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Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs

(felixrieseberg.github.io)
1122 points felixrieseberg | 6 comments | 06 May 25 15:02 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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mrandish ◴[06 May 25 16:53 UTC] No.43907199[source]▶
Great idea! I've been humorously referring to chat agents as next gen Clippy because of their chipper, talky default personas which I find insufferably annoying.

I'm kind of shocked Microsoft didn't already do this as an alt version of their CoPilot UI. Really a huge miss on their part because I hate the overbearingly intrusive way they keep forcing it into their OS, apps and my fucking laptop keyboard. If they at least acknowledged their behavior and owned it (with a sly wink), I'd hate it a little less. I might even be up for a "Clippy is my CoPilot" sticker on my laptop (calling back to the old 80s "Jesus is my Copilot" bumper stickers).

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freedomben ◴[06 May 25 17:10 UTC] No.43907398[source]▶
> I'm kind of shocked Microsoft didn't already do this as an alt version of their CoPilot UI.

Seriously! This makes me think nobody at Microsoft with the authority to approve something like that has a sense of humor and/or good business sense. The nostalgia would be enormous. Hell I'm a linux person now and I'd install Clippy if it supported Fedora

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snoman ◴[06 May 25 20:44 UTC] No.43909455[source]▶
Clippy was a laughing stock and target of derisive comedy for years. It has such bad brand recognition that nobody should be surprised that they aren’t using it.
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1. Nevermark ◴[06 May 25 21:00 UTC] No.43909586{4}[source]▶
I think that is what makes it a humor goldmine.

Clippy was useless.

But attaching a Clippy to a language model? Still nominally useless, but mindfully so!

It would be self-deprecating (un-deprecated???) humor for Microsoft, which would take the edge off of the often pushy and tone-deaf corporate look they continually and crassly paint themselves into by default.

And actually potentially useful as a branding touchstone: a visual and interface link across otherwise seemingly disparate model interfaces. Clearly delineating and bridging MS AI tools from all the other mixes of tools we are accumulating.

They could lean into the “clip” in Clippy with a side app for saving and organizing clippings and logs of notable interactions with any MS model, akin to a notes app. With features for compressing convos into compact topic cheat sheets (with retained sources & convos), lists and other helpful info gathering and leveraging tasks.

An ongoing accumulated compressed common core of context for both (hu)man and machine, er … Clippy.

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2. dullcrisp ◴[06 May 25 22:55 UTC] No.43910508[source]▶
But pushy and tone-deaf is what they are. Unless they change their whole corporate structure for this, it’d be equally tone-deaf for someone from their marketing department to pretend that Microsoft is hip and self-aware now. Better to be honest.
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3. stray ◴[06 May 25 23:27 UTC] No.43910714[source]▶
I sneak Clippy into most of the presentations I give.
4. bcoates ◴[07 May 25 02:24 UTC] No.43911647[source]▶
Clippy's popups were useless, but his chat interface actually worked fine (within the domian of MS office questions) things like "how do I add page numbers" or "count the paragraphs in my document")

The pre-clippy natural language help in MS word worked fine too. Chatbot interfaces that work fine are nothing new, it's just very few programs are complex and open-ended enough for them to be a reasonable UI -- but a full-featured word processor probably is

5. eru ◴[07 May 25 06:07 UTC] No.43912694[source]▶
> I think that is what makes it a humor goldmine.

Agreed!

Compare https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy

6. Nevermark ◴[07 May 25 19:40 UTC] No.43919831[source]▶
I get the strange feeling you wouldn’t be happy with “New Clippy’s” occasional off topic purchase recommendations!