- macOS Notifications are broken, they send for any little reason, and then they don't send when you're actually needed. It's like each agent finishing a round causes a notification.

- Speaking of missing notifications, the _most important_ screen to me is the "Ask Me" tab under "Michael", where they ask questions (more on that later) but there is zero indication that anything is waiting for you. You have to dig into it yourself.

- The "Ask Me" tab is great.... when it works. I've had to unstick agents or answer questions they were waiting on answers for

- Trying to be too cute, it was cute for a minute, now I don't care (and I _love_ The Office). I want a more utilitarian view. I want to see questions, plans, be able to inject new ideas, and a small overview of what each agent is doing. I don't need half the screen taken up with a "game ui".

- Why no clear? I don't understand at all the idea of them keeping context. Maybe I'm missing something and I shouldn't be using persistent agents except for more persistent jobs (like Michael's?).

It's an interesting concept, very "Gas Town", and it make me want to write my own that does more of what I'm looking for but I don't have the time (or tokens) currently to take on another project. My current best approach of herdr+6-10 Claude Code sessions feels like it works better than this and keeps me close enough to the decisions I want to make.

joshstrange 27 minutes ago | parent [-]

Some more observations

- It seems like letting Michael spin up things is the prefered pathway instead of defining a bunch of agents.

- The Ask Me really needs some love. The "X/N" display doesn't make sense to me, I started on "5/5" and as I answered the questions it went to "4/5" -> .... "1/5", I'm not sure if the questions were asked in the wrong order or what. Additionally, it really needs some UI improvement for things like when there are options (and recommendations) it should show as multiple-choice (ALWAYS with a way to add an additional note, this annoys me about Claude Code today).

- Why tell the agent you spin up it's not interactive? I really think instead you should hook the AskUserQuestion and proxy that up to Michael and/or the Human directly. I _want_ to see and answer all the questions. Maybe a first pass with an LLM to see if we already have the answer?

- I still feel lost in what's happening and have to dig into agents too often to understand what has been farmed out to them. A LLM-generated summary of their task showing under their name would be nice. The Tasks board is nice but I think it and the "Ask Me" should be global tabs instead of nested under "Michael"

- Triggers seem cool, I don't have a use for them yet but I think this Claw + Agent Harness path is the correct one.

- I keep needing to unstick agents, like Michael, for things asked in the terminal that didn't get put into "Ask Me" or alert me in any way

Semi-related, I'd love some kind of SDK/library to abstract the "control XZY Agent" while being able to expose the raw agent to make writing agent harnesses like this easier. I've been playing with a little agent loop but I often wish I could have it spin up/manage a Claude Code instance and control it (I know it's possible but it's finicky).

jstummbillig 3 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's interesting how many of these projects are trying to model the worst parts of work (the office, the interaction and information messiness) and then automate that with agents.

chaicodes 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hey guys, thanks for putting it here, I am Chaitanya I built Munder Difflin, I am here to answer all your questions(except nylonstrung).

For people who haven't tried it: Munder Difflin is a local multi-agent harness that wraps around your existing claude code and codex subscriptions(we literally support almost all harnesses/coding agents).

Simulations are deterministic, they do not consume tokens, infact most of the users(20K+ in a week) say that it has reduced their token consumption due to a benchmarked memory layer acting as a hive mind called mempalace.

Common use cases apart from coding: 1. Create triggers that runs an live agent with your context(Webhooks, slack, scheduled) 2. Almost any kind of automation for yourself(I make it review PRs, send cold emails with enriched context, manage discord, Send myself analytics about how app is doing on email an end to end AI video production and posting workflow in 1 prompt and then some)

I'd love to hear your feedbacks on it.

bot403 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's interesting but It was hard to tell from a quick read if this was a fun game with LLMs or a productivity tool. You could stand to make that more clear.

Wowfunhappy an hour ago | parent | next [-]

...I agree but I also kind of like it? More software should aim to be both useful and fun.

qarl2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

my last comment was flagged - presumably i didn't make it pedantic enough for someone, so let me try again:

why do you feel the need to pigeon-hole this work? the greatest things in life are more than one thing at once.

EDIT: stealth edits of your comments is naughty-naughty.

xp84 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I don’t think GP is being unreasonable. Half of this webpage kinda sounds like parody and the other half serious. It’s valid feedback.

qarl2 2 hours ago | parent [-]

did i say he was being unreasonable?

i asked him why he's pigeon-holing it. and you, too? don't hackers enjoy a little bit of playful ambiguity in their lives? must it be all serious all the time?

sheesh.

01100011 an hour ago | parent [-]

Sir, this is the Internet in 2026. We don't allow playful anything unless the intent is clearly labeled and approved by your local decency csar. Please continue to refrain from double entendre, sarcasm, irony, or any other form of misunderstandable communication. Every thought must be of clear intent to the community so we may apply the correct direction of moderation to facilitate the amplification or suppression of thoughts in line with the already accepted and centrally approved community morality. Thank you for your cooperation.

qarl2 an hour ago | parent [-]

UNDERSTOOD. WILL COMPLY.

sgarlatm 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cool project! I’m still trying to figure out if this sort of thing is the future, or something that the big AI labs will subsume into their products on their own soon. Or something that won’t be necessary in a few months when LLMs get smarter.

andrewljohnson 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

“send cold emails with enriched context”

What’s the difference between cold and spam?

JKCalhoun an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does it work with local LLMs?

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

I love it!!! But please, change that "GOD orchestrator" label, as a believer, I find it profane and offensive.

ihaveajob an hour ago | parent [-]

Is that satire?

qarl2 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

don't let the crankles get you down. this thing is delightful.

jambalaya8 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What an exciting project, Chai. Congratulations on your work.

dist-epoch 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How is this different from a Hermes agent? Any major pro? Besides the cute graphics.

And why do you need E2E encrypted comms between your own agents? What is that protecting against? To prevent other agents snooping and maybe getting derailed? Or do you support conversations between agents of different users?

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

I've thought about something like this. When there is a lot of stuff happening at once, it's a mistake to try and communicate it all with text. Agents use tools, reference databases, reference the web, interact with other agents, and spend time processing the information. When you have several agents operating at the same time, communicating what they are doing using some kind of spatial map is a really smart idea.

The office is a decent analog for such a map. Referencing a database? That operation along with processing the information takes a little bit of time. During the interval, have the avatar move to a file cabinet and back to their desk. Have their computer screen change when they access web resources. If they use a particular tool, it can be represented somewhere in the room and used the same way. Interacting with another agent can be similarly represented.

Symbolizing the operation of the agent with movement and behavior is a great way to give an overview. It would support a much richer intuition for how they are accomplishing a task. It wouldn't even need to be a game UI for people who will have a hard time feeling like they are doing serious work while watching what appears to be a game, but that wouldn't bother me.

ethbr1 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It is nice to see folks experimenting widely with unique visual representations of agent orchestration, as a consequence of the bottom-up / individual-led development that's driving the industry (inasmuch as it exists yet).

There are folks young enough now that they've never known anything other than "the desktop" (or CLI) as a computing metaphor.

But there's no fundamental reason a metaphor has to be anything specific... it should be whatever is most widely comprehensible and efficient for the problem space.

ImageXav 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is fantastic. As the little joke I hope it is. Everyone gets their own small disfunctional group, and gets to figure out the challenges of management. You, the manager, are Michael. You know you have to produce something, and you do, but you have no real idea of how. Your diligent agents are Dwight. Overly literal sycophants that are ready to leap to action at your slightest command without any question.

I do think a lot of folk would benefit from the introspection this offers. We've all been given the opportunity to become middle (and middling) managers, and a lot of the challenges we face are those of people who direct. Setting direction is tough. But LLMs are awesome tools.

xp84 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Insightful. I think I’d do better at this orchestration at this particular stage of technology development if I named all my agents Dwight, maybe with an occasional Creed.

jambalaya8 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not feeling this. Is it necessary to call "agents" by human names? Wouldn't objectives be a safer easier to remember approach to naming? Like, say 'Clips' and 'Seeks'.

bbkane an hour ago | parent [-]

Safer? From a mental health perspective? Tbh I like human names

jambalaya8 an hour ago | parent [-]

um no. from a technical design perspective, obviously.

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

If this dropped just five years ago no one would understand what on earth this software does . In many ways I still don't. Incredible the development we've seen lately, wonder what will stick and what won't?

deadbabe 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Why does everyone assume people in the past were idiots? They probably would have figured out what this was for after some critical thinking. Remember those people wrote massive complicated software by hand.

bedstefar 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I didn't imply people in the past were idiots, but how on earth would anyone know what an _agent harness_ is, say?

grey-area an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It’s actually a funny oxymoron if you unpack it - agent implies autonomy and intelligence, harnesses are for unintelligent beasts of burden to control them.

So you’re right, it makes absolutely no sense and would be hard to decipher, but does perfectly capture the contradictions inherent in attempts to treat dumb LLM word generators as intelligent independent agents.

ihaveajob 44 minutes ago | parent [-]

I don't think it's an oxymoron at all. An expert climber still uses a harness for safety, even though they won't (typically) try to jump off the wall.

grey-area 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

They would 1 times out of 10 if they were an LLM. Then say sorry, you’re absolutely right I shouldn’t have jumped off the cliff.

dist-epoch 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

AlphaGo already had a harness. An AI in a loop with tools is not exactly a Black Swan.

deadbabe 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because the term or concept of “AI Agent” existed long before LLMs??? Jesus…

techpression 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The concept of agents is from the 1970’s, I love how some people think the idea is new. Sure, they didn’t have the LLM component, but the rest is the same.

idiotsecant 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're addicted to being mad

nusl 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is super cute. I haven't tried it or anything but it's really fun, seems genuinely useful too. I don't really get people calling it cringe.

inigyou 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They're thinking it's serious like Gas Town, that's why

ethbr1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Something can be ridiculous and also conceptually interesting / intelligent.

Gas Town was (transparently, directly from the author's writing) a veneer of visual/linguistic flair applied over a conceptually fascinating and well-thought-out attempt to prod gen 1 LLMs (with all their flaws) into infinite, zero-touch agentic loops.

That the author chose to do so with Mad Max-themed animals doesn't validate or invalidate the underlying concepts.

Personally, I'd rather that than some soulless OpenAI / Anthropic / Microsoft / Google / Meta corporate-scrubbed blob of beige, riskless design.

Especially when it was abundantly clear they realized the presentation choice was ridiculous, but the guts were the more important part.

And not for nothing, there's the 'We're not Kansas anymore' utility of the sufficiently bizarre, to cue people to avoid reusing the wrong prior expectations.

E.g. in Munder Difflin: 'Your LLMs are occasionally brilliant but generally stupid characters, not brilliant human analogs'

gruez 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>They're thinking it's serious like Gas Town, that's why

It's not? https://munderdiffl.in/#pricing

atique29 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reference to the office is hilarious, this might actually get as much work done as Michael did in the show

x3haloed an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is funny and shamelessly bad at the same time. I have no idea how it's getting so much attention.

zuInnp 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I guess I wouldn't use it, but I just bought two of the asset packs of the pixel artist instead.

junon an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This looks like a tool from Cowboy Bebop.

luciana1u 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

an office of your clones. next they'll add a clone HR department to handle the clone performance reviews, and a clone IT guy who's also a clone and keeps filing tickets against himself.

fHr 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Can't be worse then the preformative just-have-to-be-done newage bs HR reviews in modern big corpo landscape.

chanux 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is it just me or do AI made websites tend to be too verbose?

flufluflufluffy 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not quite verbose but they tend to repeat the same few ideas multiple times with varied wording/imagery. You keep scrolling because you think you’re gonna see something new and by the end you’ve realized you just read the same thing 4 times over.

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

LLMs in general have a tendency to be overly verbose, in my experience.

trentor an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

And yet seeing the exact same comment repeated over and over in every thread with an ai generated website is even more verbose. I find it even worse at least the website can contain new information.

chanux 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

Please pardon. I have seen people complaining that copy being written with an LLM but did not see any mention of verbosity.

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

This is cute and fucked up at the same time.

nylonstrung 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This project is cringe and I really hope we see less stuff like this

ghusto 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People who who "cringe" as an adjective are cringeworthy, and I hope we hear less from them.

lbreakjai 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Calm down Angela.

corvettez0606 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The next steps in innovation will occur at the harness level. Why not have some fun while we’re at it?

yeodev 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wouldn't call it cringe but I don't think it adds a lot of value, distracts me even more & even pulls unnecessary resources I'd guess?

but if people need some tamagochis to look at while their AI is working, maybe it makes sense

dcc635 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That you, Stanley?

souvlakee 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why?

nusl 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I hope we see fewer comments like this that aren't shitting on projects that you have no stake in anyway

StilesCrisis 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a business--they have cloud and a sales team.

nusl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fair. I'll rm the personal project bit

stavros 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Eh, so what? It's whimsical and fun, and it's better if more things like this exist in the world than not.

mcmcmc 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They’re literally reusing IP from The Office. It’s clearly not parody, and they directly reference the show. It’s one thing for a joke project to do that. They are attempting to profit off someone else’s creative work. And not even in the roundabout way AI does.

StilesCrisis an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Not even in a clever way. The bots don't actually seem to carry any personality traits; they're just ways to label <session_0001> and <session_0002>. I won't accept it as an Office parody if Dwight can work well with others.

qup an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Legally, I agree.

Morally, I think it's totally wild to care if some totally unrelated real world thing gets named after a twenty+ year old cultural icon of a TV show as an homage.

They're attempting to profit off their business. The office thing is a theme.

mcmcmc 40 minutes ago | parent [-]

I can’t imagine having so little empathy that you can’t put yourself in the shoes of the creator of the IP. They didn’t even bother to tweak the characters. It’s not “inspired by” or riffing on a theme, it’s a straight ripoff being used to market some AI product. Do you think anyone who created The Office would want to be associated with AI, something that’s threatening to drive them out of a job?

What pisses me off the most is it’s just so damn lazy.

StilesCrisis 20 minutes ago | parent [-]

Honestly, making Ricky Gervais upset might be the most redeeming thing in this product.