[latchkey]

Of course everyone on HN is focused on the climbing / beta / technique aspect of this.

It is ok that it is a solution looking for a problem. There is obviously no 'business' or 'product' here. It isn't like there is a payment link on the page or anything.

What I'd like to see the comments focus on is that we should just be happy that someone is making the effort to learn more about AI and building tooling around it. Experimentation is king.

They've put their work out into the open (soon to be open sourced even!), not to be criticized over whether it is useful or not, but just that they created something that could spawn other interesting things that solve real world use cases.

Huge kudos for doing this work.

[iosguyryan]

If I could “yes and” this… route setters could benefit from this tool to simulate layouts against a number of body types and mobility.

[latchkey]

I spent 8 years lead climbing at Mission Cliffs in SF 2-5 days a week (5.12 range was my top). They had excellent route setters there that I spent many hours just watching between climbs.

The route setters would effectively do what you're saying, while they were setting the route. They knew exactly what would work and what wouldn't. The holds/wall are really what dictate things and if you're not able to climb it... it isn't really their problem.

As far as I can tell, while this project is cool, it really has nothing to do with climbing or route setting. It is an AI project where the developer just kind of made up some task and had AI follow it.

[ungreased0675]

Yes, and help setters create more interesting routes. Maybe a layout with multiple ways to solve it, but all the approximate same difficulty?

[iosguyryan]

really good example of the culture of climbing too!