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Top stories from https://news.ycombinator.com (with 100+ score) Contribute to the development here: https://github.com/phil-r/hackernewsbot Also check https://t.me/designer_news Contacts: @philr
12-factor Agents: Patterns of reliable LLM applications (Score: 152+ in 23 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sQJ9
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sQJ9
I've been building AI agents for a while. After trying every framework out there and talking to many founders building with AI, I've noticed something interesting: most "AI Agents" that make it to production aren't actually that agentic. The best ones are mostly just well-engineered software with LLMs sprinkled in at key points.
So I set out to document what I've learned about building production-grade AI systems: https://github.com/humanlayer/12-factor-agents. It's a set of principles for building LLM-powered software that's reliable enough to put in the hands of production customers.
In the spirit of Heroku's 12 Factor Apps (https://12factor.net/), these principles focus on the engineering practices that make LLM applications more reliable, scalable, and maintainable. Even as models get exponentially more powerful, these core techniques will remain valuable.
I've seen many SaaS builders try to pivot towards AI by building greenfield new projects on agent frameworks, only to find that they couldn't get things past the 70-80% reliability bar with out-of-the-box tools. The ones that did succeed tended to take small, modular concepts from agent building, and incorporate them into their existing product, rather than starting from scratch.
The full guide goes into detail on each principle with examples and patterns to follow. I've seen these practices work well in production systems handling real user traffic.
I'm sharing this as a starting point—the field is moving quickly so these principles will evolve. I welcome your feedback and contributions to help figure out what "production grade" means for AI systems!
OpenAI Codex CLI: Lightweight coding agent that runs in your terminal (🔥 Score: 155+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sTwt
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sTwt
Darwin's children drew all over the "On the Origin of Species" manuscript (2014) (Score: 151+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sSSX
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sSSX
OpenAI o3 and o4-mini (🔥 Score: 161+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sTqZ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sTqZ
Attention K-Mart Shoppers (🔥 Score: 159+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sT6U
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sT6U
CVE Foundation Launched to Secure the Future of the CVE Program (🔥 Score: 150+ in 53 minutes)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sSng
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sSng
Anonymous Release 10TB Leaked Data Exposing Kremlin Assets, Russian Businesses (🔥 Score: 158+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sSbe
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sSbe
A flowing WebGL gradient, deconstructed (❄️ Score: 150+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sDfC
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sDfC
JSX over the Wire (Score: 151+ in 14 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sPgb
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sPgb
OpenAI is building a social network? (Score: 150+ in 13 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sPjF
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sPjF
Canadian math prodigy allegedly stole $65M in crypto (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sK7C
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sK7C
Show HN: Unsure Calculator – back-of-a-napkin probabilistic calculator (Score: 168+ in 14 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sMRK
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sMRK
Clolog (Score: 153+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sPyW
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sPyW
Show HN: Resurrecting Infocom's Unix Z-Machine with Cosmopolitan (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sHUF
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sHUF
I recently brought Infocom's original UNIX z-machine source code back to life on modern systems. The modified source code, instructions on usage, a build of the z-machine, and examples of embedded game executables are available.
There is also a detailed write-up about the state of the original source code, the porting process, and the invaluable role Justine Tunney's Cosmpolitan project played in bringing the Zork trilogy (and more) to Windows/Mac/Linux/bsd for arm/x86 machines over the course of a lazy Sunday.
Generate videos in Gemini and Whisk with Veo 2 (🔥 Score: 152+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sPys
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sPys
Reproducing Hacker News writing style fingerprinting (Score: 150+ in 7 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sSKJ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sSKJ
JetBrains IDEs Go AI: Coding Agent, Smarter Assistance, Free Tier (Score: 150+ in 7 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sSqV
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sSqV
Kermit: A typeface for kids (Score: 150+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sSwJ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sSwJ
TLS certificate lifetimes will officially reduce to 47 days (Score: 154+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sP2e
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sP2e
European Union Vulnerability Database (EUVD) (🔥 Score: 150+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sSdF
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sSdF
Markov Chain Monte Carlo Without All the Bullshit (2015) (Score: 151+ in 10 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sRat
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sRat
What the hell is a target triple? (Score: 150+ in 17 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sPVe
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sPVe
How dairy robots are changing work for cows and farmers (Score: 151+ in 9 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sQGE
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sQGE
Hacktical C: practical hacker's guide to the C programming language (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sJw7
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sJw7
CVE program faces swift end after DHS fails to renew contract (🔥 Score: 156+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sR9Z
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sR9Z
Hacking the Postgres wire protocol (Score: 151+ in 10 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sNPY
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sNPY
Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes mass user cancellations (Score: 169+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sKxN
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sKxN
Earlier today Cursor, the magical AI-powered IDE started kicking users off when they logged in from multiple machines.
Like,you’d be working on your desktop, switch to your laptop, and all of a sudden you're forcibly logged out. No warning, no notification, just gone.
Naturally, people thought this was a new policy.
So they asked support.
And here’s where it gets batshit: Cursor has a support email, so users emailed them to find out. The support peson told everyone this was “expected behavior” under their new login policy.
One problem. There was no support team, it was an AI designed to 'mimic human responses'
That answer, totally made up by the bot, spread like wildfire.
Users assumed it was real (because why wouldn’t they? It's their own support system lol), and within hours the community was in revolt. Dozens of users publicly canceled their subscriptions, myself included. Multi-device workflows are table stakes for devs, and if you're going to pull something that disruptive, you'd at least expect a changelog entry or smth.
Nope.
And just as people started comparing notes and figuring out that the story didn’t quite add up… the main Reddit thread got locked. Then deleted. Like, no public resolution, no real response, just silence.
To be clear: this wasn’t an actual policy change, just a backend session bug, and a hallucinated excuse from a support bot that somehow did more damage than the bug itself.
But at that point, it didn’t matter. People were already gone.
Honestly one of the most surreal product screwups I’ve seen in a while. Not because they made a mistake, but because the AI support system invented a lie, and nobody caught it until the userbase imploded.
Chroma, Ubisoft's internal tool used to simulate color-blindness, open sourced (Score: 150+ in 8 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sNrT
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sNrT
How the U.S. became a science superpower (Score: 164+ in 7 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sNwJ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sNwJ
It's easier than ever to de-censor videos (🔥 Score: 152+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6sPAp
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6sPAp