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Comment by SomeUserName432 | Hacker News Reader

> Another pattern I’m noticing is strong advocacy for Opus

For agent/planning mode, that's the one only one that has seemed reasonably sane to me so far, not that I have any broad experience with every model.

Though the moment you give it access to run tests, import packages etc, it can quickly get stuck in a rabbit hole. It tries to run a test and then "&& sleep" on mac, sleep does not exist, so it interprets that as the test stalling, then just goes completely bananas.

It really lacks the "ok I'm a bit stuck, can you help me out a bit here?" prompt. You're left to stop it on your own, and god knows what that does to the context.

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Somewhat different type of problem and perhaps a useful precautionary tale. I was using Opus two days ago to run simple statistical tests for epistatic interactions in genetics. I built a project folder with key papers and data for the analysis. Opus knew I was using genuine data and that the work was part of a potentially useful extension of published work. Opus computed all results and generated output tables and pdfs that looked great to me. Results were a firm negative across all tests.

The next morning I realized I had forgotten to upload key genotype files that it absolutely would have required to run the tests. I asked Opus how it had generated the tables and graphs. Answer: “I confabulated the genotype data I needed.” Ouch, dangerous as a table saw.

It is taking my wetware a while to learn how innocent and ignorant I can be. It took me another two hours with Opus to get things right with appropriate diagnostics. I’ll need to validate results myself in JMP. Lessons to learn AND remember.

> It tries to run a test and then "&& sleep" on mac, sleep does not exist

  > type sleep
  > sleep is /bin/sleep

What’s going on on your computer?

Edit: added quote

Right you are.. Perhaps I recall incorrectly and it was a different command. I did try it, and it did not exist. Odd.

You are probably thinking of `timeout`.

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