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Comment by dlivingston | Hacker News Reader

> Call it what you want, you can write it in 100 lines of Python. I encourage every programmer I talk to who is remotely curious about LLMs to try that. It is a lightbulb moment.

Definitely want to try this out. Any resources / etc. on getting started?

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This is the classic blog post, by Thorsten Ball, from way back in the AI Stone Age (April this year): https://ampcode.com/how-to-build-an-agent

It uses Go, which is more verbose than Python would be, so he takes 300 lines to do it. Also, his edit_file tool could be a lot simpler (I just make my minimal agent "edit" files by overwriting the entire existing file).

I keep meaning to write a similar blog post with Python, as I think it makes it even clearer how simple the stripped-down essence of a coding agent can be. There is magic, but it all lives in the LLM, not the agent software.

> I keep meaning to write a similar blog post with Python...

Just have your agent do it.

I could, but I'm actually rather snobbish about my writing and don't believe in having LLMs write first drafts (for proofreading and editing, they're great).

(I am not snobbish about my code. If it works and is solid and maintainable I don't care if I wrote it or not. Some people seem to feel a sense of loss when an LLM writes code for them, because of The Craft or whatever. That's not me; I don't have my identity wrapped up in my code. Maybe I did when I was more junior, but I've been in this game long enough to just let it go.)

I highly relate to this. Code works or it doesn’t. My writing feels a lot more like self expression. I agree that’s harder to “let go” to an agent.

I wrote a post here with zero abstractions. Its all self contained and runs locally.

https://ravinkumar.com/GenAiGuidebook/language_models/Agents... https://github.com/canyon289/ai_agent_basics/blob/main/noteb...

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