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We put a coding agent in a while loop

(github.com)
425 points sfarshid | 7 comments | 24 Aug 25 16:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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VincentEvans ◴[24 Aug 25 16:36 UTC] No.45005596[source]▶
There will be a a new kind of job for software engineers, sort of like a cross between working with legacy code and toxic site cleanup.

Like back in the day being brought in to “just fix” a amalgam of FoxPro-, Excel-, and Access-based ERP that “mostly works” and only “occasionally corrupts all our data” that ambitious sales people put together over last 5 years.

But worse - because “ambitious sales people” will no longer be constrained by sandboxes of Excel or Access - they will ship multi-cloud edge-deployed kubernetes micro-services wired with Kafka, and it will be harder to find someone to talk to understand what they were trying to do at the time.

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dhorthy ◴[24 Aug 25 17:04 UTC] No.45005830[source]▶
When Claude starts deploying Kafka clusters I’m outro
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CuriouslyC ◴[24 Aug 25 17:33 UTC] No.45006053[source]▶
It's already happening brother, https://github.com/containers/kubernetes-mcp-server.
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dhorthy ◴[24 Aug 25 19:10 UTC] No.45006808[source]▶
still don’t know why you need an MCP for this when the model is perfectly well trained to write files and run kubetctl on its own
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1. __MatrixMan__ ◴[25 Aug 25 03:07 UTC] No.45009822[source]▶
If it can run kubectl it can run any other command too. Unless you're running it as a different user and have put a bit of thought into limiting what that user can do, that's likely too much leeway.

That's only really relevant I'd you're leaving it unattended though.

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2. gardnr ◴[25 Aug 25 04:58 UTC] No.45010358[source]▶
You can control it with hooks. Most people I know run in yolo mode in a docker container.
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3. popcorncowboy ◴[25 Aug 25 09:00 UTC] No.45011780[source]▶
Yes... a docker container...
4. __MatrixMan__ ◴[25 Aug 25 14:14 UTC] No.45014092[source]▶
What about being in a docker container lets you `kubectl get pod` but prevents you from `kubectl delete deployment`?
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5. dhorthy ◴[25 Aug 25 14:50 UTC] No.45014499{3}[source]▶
this is more about the service account than the runtime environment i think. you put your admin service account in docker the agent can still wreak havoc. Docker lets you hide the admin service account on your host FS from the agent.
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6. __MatrixMan__ ◴[26 Aug 25 03:48 UTC] No.45022069{4}[source]▶
Keeping the powerful credentials where the agent can't reach them does buy you a bit of safety. But I still think its a bit loose when compared with exposing an API to the model which can only do what you intend for that model to do.
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7. dhorthy ◴[29 Aug 25 23:29 UTC] No.45070548{5}[source]▶
sure fair enough. I guess i'm mostly being pragmatic here.

Plus i'm not convinced that generating "kubectl"...json..."get"...json..."pod"... is easier for most models than "bash"...json..."kubectl get pod"...