Show HN: Sphinx – A hook that quizzes you on your AI's code before shipping(sphinx-six-theta.vercel.app)
90 pointsby critiquebrowser3 hours ago21 comments
  • theParadox4239 minutes ago
    I certainly feel like certain AI coding practices I have leave me with nothing learned in a frustrating way. Sometimes the most effective way to getting what I want is just describing a goal really clearly, and then bashing the AI until it gets there. That bashing process can take a lot of energy and yet I don’t gain useful skills or a “better way” that I would if I was still coding. I generate more training data for BigAI corp, but that’s a slow return cycle.

    Not sure if this is the right solution, but I would like to learn/understand/grow more as I pursue reckless efficiency.

  • freshnode2 hours ago
    Have you ever heard the idiom "ambulance at the bottom of the cliff"?
  • chacha-bong39 minutes ago
    Lol I built this and immediately got frustrated with it and stopped using it. I think I don't like being questioned by someone who I expect to work like magic.
  • nkmnz2 hours ago
    It’s ironic that all negative comments on here are dismissive because “slop’s baaaaad”. Yes, slop is bad. Carelessness is bad. Lack of understanding is bad. It always has been. Code has been copied from stackoverflow. Built-in methods or std libraries have been used in a wrong way. Edge cases haven’t been covered. Rate-limiting and other hardening tasks haven’t been taken care of until the system broke. The code wasn’t DRY.

    Now, people are building tools that not only hide the solutions to these problems in some obscure coding tool, markdown file, or agent harness, but they build gates that help developers to elevate themselves from the darkness of not knowing better. The number of developers roughly doubles every ~3 years, so at any given time, half of the people building software have less than 3 years of experience. Most of them didn’t even study CS before starting their careers. Tools like this will be the new warning voice that told people like us 5 to 10 years ago to never copy code from stackoverflow that you didn’t understand. It’s great.

    • xiaoyu200625 minutes ago
      The problem with AI SE is that AI writes un-architecture-ed code. The problem #2 is that a lot of people suck even more....
  • sshah032 hours ago
    I considered doing this with an open source app I have that let's you get a visual summary on a PR + get quizzed on it, but ultimately decided it's better to keep it an optional thing for people that want to understand AI PRs rather than force it as a gate, the volume is slowly becoming too high for even that. I agree with the sentiment behind this though as I felt this was needed as well.
  • thomask1995an hour ago
    I think this would be killer for OSS maintainers.
    • 23 minutes ago
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  • jamienk2 hours ago
    I can kinda understand the motivation here: you push a bunch of slop (or is it deep, genius code?) but you have a kind of nagging suspicion that you should get to know it more familiarly, like back in the good old days a few months back when you sort of understood what was going on. I... don't... think this is going to work...? Remember Confirmation Fatigue? Soon we will have agents that interact with Sphinx for us.
  • sailorganymedean hour ago
    Honestly I love to see people working on this problem ! I actually built a similar project myself (https://github.com/bhurghundii/vibecheck.dev) except it prevents you from merging on the PR level. I’d love to get in touch to talk about it sometimes.

    Edit: I see there are a lot of people questioning the value of this. The thing is that there are teams where people are just pumping tons of AI code without understanding their work (literally take the ticket and dump it) and shipping it. culture change is the right answer but v hard but this at least slows things down and is quick to implement

    • zapkyeskrill21 minutes ago
      Does it check if the answers are AI generated?
  • cjimeshan hour ago
    Its the right problem statement, but we normally let the code review process take care of this.
  • compounding-erran hour ago
    This is cute and novel, but practically useless. For those who use AI efficiently and effectively, this is useless. For those who don't, this becomes friction they don't want. Who really needs this?
  • gandhiandy692 hours ago
    We went from micromanaging code to micromanaging tools and markdowns.
  • man_lukean hour ago
    So who is the master of whom?
  • hypfer2 hours ago
    I mean I see the idea, but at least I use LLMs for code generation in two distinct ways.

    The first is when I care about the code. That's when I actually read what it produces and force it to use my mental model of how things should be.

    The second is when I just need a solution that sorta fits the requirements provided. Then I don't read the code because I really do not care.

    So this hook would either ask me things I know, or it would ask me things I do not care about.

    But I guess this is very workflow-dependent.

    • mikepurvisan hour ago
      I think this tool is meant to be something you impose on your colleagues who treat all code like the second bucket.
  • ericand39 minutes ago
    Humans are now test subjects in the ci pipeline
  • jan_m_savagean hour ago
    a tool written by AI (mostly) to check code written by (possibly other) AI.

    however, it still feels like a lot of work. what if AI hallucinates during the check?

  • altmanaltman2 hours ago
    People who care about the problem will definitely not be using this as a method to "understand" their code. People who don't care about this problem will continue to not care.

    So, who is this for?

  • linkdd2 hours ago
    https://www.sphinx-doc.org/

    Your slop generator should check if a name exist before claiming it.

  • totallykvothe3 hours ago
    "Outsource your thinking"

    I'm sorry, what?

    • altmanaltman2 hours ago
      I am trying to outsource my depression but the market is rough
    • freshnode2 hours ago
      Yeah this is cooked
    • tripleee3 hours ago
      we're just leaning into it now
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  • georgestonesan hour ago
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