Yin Lai

So what does StarCraft (or SC) have to do with agentic coding? Why do people who played SC feel its transferrable to this new era of creating software with agents. Why is @tobi the CEO of Shopify keep bringing it up? Is it justification for the thousands of hours spent in their youth? To proclaim to the world, it's not a waste of time?! Having played (conservatively) over 2000+ games, ranked high Diamond, and at best, Master (Zerg of course, ok fine Master in 2v2), I'll try to break it down as a SC player, why we feel the future of orchestrating agents to build software has a familiar feel to it. SC is a RTS (real-time strategy) game where you gather resources, build bases and control your army (units) in real time and try to defeat an opponent who’s doing the same. Most 1v1 games last about 30-40 minutes. I would argue that it ignited the eSports industry with its million-dollar prize pool, celebrity-like players in South Korea, audience size, captivating commentators... Ok like cool story bro, how this is relevant to orchestrating coding agents? Two words.. Micro and Macro. And Meta. Ok fine, three words. I'll start with Micro since it's easier to explain. Micro (short for micro-management) means actions that directly control a specific unit.. Ya, u know that feeling when your manager controls every tiny decision you make at work, same thing 😄 In SC, good micro is extremely precise unit control: exact movement, exact timing and intent for that unit. This is important so you can use your unit's special characteristic to its maximum potential, e.g. blinking stalkers in n out of harms way (I hate you Protoss). And Macro, are actions that affect the overall flow of the game: the strategies, the management if u will. Some macro questions you constantly grapple (concurrently) with throughout the game is 1. is this a good time to get more resources so it will pay off later OR use the resources to build up the army to hurt the opponent for X reason 2. scouting and looking at what the opponent is building, and decide on your army composition to best counter theirs 3. .. the list goes on. You are constantly monitoring the map, accessing the current status, the progress, and making changes to the plan in real-time to improve your odds of winning. See the pattern yet? :D Good SC players know when to micro and when to macro. The best SC players do both blurringly at the same time (trust me, when I say blur, I meant it figuratively and literally). This is where APM (actions per minute) comes into the conversation. IMO, it is not the APM that matters as the takeaway, the point is you are constantly context switching between them. It's normal, in fact, demanded of you if you want to win. And lastly, Meta: the game above the game. Every SC patch can either buff or nerf certain units, actions, timings, etc. This can change the game drastically and players come up with new macro strategies and micro actions, and when the combinations eventually converge, it becomes the "meta" for that patch. This means SC players are used to changes, there is a flavor of the month, you either adapt or you lose. I hope I shined some light to why people are clamoring to this analogy and why it feels familiar. Personally I feel it boils down to 1. conditioned to context switch constantly 2. an understanding that you have to micro and macro in order to get the best results 3. patch happens, learn the buffs n nerfs, you adapt or you lose. If you got this far, and if you are also a gamer but just not a SC fanatic, you are probably thinking, hey this is not that different from the games I am playing. I am sure Factorio fans will be shouting from their rooftops too. Maybe it's my cognitive biasness speaking, but there is a feeling of "gaming" in this new world of building software. Ok this is long enough, but lastly I do want to shout out "IT WAS NOT A WASTE OF TIME!"

Does this mean @bot eventually will have dynamic interactive pages/app back into @bot? 🤔🤔

.. the said Live Pages bot x.ai/bot/ignLvLJlOxOIenZPr-t…

diningcreditmap.com/ is live. It is built to search for Chase Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables (for now) across the US. Scratch my own itch :D Fully implemented by a (team of) @bot , from gathering of data, to visual design, to deployment. I wanted to deploy something that is simple enough but not too simple, to experience this e2e. Pretty pleased with the result, and more to share on the process. And before I go to bed, I dropped this to the team .. "improve SEO, fix bugs, ship 1–2 landing pages, report in the morning" So let's see what I get in the morning :D

With all that chatter on AI and games, (good) games to me is about the IP, the story, the world building, the culture. So yes anyone can possibly create a (vibe) game or mod a game but it will lack “soul”, the art, the connection, without any form of human contribution. This genre of art (game is art to me) like any meaningful medium, is more than the “code” behind it.

I have entered too many @Walmart @Pokemon collectible drawings that I care to admit. And don’t get me started on @amazon price gorging and giving me the privilege of entering a drawing to pay SCALPER prices.. 🤦‍♂️ walmart.com/shop/collectible…

Looks like I need to restart my @bot computer 😱 memory is low, 1 gig mem free.. Seems to b the root cause of skipped tasks Browser automation helpers seem to be the memory leak? Maybe? Unless @bot is hallucinating :D @mattyp I don’t like to tag folks I don’t personally know but bringing to u guys attention or maybe I’m using @bot wrong :D

Agreed in general, the trend is obvious in the @X bubble. I feel its more accurate to say software is being commoditized and eventually, more accessible to everyone. And being a commodity is not a bad thing. We enjoy so many comforts of modern life from things being commoditized. I hope everyone gets to use software tailored to them, and improves their lives in every way possible. That will be amazing. And maybe, the phrase "the user is stupid or user error" will be a thing of the past :) Aside: hearing that is a pet peeve of mine. No, the user is not stupid. Its the software that's stupid, not adapting to the user.

💯agents are pretty much random walking in the solution space, without defining the constraints of what is "done" and what is "good quality", then it can keep on walking :D tl;dr all about the constraints, all about saying "no"