Hacker News: jamestimmins

New comment by jamestimmins in "The Agentic Loop: Three loops in a trench coat"

jamestimmins — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:38:21 +0000

The issue I have with loops is that for truly complex work, where I care about building a generalized solution for a complex problem, the agents frequently reward hack and end up burning indefinitely without finishing until I step in.

Curious how you're addressing this

New comment by jamestimmins in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"

jamestimmins — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:17:39 +0000

Telemetry tooling for local Claude/Codex usage so I can analyze old sessions and fill tooling gaps, make sure I'm using the right models for various tasks, update my processes, etc.

I've also replaced Linear with a local sqlite-backed tool, added tooling to speed up code nav, and am building "no-slop", a tool for enforcing architectural guidelines on vibe-coded projects.

New comment by jamestimmins in "Vacation With An Artist – Mini-Apprenticeships with Artists in Their Studios"

jamestimmins — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 21:26:35 +0000

This looks awesome. I’m the ideal customer for this and am delighted it exists.

Ask HN: Do you use any (semi) autonomous agents?

jamestimmins — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:33:13 +0000

Much of the way that people talk about and pitch AI is around agents that work without human prompting.

As a programmer, I struggle to find ways where this is useful beyond a tool I once built that created playwright scripts from code changes and added screenshots to new pull requests. But that's pretty niche.

I'm curious if other people have found good day-to-day uses for agents.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544500

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by jamestimmins in "Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute"

jamestimmins — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 02:52:19 +0000

My first thought was my finance professor telling us that companies always raise with equity when they think their equity is overvalued.

Quitting my job to research AI software design

jamestimmins — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:17:38 +0000

Article URL: https://jamestimmins.com/p/quitting-my-job-to-research-ai-software-design/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783880

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by jamestimmins in "Minions: Stripe’s one-shot, end-to-end coding agents"

jamestimmins — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 16:42:28 +0000

The responses to this are wild. I have worked with and built smaller systems like this and it is an incredible speed up.

So much reflexive hate against a genuinely transformative tech. Yes AI has annoying people and grifters, but it is genuinely incredible at some things and finding out how to use it effectively within a company is the most fun I’ve had in my career.

New comment by jamestimmins in "Anthropic tries to hide Claude's AI actions. Devs hate it"

jamestimmins — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 19:24:58 +0000

The issue of it burning through tokens grepping around should be fixed with language server integration, but that’s broken in Claude Code and the MCP code nav tools seem to use more tokens than just a home-built code map in markdown files.

New comment by jamestimmins in "Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?"

jamestimmins — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 18:38:23 +0000

Haven’t done robotics, but this approach is also much more feasible now with AI, which I appreciate.

New comment by jamestimmins in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)"

jamestimmins — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 01:38:27 +0000

Building a woodworking extension for SketchUp!

I took a course in using it for woodworking, and just kept thinking “this should all be a single extension”, so I’ve been building that.

New comment by jamestimmins in "$300B Evaporated. The SaaS -Pocalypse Has Begun"

jamestimmins — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:29:31 +0000

I keep thinking about two very different cases wrt existing platforms:

1. My cousin who works for an enterprise real estate SaaS company. He said their main product has iirc 10-20,000 database tables.

2. Evernote users had famously little overlap in which features they used. Everyone use a slightly different subset of Evernote tools.

I wonder if you could create a 2x2 grid of these two scenarios to determine a SaaS tool's likelihood of being replaced with AI.

- Complex Data Model + High feature adoption: Low risk of AI

- Complex Data Model + Low feature adoption: Medium risk short term. High long term.

- Simple data model + High feature adoption: High long term risk risk, but limited ability to grow accouts

- Simple data + low feature adoption: Very high risk

New comment by jamestimmins in "$300B Evaporated. The SaaS -Pocalypse Has Begun"

jamestimmins — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:19:48 +0000

1. I was prepared my to roll my eyes, but I actually think the framing is correct. AI hasn't replaced legacy vendors yet, but companies are now in a position to at least assess whether "Cheap External Tool + AI" beats "Expensive Tool", which starts to compress margins for existing tooling.

2. A suspicious number of "It's not X, it's Y" in this piece.

New comment by jamestimmins in "Film students who can no longer sit through films"

jamestimmins — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 20:28:41 +0000

Jonathan Haidt recently made the point on Ezra Klein's podcast that while adults can take a break from phones and reset their attention/hormones in a couple of weeks, we don't know what impact similar addiction has on a developing mind. It's possible the addiction sets in much deeper.

I'm sympathetic to folks who grew up shaped by this. Not for nothing, but The Conversation also has a compelling start/end, but has a long, arguably slow, boring middle. So it's like being forced into withdrawal on hard mode.

New comment by jamestimmins in "The world of Japanese snack bars"

jamestimmins — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:47:02 +0000

Not snack bars, but tiny bars were absolutely one of my favorite things in Japan. The streets of 3-5 seat bars felt incredibly special and distinct from anything I've seen in the US, regardless of the presumably high % of their business that came from tourists.

New comment by jamestimmins in "The world of Japanese snack bars"

jamestimmins — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:34:22 +0000

I think it's pretty unlikely that they visit bars who don't want the tourists.

I often go on food tours in new cities (e.g. Secret Food Tours) and the restaurants they visit seem to like the consistent revenue stream during off-hours.

New comment by jamestimmins in "Gas Town Decoded"

jamestimmins — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 08:25:18 +0000

Yes at some point innovative software and naming are at cross purposes, and if your naming gets too extreme ultimately that will get all of the attention.

New comment by jamestimmins in "Gas Town Decoded"

jamestimmins — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:25:15 +0000

I actually love the idea of totally new naming schemes for experimental software.

Certain name types are so normalized (agent, worker, etc) that while they serve their role well, they likely limit our imagination when thinking about software, and it's a worthwhile effort to explore alternatives.

Ask HN: How to spend L&D/Training funds before the end of the year?

jamestimmins — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 20:57:38 +0000

Asking here bc others may be in a similar position.

Software developer in the data/platform/python space. I have training funds to spend in the next 12 days. There are plenty of paid resources out there, but relatively few seem better than reading the docs end to end.

What paid resources have folks found better than the many free resources available? This could be courses, books, newsletters, etc.

Note: I already own Designing Data Intensive Applications.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46318611

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by jamestimmins in "Thousands of U.S. farmers have Parkinson's. They blame a deadly pesticide"

jamestimmins — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 15:53:12 +0000

Excellent movie. Worth noting that it was written by Tony Gilroy, who created Andor and cowrote The Bourne Identity, so if you enjoyed those you're likely to enjoy this.

New comment by jamestimmins in "Show HN: I made a spreadsheet where formulas also update backwards"

jamestimmins — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 04:45:54 +0000

My brother once suggested that there are probably bits of code/algorithms that would be world changing if they were released in academic journals, but instead were written by some unknowing programmer in an afternoon for their job coding embedded systems for refrigerators.

This particular example may be unlikely, but it's a very fun idea.