Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by datpuz 392 days ago
AI agents can't even do very basic things without causing absolute mayhem. Do you really think it makes sense for your basic assumption to be that your user is dumber than a token generator?
5 comments

The article title stinks, I agree. Users are way better at figuring out APIs than AI agents right now.

The actual contents of the article are more about using an AI agent to playtest your docs. The premise is actually the opposite of the title: if an AI agent can figure out your API then your users probably can too.

> your basic assumption to be that your user is dumber than a token generator

No. You should assume your user is dumber than a brick - and not one of the smart or clever bricks, one of the really dumb ones.

YES 100%, and severely disabled too.
I legitimately wish developers of consumer apps would assume I am extremely stupid (and impatient).

I'll grant you your silly hamburger icon, I can memorize that one, if you grant me text icons for everything else, and low latency, and leave your ego and whatever you think you know about customers wanting to memorize 8 different icons for each app they use at the door.

I wish developers of consumer applications wouldn't assume anything about me, and would let me use my computer to my whims of the moment.
> Do you really think it makes sense for your basic assumption to be that your user is dumber than a token generator?

Have you seen the average user in action? I'm fairly sure that's true at least on average. Even putting huge red warnings like "This action is irreversible" for some things will lead to user reaching out to you saying they didn't see it.

The average user of a developer API is quite a bit smarter than the average user of, say, a mobile game
> AI agents can't even do very basic things without causing absolute mayhem.

Agreed.

> Do you really think it makes sense for your basic assumption to be that your user is dumber than a token generator?

Absolutely. Users will fuck up basic things. I wrote a simple inotify wrapper and half of the issues I got were that it didn't work on Windows and MacOS.