Pretty much every software engineer I've talked to sees it more or less like you do, with some amount of variance on exactly where you draw the line of "this is where the value prop of an LLM falls off". I think we're just awash in corporate propaganda and the output of social networks, and "it's good for certain things, mixed for others" is just not very memetic.
I wish this was true. My experience is co-workers who do lip service as to treating LLM like a baby junior dev, only to near-vibe every feature and entire projects, without spending so much as 10 mins to think on their own first.
I played with it extensively for three days. I think there are a few things it does that people are finding interesting:
1. It has a lot of files that it loads into it's context for each conversation, and it consistently updates them. Plus it stores and can reference each conversation. So there's a sense of continuity over time.
2. It connects to messaging services and other accounts of yours, so again it feels continuous. You can use it on your desktop and then pick up your phone and send it an iMessage.
3. It hooks into a lot of things, so it feels like it has more agency. You could send it a voice message over discord and say "hey remember that conversation about birds? Send an email to Steve and ask him what he thinks about it"
It feels more like a smart assistant that's always around than an app you open to ask questions to.
However, it's worth stressing how terrible the software actually is. Not a single thing I attempted to do worked correctly, important issues (like the discord integration having huge message delays and sometimes dropping messages) get closed because "sorry we have too many issues", and I really got the impression that the whole thing is just a vibe coded pile of garbage. And I don't like to be that critical about an open source project like this, but I think considering the level of hype and the dramatic claims that humans shouldn't be writing code anymore, I think it's worth being clear about.
Ended up deleting it and setting up something much simpler. I installed a little discord relay called kimaki, and that lets me interact with instances of opencode over discord when I want to. I also spent some time setting up persistent files and made sure the llm can update them, although only when I ask it to in this case. That's covered enough of what I liked from OpenClaw to satisfy me.
> You could send it a voice message over discord and say "hey remember that conversation about birds? Send an email to Steve and ask him what he thinks about it"
if one of my friends sent me an obviously AI-written email, I think that I would cease to be friends with them...
> You could send it a voice message over discord and say "hey remember that conversation about birds? Send an email to Steve and ask him what he thinks about it"
Ah, so it's a device for irritating Steve, got it.
> “hey remember that conversation about birds? Send an email to Steve and ask him what he thinks about it”
Isn’t the “what he thinks about it” part the hardest? Like, that’s what I want to phrase myself - the part of the conversation I’d like to get their opinion on and what exactly my actual request is. Or are people really doing the meme of sending AI text back and forth to each other with none the wiser?
I think in the context of business communication; yeah a lot of people are doing that. Which, to be honest, I don't think it the worst thing ever. Most corporate communication is some basic information padded out with feigned personal interest and rehearsed politeness, so it's hardly a huge loss.
For personal communication between friends it would be horrible. Authenticity has to be one of the things I value most about the people I know. Didn't mean to imply from that example that I did or would communicate that way.
I like how Xcode installs a bunch of gigantic, multi-gigabyte artifacts for like ios runtimes or whatever, fills up the hard drive, can't update because it's out of space, and then tells me I'm not allowed to delete them because of SIP.
But the best part is what it DOESN'T install when you think you've updated. You get on a plane and settle in for some work, only to be prompted to download and install a bunch of required crap you weren't told about. OH WELL, says Apple, your time is FREE!
I've been using it for the past couple days. Like most AI products right now, it is both incredible and incredibly stupid.
Virtually everything I've tried (starting with just getting it running) was broken in some way. Most of those things I was able to use an LLM to resolve, which is cool, but also why doesn't it just work to begin with?
I still haven't gotten it to successfully create a cron job. Also messages keep getting lost between the web GUI and discord. Trying to enable the matrix integration broke the whole thing. It seems to be able to recall past sessions, but only sometimes.
I've been using OpenCode with various models, often times running several instances in tmux that I can connect to and switch between over ssh. It feels like the hype around openclaw is mostly from bringing the multi-instance agentic experience to non-developers, and providing some nice hooks to integrate with email, twitter, etc. But given that I have a nice setup running opencode in little firejail-isolated containers, I'll probably drop openclaw. Way too janky, and I can't get over the thought of "if this is so amazing, why doesn't it work?"
proot is just good enough to make you want to try it, but not good enough to keep using it. chroot was far better and if that's what was holding you back I'd recommending trying chroot.
I can relate to the clunk of having 3 different pieces to the setup, but I found myself using just the phone + keyboard pretty often for quick things. And since the desktop environment seems to sit in the background just fine, it wasn't much more than just turning on the phone and opening the keyboard. So in that sense it wasn't much different than a laptop.
I see - actually in my case I'm on Samsung, and Dex takes several seconds to boot. I like the desktop but It sounds like chroot + Termux:X11 would be way faster in every way.. I just really wish there was a Termux:Wayland - my favorite desktop doesn't seem to have an equivalent in X11 (niri, though maybe I need to look harder)
As far as being outside, I imagine it's very dependent on personality. I often get restless and distracted working from home, and being outside or in a public space will help me feel a lot calmer and more focused. There's also a certain amount of intentionton it takes to "go to a specific place to do a specific thing" that helps me mentally.
It's not something I'm doing every day, but when the weather is beautiful and I'm feeling stuck behind a desk it's so nice to be able to work outside.
Wow, there's some very nice builds there. I so far I hadn't seen anything that seemed genuinely pocket-able but there are a few there that look like they might work. I'd still really love something that can lock flat and be used on a lap, but that feels doable.
I love kbd.news and was recently struck by the novelty of the Tackle keyboard[0]. Seems rather extreme but my first thought was it could be a great complement to AR glasses. The design could be improved with improved with some tenting, because those keys at the edges will be easy to accidentally trigger when reaching for other keys towards the center.
Anyone - I need this! or something similar as a wearable keyboard. Please help me.
I rigged together a torso/chest mounted keyboard system using rugged keyboard and laptop chest harness modified. It actually kinda works but this Tackle keyboard would work really well for my use case, which overlaps significantly with this post.
I use Viture XR glasses, similar to the Xreals in the post. And I have a rugged laptop in a backpack with LTE modem and external antenna. Then what I do is go hiking in woods and periodically stop and open a Ta-Da chair, which I use as a walking stick or carry on my back, then put on the XR glasses which connected to laptop just using the Viture HDMI adapter, open the keyboard harness, and start working, all terminal based work.
The worst worst part of this crazy setup is the keyboard system. It’s awkward and kinda scares other people as it looks like maybe I have a tactical military vest on. opening it up and getting oriented is like 90% of the hassle.
Please someone help me get this Tackle keyboard. I don’t have the physical engineering skills needed, I’m a software guy. DM me on reddit with same username as HN. I will PAY decent money to anyone who can deliver me a working version of this Tackle keyboard.
I also own and tried tap strap and it’s not viable. Keys needed. LLMs combined with Voice to Text is promising and something on software side I’m looking into actively, but I don’t think no keyboard is a productivity retaining option anytime soon.
I do at least 10K steps daily when I have this system working and my goal is to get to 15K steps and drop weight. My preferred environment is outdoors away from desks and tables and civilization.
Unfortunately not but … but yes if you see me outside in my setup it bears resemblance.
The laptop harness closes so the keyboard is strapped to my chest while walking and there isn’t any screen as I use the Viture glasses as the monitor when I stop and work while sitting.
I could make people SO uncomfortable if I worked as a receptionist with this strapped on and threw in some very subtle signs of enjoying it. Reminds me of the south park nipple twisting guy. Very cool keyboard for VR and AR though. Can't really think of anything better if you wanted to type something quick in the middle of a physical VR game.
Hey thanks (I'm the author)! BTW the "Pro" version has the electrochromic dimming, so I recommend paying a little extra for that unless you're really sure you're not going to need it.
EDIT: To clarify, I meant the "Xreal Air 2 Pro", not the "Xreal One Pro". The latter are much more expensive.
They are $299 on sale on the vendor website right now. I won't link because I don't want to promote them necessarily, but I think you must have seen a different vendor or something?
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