The way it worked originally was it would trigger a different system prompt, and then the permissions system would prompt you (even on YOLO mode) before running any non-readonly actions.
Cursor would also write a plan document, which was useful when working on larger tasks (due to context size). I still find that part useful today.
I think the rise of Claw's, Grok Bot and Muse is a good counterpoint to this. Yes they are still niche specialized interfaces right now, but they are basically allowing non-technical people to do things that have been easily possible with scripts and cronjobs for a long time. Its basically the Ford and faster houses analogy.
When I look around me, the only time people get their phone out of their pockets is either for youtube, some social media, or calling/chatting with people. It's very rare to even see them set reminders or use the calculator. It's look like you're in some tech bubble. People outside of that don't scripts or do repetitive and formalized stuff. The people that do create apps and services to sell.
My wife is as non-technical as it gets, but she still spends hours with ChatGPT everyday. Calorie counting, parenting tips, gardening help, fact checks, looking up celebrities, road trip planning, meal planning, health related questions, all with ChatGPT. I really don't think she's the only one. It wasn't the most downloaded iPhone app of 2025 for nothing.
Those are all techbical limitations that will be solved with time. In 5 years I would be surprised if we do NOT have an AI as smart as today's frontier models, that runs completely locally, and has a real time voice interface.
I'm not a Treky but I think Star Trek has the right interface here. For basic operations you just use voice and tell it your intent or what you need to know "Computer, what's the fastest route for me to get home?". "Madison is fastest right now, it's 3 minutes faster than Lake, it traffic is building up".
This isn't just whatever Waze gives you, it knows about your constraints and preferences. So you need to program that somehow. Imagine taking it one step further "Computer, what's the fastest route to pickup my daughter and get home?" or even it just responding to the first prompt "Take Roosevelt, and today you need to pickup your daughter from volleyball".
In Star Trek they often do this when they create "simulations". They tell the computer constraints and then it refines it. No writing programs, but effectively that's what you are doing but with the natural language voice interface.
"Computer let's create a simulation to figure out the fastest way for me to get home. I want to take a route along the expressway and know whether to get off at Roosevelt, Madison, or Lake. I need to pickup my daughter when she has volleyball." You don't need to repeat the whole instruction each time, and behind the scenes it is probably turning it into some deterministic code, so next time you trigger that program it's not going to hallucinate some nonsense.
We live in a "capitalist" society. Moats will be built, regulations will be enacted to ensure the American Corporation controls the market segment. No one has been able to unseat Amazon, no one has been able to unseat Google, no one has been able to unseat Microsoft, no one has been able to seat Twitter, Facebook, etc. The modern market is segments that are controlled by a single entity. There will be no local models.
> "Computer let's create a simulation to figure out the fastest way for me to get home. I want to take a route along the expressway and know whether to get off at Roosevelt, Madison, or Lake. I need to pickup my daughter when she has volleyball."
Imagine saying that to a random dude with a map and that should give you a good idea on how many info you're leaving out. You can say that the AI will infere those but that seems to be the common fallacy of AI enjoyers: They're always assuming the AI will magically find out the missing information from their prompt somehow.
I have Organic Maps installed on my phone and within a few minutes (faster than my car warming up) I can set a multi stop route (you can bookmark places). Training a random user to use such apps is also equally fast. The same happens with various pro tools: once trained, a user can be very fast with them.
> I have Organic Maps installed on my phone and within a few minutes (faster than my car warming up) I can set a multi stop route (you can bookmark places).
Wow that's slow. I can do the same in Google Maps in seconds. Can you tell me what I'm missing? I'm definitely missing something.
Much tighter electronic control of fuel, ignition and even cooling system combined with tighter tolerances and modern oil formulations. Wait for the cat to light off and the revs drop and then put it in gear and take it easy for the next couple of minutes of driving.
Do you change the oil on your car yourself? No? Why not? Buying the oil, filters and all the tools you need to do it forever would cost less than one oil change at the dealership. Plenty of videos on YouTube you can learn from.
Sure, but changing the oil means buying a bunch of stuff and getting dirty. Replacing your vibe coded garbage app with my vibe coded garbage app is much much easier than changing my oil.
That said, I think this only applies to apps that can be replaced by vibe coded garbage. Anything with a network effect, or anything that requires deep domain knowledge is much safer
> Replacing your vibe coded garbage app with my vibe coded garbage app is much much easier than changing my oil
I am not sure what is it about the HN crowd that makes them so out of touch with what the average Joe is capable of. It's like that Dropbox post top comment all over again.
Don't you think that the only reason you think it's simple is because you're... A professional Software Engineer??
I know for a fact that it has gotten simpler. Which means that the number of people who can do a version of the thing i’ve been doing most of my life got way way way bigger in the last couple years.
Sure, not everybody can do it - i take your point. But the dynamic between can and can’t has changed. Projects I wouldn’t take on because they were too much work for not enough reward have become something I can pop off in a couple hours. People who know nothing about coding but a lot about their specific need can build complex apps in days.
> Which means that the number of people who can do a version of the thing i’ve been doing most of my life got way way way bigger in the last couple years.
Which invariably means that businesses who incorrectly believe that their vibe coded solution will withstand the trials and tribulations of production will be needing even more professional help when it all goes wrong.
Yes people shouldn't discuss until they have tried vibe coding as SaaS. I do this now and it is 10x faster at coding and 1x on any other tasks. So overall maybe 3 months work is done in a month. This means the typical SaaS may be cheaper now but it is not like anyone can vibe code it cheaper than the subscription fee.
> Buying the oil, filters and all the tools you need to do it forever would cost less than one oil change at the dealership.
Are you changing your own oil? The cost of oil alone usually ends up being around 3 DIY changes vs one at the dealer ship. The mobile 1 synthetic I like is currently $92 for a 3-pack of 5qt containers. Which is enough for 3 oil changes with some left over to almost do a 4th. Dealership currently wants $84+tax for change w/free tire rotation. It's cheaper but certainly not "do it forever", and living in an apartment often means risking getting a warning from the landlord for doing auto maintenance in the parking lot since its against the stated rules in the lease.
Drain plug is in a stupid location that I don't often feel like dealing with. I do change the oil myself in all my other machines with much more pleasant for oil change designs, though. So I guess what you are saying is that AI isn't ergonomic enough yet, but will that hold true much longer?
I was building web apps like this until 2017 when I entered the React + Typescript world. For B2B you can get pretty far, rendering HTML on the server is fast! I was using Rails on the backend, so templates, partials, shared chunks, made it easy to manage and have a consistent UI without repeating too much.
The hard part is when you then need to build an infinite scrollable table, that has bulk select, and in-placs updating of columns. Ok maybe that's a bit too extreme the other way, but when you get to the point where it's easier to build full-on frontend components, you basically have to use a JavaScript framework for your entire UI. And they are basically all or nothing.
Last time I checked (a good few years ago; I gave up and accepted un-optimized frontends as the rule) there wasn't really a good way to do progressive ehancement like the above: the page rendered on the server as HTML, and some components then become fully frontend managed. And no, frameworks like Stimulus and HTMX don't really solve it for me, I want something declarative.
I'm a bit pissed off with DHH, that he went so far in the anti-Javascript direction, as IMO that was one of the big factors in Rails loosing it's limelight status. For backend I still haven't found anything as easy and fun to work with.
Agree. Now imagine the same thing in less developed and/or less well off countries.
There was a post here a few weeks ago about a UK court being inundated with some kind of claims (unfair dismissal?). To submit a claim you do not need a lawyer, but the process is (intentionally?) vague and very complicated, so it takes a lot of effort to figure it out yourself. But AI makes that kind of stuff easy.
AI is not going to replace layers billing big corporate clients millions a month, but it will replace things that are fairly standardized processes, that don't require a lawyer, but today are just too complicated for regular people.
> To submit a claim you do not need a lawyer, but the process is (intentionally?) vague and very complicated, so it takes a lot of effort to figure it out yourself.
I'm not sure there's quite accurate. The form is really not that difficult to complete.
It's basically: Party details, type of claim, particulars, damages
Obviously knowing these details requires some legal knowledge but I actually think ET claims are easy enough to bring if you've got the time to do a little research and build your case. Almost all ET judgments are public so there isn't the usual difficulty with research as you get with law reports being restricted either.
Cables are something I have no qualms about buying from AliExpress, and I'd say they are better quality than what I can buy locally.
I power my laptop with a WOTOBE 100W 3-meter braided USB-C cable, I got three years ago, for €5. I roughly reel it up and throw it in my backpack, and the next day it comes out again.
I actually bought another one this year (as a spare) as I feel I've had it too long and it should break sometime soon. From a visual inspection there's absolutely nothing wrong with it though.
Compare this to paying €10 for a 1.5m cable from the supermarket, which is just a 50c Chinese product in a box that'll last 3 months - great if you need a cable NOW though. Or €30 for something from an electronics store that is whitelabeled with the brand of a phone manufacturer - and neither is actually rated for 100W.
The thing is the stuff retail stores sell locally is just the same stuff I can buy from China. Except they need to make a profit, the local distributor needs to make a profit, and the regional distributor needs to make a profit. So you end up paying 10x more for the same thing and/or they sell lower quality (= cheaper for them) items. I see zero value in them still existing other than convenience, it's not like the workers can tell you anything that you can't just ask Google yourself.
I live in a 160m2 (1700 sqft) house in Northern Europe (54N). 10kWp of solar on my roof generates around 1/3 more than I consume over the year. Everything is electric, I don't have natural gas. I have a heat pump for heating and cooling (rarely gets above 30c here). If I had a battery April - September could all be local consumption (I pull around 5kWh from the grid each day).
The issue is winter: It gets down to -25c and there is very little sun (not that it would help due to snow on the panels). In January and February this year I generated a grand total of 5kWh :D
However my house is a new house, it's designed to modern building standards and has 30cm of PIR insulation in the walls and even more in the roof. There's just no way to properly renovate old buildings to be like that without basically rebuilding the whole thing. The actual cost of materials is not expensive though (for the west). In milder climates (UK I'm looking at you) there's really no reason all new houses cannot be net-zero.
Modern building standard constantly changes. Time will show, how good they are.
Meanwhile, we have, in Europe a lot of buildings from late 19, early 20th century that are perfectly habitable today and often are ruined by modern standards that not respect old standards. For example basement addition that prevents the apartments from “breathing” and causes them to become damp.
Cursor would also write a plan document, which was useful when working on larger tasks (due to context size). I still find that part useful today.
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