[throwdbaaway]

As shared by Simon in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44176523, a better agent will prepend the line numbers as a workaround, e.g. Claude Code:

    54 def dicts_to_table_string(
    55     headings: List[str], dicts: List[Dict[str, str]]
    56 ) -> List[str]:
    57     max_lengths = [len(h) for h in headings]
    58 
    59     # Compute maximum length for each column
    60     for d in dicts:

[emp17344]

That’s not what he’s saying there. There’s a separate tool that adds line numbers before feeding the prompt into the LLM. It’s not the LLM doing it itself.

[svachalek]

The separate tool is called the agent.

[emp17344]

My understanding is that an agent is comprised of many tools that provide a harness for the LLM.

[throwdbaaway]

I just learnt the `nl -ba` trick from Codex. Claude Code is most likely doing the same.