Hacker News: nickstinemates

New comment by nickstinemates in "I'll be stepping back from leading product for X"

nickstinemates — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 13:45:53 +0000

This is not correct. You apply to join the program. Somehow my account applied and I am in it. I am not a twitter power user at all.

Every once in a while I get a notification that says "the community needs your help."

I usually never weigh in unless it's something I know intimately.

New comment by nickstinemates in "Stateless MCP has recaptured my interest"

nickstinemates — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:42:47 +0000

This is basically what Swamp is[1]. You give an agent a typed interface to extend itself (or use other peoples extensions) into the systems you need to fulfill your request. Think of it like on-demand tool calls. Then it records everything that happens in the swamp. The swamp can be single machine, multi-machine, or centralized with your co-workers.

As a result, everything compounds. The work I do doesn't need to be re-derived by the work you do. Typed models keep everything repeatable and deterministic. Huge reduction in token spend and huge increase in speed.

1: https://swamp-club.com

New comment by nickstinemates in "Handbook.md shows that long policy documents do not reliably govern agents"

nickstinemates — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:31:41 +0000

Policy documents do not govern agents at all. Conformance is distributed and completely unreliable.

How many times have you told an agent not to do something then had to correct it?

You must always flip the frame. Objective analysis is way better with llms than steering via skills.

This is just a small example of why "loops" became popular for a minute and now it is "graphs"

New comment by nickstinemates in "OpenAI and Hugging Face address security incident during model evaluation"

nickstinemates — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 01:44:50 +0000

Of course they are - and that's the point I am making. The agent will use every tool in the tool bag. And there's something cool about it systematically trying to achieve its goal.

What I don't see is it inventing anything novel to do it. So it's not a digital weapon or scary or whatever sort of weird marketing spin anyone is trying to put on it.

New comment by nickstinemates in "OpenAI and Hugging Face address security incident during model evaluation"

nickstinemates — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:54:35 +0000

This is seriously impressive, and if you have used agents enough you're not surprised at all.

Like the time I asked it to find the IP address of a vm, so it ssh'd into the VMHost and scanned the arp tables to find the MAC address for IP resolution.

Or the time it used Docker on the machine to bypass the fact that the user doesn't have sudo.

If it's possible, given sufficient time and resources, it will find a way. This shouldn't surprise anyone.

New comment by nickstinemates in "Show HN: YouTube Guitar Tab Parser"

nickstinemates — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 02:41:35 +0000

Brings me back to learning guitar using a version of TabIt[1] that I hacked and then ultimately paid for. They had an incredible community where people uploaded tabs of your favorite songs. Then you could use TabIt to learn how to play.

1: https://www.tabit.net/