Looks cool, but the readme is AI-generated. Absent throwing my own Fable/Astra at this and hoping it finds any bugs, how does one decide whether to trust AI-assisted software these days?
We used to say, use an open source product and inspect and compile it yourself.
Now endless frameworks and everything make that impossible. So the next step is probably to describe the thing you want to your own AI, in plain English, and have it code it itself.
Of course that will only work until we start using frameworks and everything…sigh.
You don’t. LLMs make vibe coding highly customized software that operates exactly as the user wants it super easy, which is awesome. However humans still haven’t caught up to the idea that it doesn’t need to go on GitHub because if it was useful to somebody, they’d have already vibe coded it themselves.
Because the hyper-tailored vibe coded browser front end that you like might be ever so slightly different from the hyper-tailored vibe coded browser front end that I want to use.
You could search for “small lightweight browser with add blocking and minimal footprint” and find a few, evaluate them, and choose. Or you could use AI to build a “small lightweight browser with add blocking and minimal footprint.” And tweak it to be exactly what you want in maybe the same amount of time.
The only way to know if software does what is intended is to use it. IMO that's the real value of OSS: software that has been executed many times by many people in many different environments, which overall increases the trust in the correctness of the system(s).
The only way to know if software does what is intended is to use it.
No, testing and code audits also work.
No amount of use of the software will tell you what else the software does beside what is intended (exfiltrate data, etc); testing and code audits both help with that.
For every highly customized piece of software there are a thousand people who don't know they need it. This is the whole concept of software in the first place.
How does one decide whether to trust any software? Not just the small things we do have the source code for, but big things that we don't have the source code for? I don't think this is a new problem.
Nothing is foolproof, but signals can go a long way. If an app's UI is poorly considered or comes across as careless for example there's a good chance that its other aspects are like that too.
After a significant number of iterations of testing, and improving it. When we wrote code by hand, something like changing an api endpoint or a simple front end change would still involve dozens of "write code" then "retest manually". This would not only get the work item done, but you would often encounter edge cases or other issues you hadn't thought of when writing/reading the ticket.
When AI can one shot the implementation and testing, it likely only gets 1 round of human testing if you are lucky. Then scale this to an entire AI generated project, the ratio of features to manually run tests is astronomical. In the old days this ratio was inverted, and the tool has been battle tested before reaching any users.
I don't think human vs agent inherently means that the app is built any more rigorously. Sure, it might be. But it's not guaranteed that a human app is more rigorously built than one guided by human, or vice versa. It depends, on the developer and how much they care, as it always has even before agents. I remember some shocking software from back in the day, Windows Vista being the top of that steaming pile. There's nothing new here.
For me, this is not gonna be a daily driver but more of the one off screenshot browser so that my screenshots look super minimal with no popular browser shell in them :)
Looks cool, but the readme is AI-generated. Absent throwing my own Fable/Astra at this and hoping it finds any bugs, how does one decide whether to trust AI-assisted software these days?
We used to say, use an open source product and inspect and compile it yourself.
Now endless frameworks and everything make that impossible. So the next step is probably to describe the thing you want to your own AI, in plain English, and have it code it itself.
Of course that will only work until we start using frameworks and everything…sigh.
FWIW, I checked and this app uses zero frameworks.
So it can be easily inspected, checked, verified.
You don’t. LLMs make vibe coding highly customized software that operates exactly as the user wants it super easy, which is awesome. However humans still haven’t caught up to the idea that it doesn’t need to go on GitHub because if it was useful to somebody, they’d have already vibe coded it themselves.
That's silly. Why waste time remaking what someone already built? What a bleak future
Because the hyper-tailored vibe coded browser front end that you like might be ever so slightly different from the hyper-tailored vibe coded browser front end that I want to use.
You could search for “small lightweight browser with add blocking and minimal footprint” and find a few, evaluate them, and choose. Or you could use AI to build a “small lightweight browser with add blocking and minimal footprint.” And tweak it to be exactly what you want in maybe the same amount of time.
The only way to know if software does what is intended is to use it. IMO that's the real value of OSS: software that has been executed many times by many people in many different environments, which overall increases the trust in the correctness of the system(s).
No, testing and code audits also work.
No amount of use of the software will tell you what else the software does beside what is intended (exfiltrate data, etc); testing and code audits both help with that.
For every highly customized piece of software there are a thousand people who don't know they need it. This is the whole concept of software in the first place.
How does one decide whether to trust any software? Not just the small things we do have the source code for, but big things that we don't have the source code for? I don't think this is a new problem.
Nothing is foolproof, but signals can go a long way. If an app's UI is poorly considered or comes across as careless for example there's a good chance that its other aspects are like that too.
Sure, but I would say this app's UI is very well considered.
After a significant number of iterations of testing, and improving it. When we wrote code by hand, something like changing an api endpoint or a simple front end change would still involve dozens of "write code" then "retest manually". This would not only get the work item done, but you would often encounter edge cases or other issues you hadn't thought of when writing/reading the ticket.
When AI can one shot the implementation and testing, it likely only gets 1 round of human testing if you are lucky. Then scale this to an entire AI generated project, the ratio of features to manually run tests is astronomical. In the old days this ratio was inverted, and the tool has been battle tested before reaching any users.
I don't think human vs agent inherently means that the app is built any more rigorously. Sure, it might be. But it's not guaranteed that a human app is more rigorously built than one guided by human, or vice versa. It depends, on the developer and how much they care, as it always has even before agents. I remember some shocking software from back in the day, Windows Vista being the top of that steaming pile. There's nothing new here.
I looked at the list of contributors, saw claude at the top, and just closed the tab.
What could go wrong?
For me, this is not gonna be a daily driver but more of the one off screenshot browser so that my screenshots look super minimal with no popular browser shell in them :)
https://zen-browser.app/ - if you would like a super minimal daily driver
Also a nice Webkit browser on macOS: https://duckduckgo.com/mac (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33246158)