alt Hacker NewsSomething I started doing recently was writing out principles instead of memories.
Essentially patterns the agents need to always think in. I also implemented a versioning system to the principles that need to be quoted in any comments which are there in the code. That way, when my principles evolve, so does the code.
I did package it up in a way that I can share it with friends [0]. System still evolving, but the last two-ish months that I've used it has served me really, really well, And it's been even better with the latest models.
I've had surprisingly good adherence from agents on this technique.
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I've done that too, called it Decisions. Was happy for a while, but then the agent started to make decisions longer and longer, putting "x, not y" in there. It started to write them without asking. Suddenly in code review it would say "violates D-236". Some rule it made up that I never approved. Then I made very clear that it should never touch those files. Still does. Now it's just context bloat.
I wrote a cli tool the agent is instructed to call. The tool collects answers to a few questions from the agent, and responds with a steering command. Sometimes it responds with more questions, and then shows the command.
The questions are designed specifically to identify the state the agent is in, in order to assign its steering. Changing this tool changes how the agent works. You just need to make the use of this tool a necessity so it does not forget to call it.
Unlike principles and memories, questions are more openended and tend sometimes to trigger the right mentality in the agent even before it gets to the policy itself. In my opinion agents get lost in local work losing the big picture, my questions jog the big picture back into attention.
1. call ssp tool, no arg, it just reads features from the repo, like most other tools -> ssp locates state and sends 4-5 questions
2. agent responds the first batch -> state is further narrowed down -> ssp sends a second batch of questions
3. agent responds again to the interview -> state gets finally pinned down -> agent gets the steering assigned
4. a log is created of this ssp session, and reflection on the log used to refine the questions and steerings in the ssp tool (name comes from State-Space Policy)
Timely comment! I'm learning harness design and was introduced to the concept of writing guiding principles. I look forward to trying it. (Great site. I agree with another comment. It does look commercial. Had I not been committed to looking for ways people define principles and rules, I might have skipped it. Glad I didn't.)
Do you have any resources that guided your work?
> Something I started doing recently was writing out principles instead of memories.
It seems you tried to reinvent instruction files. What do you think is the difference between your approach and standard tools such as instruction files, AGENTS.md, and even skills?
It sounds interesting, but this looks too much like a marketing website (huge text everywhere) and not enough like a documentation website, so it was hard for me to see how it might work.