260 pointsby staticvar13 hours ago36 comments
  • bivlked17 minutes ago
    One thing i wish more CLI tools did: non-interactive mode. i build bash tools that have interactive prompts for first-time users, but everything the prompt asks also has a CLI flag. makes scripting and CI/CD so much simpler - you can test the exact same code path without mock stdin.
  • maCDzP7 hours ago
    I dunno. I just let Claude build a python script that calls Claude code though subprocess.run().

    I recently made a sort of Autoresearch with that approach. The script calls Claude Code to create a hyphotesis, then code based on that, evaluate- rinse and repeat. I am still trying to figure out if I am actually on to something or just burning tokens. Jury is still out.

    • staticvar6 hours ago
      That's totally a valid approach! Especially for a very specific workflow you are looking for. For the cases I cover in cook, I had done those patterns enough times that I figured it was time to build a tool/skill for Claude so that I didn't have to explain it as much and also not have to wait for claude to code it up, and possibly interpret me wrong. Now ask claude to "/cook race 3 of foo plan with review, pick the best" and it knows what to do.
    • dgb235 hours ago
      I think you're onto something, but I would add that it's sort of like a live REPL that has an integrated agent but with extra steps.

      I haven't used python much but I wouldn't be surprised if you can set up a sufficiently powerful REPL with it. I know Julia can do it very well and it's a very similar language. Obviously there are powerful Lisps that do this very well as well.

    • scrappyjoe4 hours ago
      I went quite far down this approach last year; you're welcome to take what you want from my repo -

      https://github.com/riazarbi/way

      • staticvar3 hours ago
        Hey scrappyejoe, way looks pretty cool. The goal of cook is to be unopinionated, exposing primitives for the shape of workflows as opposed to defining what happens in those workflows. Cook is something that way could use under the hood.
        • scrappyjoe2 hours ago
          Cool, I'm already digging into your stuff, thanks for posting it.
    • danr43 hours ago
      that's rlm
    • jamiemallers6 hours ago
      [dead]
  • vadepaysa11 hours ago
    I did a Show HN[0] a few days back with my CLI agent called cook[1] and for a moment I was ecstatic my tool made it to the front page. haha.

    [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47262711 [1]: https://getcook.dev

    • staticvar6 hours ago
      Oh haha, small world! Maybe I should add cook (agent) support for cook (orchestration) and then we'll have cook manage subagents via cook!
    • 5 hours ago
      undefined
    • catlifeonmars10 hours ago
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  • 4b11b4an hour ago
    I really like the idea but my gut says it would be hard to trust. In the last example... "cleanest result" is not a great definition of done (that's only sort of a nitpick).

    In general, I feel that removing the decision process (or relegating it to a language model) is not a good idea.

    • staticvar38 minutes ago
      Yes, plz don't trust it, always review! The idea is that one prompt in Claude Code got you 80% of the way there, but with some automated review/iterate, it gets you 95% of the way there. It's not worth your time to review the 80% done version when you could be reviewing the 95% done version.
      • staticvar26 minutes ago
        Also on that point about keeping humans in the loop on decisions, I've found following the Research-Plan-Implement process where we humans review at each of those stages, to be really helpful. This doc describes the skill I use with my agents so they keep me looped in: https://gist.github.com/rjcorwin/296885590dc8a4ebc64e70879dc...

        Then I use cook to iterate and explore during the AI led parts.

  • rc_kas13 hours ago
    Can someone explain what this is to my n00b brain. I don't get what claude-cli is missing that this adds in?
    • beshrkayali12 hours ago
      IMO the raw Claude CLI is great for one-off interactive sessions, but as soon as you want repeatable multi-step workflows you’re either copy-pasting prompts forever or hacking your own solution manually. That’s exactly the gap these tools fill.

      My take on a solution for this is https://ossature.dev — .smd spec markdown files + ossature audit / build that gives you DAG orchestration, SHA-traced increments, and tiny focused contexts.

      • eloisius11 hours ago
        Isn’t a repeatable, multi-step workflow exactly what a script or Makefile does?
        • beshrkayali8 hours ago
          Yeah bash scripts start clean but the sprawl kicks in quick as the workflow and project becomes more complex. Prompts get copied, deps turn manual, and maintenance of your workflow itself becomes the chore.

          Ossature swaps that for structured SMDs and optional AMDs. Multiple specs build a clean DAG that drops into an editable plan.toml so everything stays traceable without the mess.

          Feel free to check the example projects on https://github.com/ossature/ossature-examples

          • wiseowise8 hours ago
            > Yeah bash scripts start clean but the sprawl kicks in quick as the workflow and project becomes more complex.

            Then just use Python.

        • hrmtst938373 hours ago
          [dead]
      • isodev11 hours ago
        I use bash scripts. Both Claude and Vibe support all kinds of arguments if you need a prompt to “become a task”. Bash is also deterministic and easy to read and debug.
        • Yiin9 hours ago
          can you elaborate on "easy to read and debug", because in my experience it is anything but
          • isodev9 hours ago
            Compared to a random tool someone vibecoded?
            • petcat6 hours ago
              what about a random bash script that somebody vibe coded
      • je4210 hours ago
        Had a quick look. Stumbled upon the markdown format smd.

        Was wondering if using front-matter instead of a "custom" encoding for parseble data was considered?

    • niobe2 hours ago
      This is for co-ordinating instances of Claude or Codex, not something you do inside each instance.
    • sghiassy11 hours ago
      As a prerequisite you’d want to understand the purpose of Ralph Wiggum Loops

      But in general this is meta to the CLI agent.

      So if you were to use the CLI to perform a review of some code. This tool would allow you to loop the output of the code review 5 times onto itself.

      • exolab9 hours ago
        > So if you were to use the CLI to perform a review of some code. This tool would allow you to loop the output of the code review 5 times onto itself.

        Claude already does that if you ask nicely.

        • staticvar5 hours ago
          To a certain extent, yes it does! For my cases, I'm often running 3 parallel implementations that get 10 to 20 iterations deep, and then Claude has to sort out the pros and cons of the options and also take the best bits of each. Easy to hit the context window with Claude just running those on its own, so giving `/cook` to Claude, it can offload a bit more via cook and stay higher level.
    • transitorykris12 hours ago
      Maybe not adds in, but wraps around. You could accomplish much of this with fairly simply bash scripts.
      • esperent12 hours ago
        You could accomplish all of it with claude -p (headless mode).
        • transitorykris12 hours ago
          Admittedly I might be missing a flag or two with claude, but how are multiple loops and comparisons of solutions done with just headless mode?
          • hombre_fatal3 hours ago
            You have building blocks like "--resume <sessionId>" and "--fork-session".

            For example, one thing you can do is curate the context of an "immutable" conversation and then reuse it as a base context for other prompts.

          • loveparade8 hours ago
            It's just a prompt.
          • esperent11 hours ago
            Via skills.
        • brcmthrowaway12 hours ago
          Indeed.

          Where are people finding time for these sort of projects.

          • injidup7 hours ago
            They bootstrap a workflow with a prompt then build an orchestrator off that then prompt it to be converted to an opencode plugin and then prompt a website to be generated advertising it and then prompt a tool that reviews hacker news feedback and automatically incorporates feedback into next generation of the tool. At the end of the week they go to their manager and complain they are out of tokens for the actual job they are being paid for.
            • staticvar5 hours ago
              Haha, not far off. Only difference is I'm not spending my tokens at work. I use this on a side project video game that I'm developing.
  • lazybean2 hours ago
    The composability here is really elegant — review v3 pick as a pipeline that "just works" is the kind of DX that makes agent orchestration feel tractable rather than overwhelming.
    • theowaway213456an hour ago
      em dash + "x rather than y" sentence construction is setting off my brain's LLM detector here.
  • smarx0077 hours ago
    A noob question: is there a tool that automatically instructs Claude Code to "continue" when the token quota is reset after 5h? I am interested in that more than some rather fancy loops.
    • staticvar6 hours ago
      This is a fantastic idea and I'll add it!
      • staticvar2 hours ago
        Done! @let-it-cook/cli@5.1.0 is out. This works when running loops, but even when you just run `cook "do something"` which itself is not a loop, just a call to your agent.
  • sbinnee12 hours ago
    There is a skill installation option. The skill markdown has 180 lines [1].

    My take? I like it. It's concise enough for me to try it out. And I love the webpage.

    [1] https://github.com/rjcorwin/cook/blob/main/no-code/SKILL.md

    • oefrha10 hours ago
      Given that subagents have different thinking/effort behavior from the main agent and very limited control on that front (I’m not completely sure about this but see https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/14321 and I’ve also noticed very different behavior when the same prompt is used in the main agent or passed to a subagent), I’m not sure this skill will be the same.
    • staticvar6 hours ago
      Nice! You found the no-code option that just has the outer agent perform the duties of the workflows that cook describes. It's a bit experimental (the whole thing is really), but it would be nice to get some folks impressions of whether this works well as a pure skill or if y'all find the deterministic nature of the cook script improves reliability.
  • jemmyw10 hours ago
    Looks pretty nice. I think a lot of devs have been making similar tools, I've written my own thing that does a work review loop. I like the interface you've made. I'll probably give it a go, but I'm also reluctant to relinquish the control I have when it's my own code doing orchestration.
    • staticvar6 hours ago
      Oh ya, lots of tools out there orchestrating these days, and just writing a script is a valid option. On the control bit, note that if you `cook init` in your project, it generates a COOK.md that lets you template the meta prompt. Claude could probably take a look at how you've been doing it and port it over to COOK.md so it's similar to the prompts you've been using.
  • niobe2 hours ago
    Very nice. However, I do like to read every agent summary before letting them move on. I'm not sure I'd be able to apply this level of automation to many tasks.
  • yohamta3 hours ago
    AI agent orchestration is future. That's where workflow engine shines. I'm doing the same thing using Dagu.sh and I don't use terminal so much anymore.
    • staticvaran hour ago
      Dagu.sh, using yaml files to describe the flow, looks like a nice step up in sophistication from the cook approach that's just trying to make it easy to issue directly from the command line.

      My 2 cents on the dagu.sh website, it should lead with the demo section (https://docs.dagu.sh/overview/#demo). That helped me connect what it was and how I might use it.

  • kasperstorgaard9 hours ago
    How heavy on tokens is this? I don't use these style workflows and am fairly new to claude code, so I assume it's better than 3x tokens when doing 3 passes?
    • hasperdi8 hours ago
      It's not 3x because of 3 runs; can be more token, can be less.

      The way of thinking it is, telling Claude to tackle the problem 3 times, each time it may or may not use different approach, fix or improve on things it did previously.

      • staticvar3 hours ago
        That's right. However if you use the v3 operator, you get three parallel versions being built, and then combined depending on which resolver you use (pick, merge, and compare).
  • 9 hours ago
    undefined
  • uxmaniik523 hours ago
    the token costs are real. we switched to smaller models for 80% of tasks and barely noticed
    • staticvar3 hours ago
      Good to hear that you're having luck with small models. Note that cook exposes a --model param, also workflow specific model params (--model-work, --model-review, etc) so you can have a smaller model implementing a plan and a larger model reviewing the implementation.
  • gethwhunter343 hours ago
    costs will come down. they always do. build for the future not today's pricing
  • NetOpWibby10 hours ago
    Dull colors and a display font used for copy makes this website incredibly unpleasant to read.
  • genthree7 hours ago
    Semi-on-topic: Anyone know a way to get a good alternative UI on top of Cursor?

    My company’s tracking how much we use the damn thing (its autocomplete is literally less-useful than standard VSCode, only time it’s consistently good is when it sees me do one thing to a line, sees repeated similar lines after that, and suggests I do it on the next one too, one at a time, and that’s only useful to me because I’ve never actually bothered to learn how to properly use a text editor) so I can’t avoid it, but even on codebases in the hundreds of lines it’s OOM killing things on my 16GB laptop (it, plus goddamn Teams, were eating half the memory by themselves the other day… with Cursor sitting at almost 6GB alone. JFC. On the plus side if this is what software from a company that should be full of experts at using these things looks like, guess our jobs are safe from them… though not from recession and ZIRP unwinding)

  • 9 hours ago
    undefined
  • khazhoux11 hours ago
    How does this handle when Claude needs user input? To choose an option, grant tool permission, clarify questions…
    • staticvar6 hours ago
      On asking for user input during implementation, it's best to use this when you have a plan sufficiently written up that you can point it to. To prep that plan, you can also use cook to iterate on the plan for you. Having Claude Code use `/cook` directly is nice because it watches what the subagents are up to and can speak for them, although Claude can't speak to the subagents running through cook.

      On permissions, by default, when it runs instances of Claude they will inherit your Claude's permissions. So if there is no permission to `rm -rf /`, Claude will just get denied and move on. Using the docker sandbox option (see bottom of page), then it runs inside that `--dangerously-skip-permissions` and get more stuff done (my preferred option). The hard part about that is it means you need to set up the Docker sandbox with any dependencies your project needs. Run `cook init` and edit the `.cook/Dockerfile` to set those up.

      • trumbitta25 hours ago
        Re: So if there is no permission to `rm -rf /`, Claude will just get denied and move on.

        Until it doesn't and it finds a way to work around the restriction. Lots of stories around about that.

        • staticvar3 hours ago
          I would be interested in which stories you are thinking of. Stories of Claude breaking out of the restrictions set in its sandbox or stories of people not configuring Claude's sandbox correctly?
    • neilbb7 hours ago
      If you impl this as a backend and connect to Telegram bots, agents can just do `$ ask "Should I do this?"` for agent→human and `$ alert "this thing blocked me"` for coder→planner. That's what I'm actually doing — I have 1 manager + 3 designers + 1 researcher + 2 debugger + 1 communicator + any number of temporal coders/reviewers in my setup, all connected to taskwarrior for task-driven-dev
    • facorreia10 hours ago
      It seems to be in the spirit of automated vibecoding. I assume it skips all permission checks.
      • staticvar6 hours ago
        By default it's locked down to the permissions you have granted in your Claude config. If you use the docker sandbox mode, then you can really let it fly as it can issue more commands in a safer environment.
  • nurettin11 hours ago
    claude> "We want to add a title section that shows what page we are currently on, use cook to manage the development process"

    * coolers whirring, gpus on fire, tokens flying, investors happy, developer goes for 6th break of the day

  • viditraj6 hours ago
    can we integrate it with Devin too? seems like it doable
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  • rafaamaral13 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • cheriot11 hours ago
      If this was human written sarcasm, bravo.
    • Yiin13 hours ago
      just use 200usd plan, I forgot what limits are.
      • tmatsuzaki11 hours ago
        Do you hit the limit pretty quickly on the Pro plan these days? Im thinking about subscribing for video editing, but Im still not sure.
      • croes12 hours ago
        You'll remember it soon
        • weird-eye-issue12 hours ago
          Do you often hit the limits recently on the $200 plan? I don't even come close
          • dionian12 hours ago
            i used to, its much better now. opus 4.6 has been great on tokens
            • weird-eye-issue12 hours ago
              Yes, quite a while back, they used to charge a lot more for the Opus tokens
        • anonzzzies11 hours ago
          Have not hit limits for 2 months now and I use it a lot. I have 200 max as well.
  • xiaolu62711 hours ago
    [flagged]