Hacker News: s_brady

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

s_brady — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:43:15 +0000

A runtime for a long-lived LLM agent with ambient continuous self-perception, persistent memory, defined authority, domain-specific autonomy, and forensic accountability, all in a long ongoing relationship with a human. I call this type of system an Artificial Retainer, a non-human cross between a guide dog and someone like your accountant or lawyer. It is not designed to be your friend, but it could be a valuable colleague. Think of this as an attempt to build a trusted stable agent with a stable character that could last decades.

https://github.com/seamus-brady/springdrift

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04660

Springdrift: An Auditable Persistent Runtime for LLM Agents

s_brady — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:17:37 +0000

Article URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04660

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744005

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by s_brady in "TallMountain – Stoic Virtue Ethics for an LLM Agent"

s_brady — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:45:48 +0000

Inspired by [1] I have been working on a system to integrate the Normative Calculus of Lawrence Becker from "A New Stoicism" [2] into an LLM agent. This works out kind of like Constitutional AI but prompt engineering based. There is a Raku and a Python implementation. I much preferred using Raku as the built in text handling and multithreading is a joy to work with. Python is very clunky compared to it. it just has better libraries.

I make no great claims for the system, it has major issues being prompt based. It is a prototype to explore the feasibility of the idea of giving a chatbot arete, a code of conduct. There are few tests, no evals so all the usual caveats! An intellectual exercise in possibilities not currently being explored anywhere else. Does it work? Hmm, almost :)

It extracts normative propositions from incoming user requests then compares then to it's own internal ethical normative propositions using the Normative Calculus. The system also uses the Decision Paradigm algorithm from Lee Roy Beach [3] to make a forecast on whether to take up the user's task or not.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1013805017161 [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pd2k82 [3] https://books.google.ie/books/about/The_Psychology_of_Narrat...

TallMountain – Stoic Virtue Ethics for an LLM Agent

s_brady — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:45:48 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/seamus-brady/tallmountain-raku

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45378812

Points: 3

# Comments: 6

New comment by s_brady in "Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?"

s_brady — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 08:10:42 +0000

I might try to arrange that :) Thanks for the interest!

New comment by s_brady in "Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?"

s_brady — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 23:07:47 +0000

I am working on an agent cognitive architecture based around LLMs. Been working on it for a while. The main difference from all the dozens out of agentic systems out there is that has been designed so that it can introspect fully and it has a machine ethics layer based on the work a modern Stoic philosopher. I am trying to build a system that I would like to exist.

New comment by s_brady in "Cryptocurrency Mines Consume More Power Than Argentina–But PSUs Can Help"

s_brady — Sun, 02 May 2021 10:27:18 +0000

100 years from now BitCoin will be seen for what it really is - the computing icing on top of the large excrement cake that is our industrial civilisation.

New comment by s_brady in "Rust Language Cheat Sheet"

s_brady — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 10:48:34 +0000

I really want to like Rust, I like the intention of what the language is trying to do. But in a universe where languages like Smalltalk, Eiffel and Lisp exist, it just feels like a step backwards. Surely the computer should be doing the heavy lifting? What happened to my bicycle for the mind? Just my opinion. I admire the work going on in Rust but the complexity makes me sad.

Awesome Eiffel – a curated list of Eiffel libraries, resources and tools

s_brady — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 15:32:12 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/corvideon/awesome-eiffel

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24908376

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by s_brady in "Eiffel – Concurrency patterns in SCOOP [pdf]"

s_brady — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 17:00:07 +0000

Also see the code repository at https://github.com/romasch/scoop_patterns

Eiffel – Concurrency patterns in SCOOP [pdf]

s_brady — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 16:59:19 +0000

Article URL: https://www.eiffel.org/doc-file/solutions/eth-46802-01.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24731898

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by s_brady in "Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com"

s_brady — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 16:42:00 +0000

I always use gandi.net for searching for domains. They are honest brokers. Never had an issue.

New comment by s_brady in "Natural language benchmarks don’t measure AI models’ general knowledge well"

s_brady — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 10:51:14 +0000

Your comment is interesting but seems to conflate two separate though related areas. The need for a body arises from the embodied cognition school of AI which suggests that intelligence is fundamentally embodied, hence the need for a robot equivalent to a body for truly understanding language.

However this does not necessarily have to be related to causality, and counterfactual statements about a causal model. The math behind counterfactuals and causality is actually well understood now (see any of Pearl's books). It does not actually require that a system be embodied, just that the system have some suitable (and correct) causal model of the world.

It would of course be amazing to have both in one system, but that is not required. An AI system that understood causality and language could be bootstrapped from causal models supplied by humans - or even other AIs :)

New comment by s_brady in "Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs"

s_brady — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 15:10:02 +0000

I am almost tempted to add this.

New comment by s_brady in "Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs"

s_brady — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 15:08:04 +0000

Hi - Mousemacs author here.

There is a way to pick and choose :)

The context menu in Mousemacs is a couple of dozen lines of Elisp and would be simple to rewrite. You can simply create your own context menus.

Mousemacs – A mouse-driven Emacs

s_brady — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 11:43:31 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/corvideon/mousemacs

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24209374

Points: 92

# Comments: 97