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How to build a coding agent

(ghuntley.com)
469 points ghuntley | 2 comments | 24 Aug 25 03:21 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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revskill ◴[24 Aug 25 05:47 UTC] No.45001717[source]▶
Where is the program synthesis? My way of thinking is given primitives as tools, i want the model to construct and return the program to execute.

Of course following nix philosophy is another way.

replies(1): >>45003009 #
ghuntley ◴[24 Aug 25 10:21 UTC] No.45003009[source]▶
Sonnet does this via the edit tool and bash tool. It’s inbuilt to the model.
replies(1): >>45003144 #
revskill ◴[24 Aug 25 10:51 UTC] No.45003144[source]▶
Interesting.
replies(1): >>45003649 #
1. ghuntley ◴[24 Aug 25 12:13 UTC] No.45003649[source]▶
Keep an eye out for Sonnet generating Python files. What typically happens is: let's say you had a refactor that needs to happen, and let's say 100 symbols need renaming. Instead of invoking the edit tool 100 times, Sonnet has this behaviour where it will synthesise a Python program and then execute it to do it all in one shot.
replies(1): >>45003885 #
2. gbrindisi ◴[24 Aug 25 12:50 UTC] No.45003885[source]▶
I wonder how far I could go with a barebone agent prompted to take advantage of this with Sonnet and the Bash tool only, so that it will always try to use the tool to only do `python -c …`