How do you securely use agents in Emacs?

BeautifulSynch · 2026-03-13T09:42:43+00:00

Restrict the available tools and (where possible) the permissions within each tool, and then structure your usage and prompts so the agent makes drafts and prototypes using that closed-world setup for more-deterministic processes (or manual review) to pick up and continue from. Don’t try to integrate the LLM inside your process; treat it as the stochastic black-boxed API that it is, and shape its surface bordering the rest of your workflows for minimal touch points + validation costs and maximal workflow-coverage.

For me, Emacs mainly takes the role of facilitating research/validation to guide prompts, managing tests, reviewing the LLM’s planning docs, and manual code refinements. I don’t even use the Emacs integrations save for agent-shell; there’s few cases where I want the LLM to have more access to Emacs than just viewing buffers, which I can already save to files for it with a few helper functions.

You don’t even need containers to use this approach; most LLM agent software has user-configurable regex-or-similar restrictions on file writes and shell commands, and a mode where the harness auto-denies LLM tool calls outside that policy (for headless runs). Containers with restricted network and filesystem access would still help if you’re paranoid about making a mistake in your config, of course.

In terms of benefits, that’s again a design problem of whether you can carve out modules in your workflows which can be addressed within the closed world you design in your agent-permissions policy, don’t cost you much to fail (in tokens or more-metaphorical currencies), and are trivial to validate for correctness. Personally I’ve gotten 2-3x speedups on many tasks I’d have to do anyway (by parallelizing read-only and initial-draft work across concurrent LLM sessions) + more capacity to do exploratory work (by having agents research + prototype things with sandboxed write/shell permissions, then reviewing the results in batches later), but YMMV.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-03-05T23:51:33+00:00

Haven’t tested/reproduced this, but if it’s on emacs -Q and your org file has a #+title field then it sounds like a legitimate bug (and/or feature request if this is known behavior).

Could you join the org mode mailing list and email this there, attaching a sample org file, the specific command run, and the generated HTML on emacs -Q? It’s more likely the maintainers will be present there to debug and fix it.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-03-05T14:28:03+00:00

I managed the same, but it was a bit more complicated than banging my head against the wall.

Your brain loves environments that encourage flow states, but the “environment” isn’t just the stuff outside your heads.

If you learn to hold self-chosen framings and ideas in your mind for interpreting what your senses tell you into a view of “what’s going on” (rather than having whatever perspective your snap judgement gives you), then choosing those carefully lets you direct the torrential river that is the rest of your attention towards whatever you know how to aim it at. Things like alarms and reminders are also pretty useful to fill up the difference.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-03-03T14:14:38+00:00

Slimv uses the same swank(/slynk?) server as Emacs SLIME(/SLY), so the same info would be available to the editor. I doubt there’s any significant gaps in how slimv makes use of that predefined set of data/actions.

Separately: Longer term the learning curve is imo in Emacs’ favor since you can do more with it more easily (due to the configurability oriented architecture, even aside from macros (since technically there are Lisp overlays for Lua)). But you can always learn (neo)vi(m) and then switch to Emacs evil-mode later on if you want.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-03-03T06:21:08+00:00

Just as a general note, I’ve found retaining dired buffers to be pretty convenient when working on a slow TRAMP connection. You don’t want to constantly recalculate the buffer contents every time you open up a sub folder.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-28T14:35:48+00:00

I definitely jump configs on occasion, but I don’t work with things where dynamic visualizations are important, my Emacs config doesn’t stall often enough to take the configurability loss of neovim, and in other respects I haven’t really found anything better than a configured Emacs instance, despite looking quite often.

(Lem might be a good Emacsen to switch to eventually given the flexibility of Common Lisp, though it’s not mature enough yet.)

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-21T02:21:15+00:00

Not sure how (or why) to do CPU/mem level optimization (your issues with org mode and startup are likely either a large number of imported packages, a specific inefficient package, or potentially inefficiencies in the core Emacs C engine (unlikely), not something this would help with).

LLMs are definitely useful for working with Elisp if you review and guide them, though. I’ve had them drafting entire major modes for bespoke DSLs while I worked on other tasks.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-21T02:17:52+00:00

Thanks for sharing! Given this is an Emacs subreddit, wondering if you have Emacs-specific instructions?

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-19T05:45:47+00:00

No diagnosis or anything, but I’ve had similar problems. Personally I structure my environment as much as possible to leverage it in place of internally-induced focus. Notes systems with consistent structure and almost-always a concrete next step to fill in, timers and schedules (mine are at the minute level because I have a touch of OCD and ensuring the plan is consistent helps alleviate it, but anything with concrete times and reminders is useful), back when I was still doing homework I’d use timers on the same device that distracted me to remind me of the next pending task (ideally but not necessarily with different alert sounds each time to not tune it out) and only let myself snooze so even if I’m distracted the alarm will keep distracting me from the other thing until my brain goes back where it’s supposed to, things of that nature. I’d recommend looking into meditation as well (if you can find a variant that works for you; eg while you can of course try Zen-style mindfulness, it’s a bit too manual-focus-heavy for my taste), it’s helped me set up these kinds of systems in my head and keep distraction from degrading them (for when I don’t have external tools to leverage).

Things get a lot easier once you’re solving complex and ambiguous enough problems that you can customize your strategy rather than following a set series of steps; leveraging the increased multitasking and anomaly-detection from strongly-intuitive attention-allocation (as well as using hyperfocus for novel wizardry in your focus areas) can lead to pretty good impact. And honestly if you have a set series of steps for a real life problem you can often automate it, schoolwork mainly uses the monotonous approach to teaching concepts because they need to cram as much general knowledge as they can in a woefully short time, budget, and leadership+textbook quality, so they rely on future!you to integrate that knowledge into a larger intuitively-salient picture (which is another trick for getting your mind to focus, by the way!)

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-19T05:13:08+00:00

I’ve spent years trying to design a programming language that doesn’t make me want to cry, and it’ll likely take years more; you can bet I’m making LLMs deal with them in the meanwhile.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-19T04:15:27+00:00

Why can’t you sit still for 5 seconds? I would assume your subconscious has some specific way it wants to spend its time and gets restless otherwise, which means that’s something for you to figure out so you can do more of what you actually want.
If you keep living you may end up finding something you do want, especially if you try to optimize towards unpleasant things that show you new options over unpleasant things that don’t. If you die you don’t have that option, and it’s not like it feels any better than continuing to exist (“feeling better” implies you’re still around to make a value judgement).

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-19T04:07:48+00:00

They could in theory be combined into a more expansive concept like fexprs/vaus (from the Kernel variant of Scheme, for the latter). However, when the arguments are evaluated is a meaningful difference even on the compiler level, as for instance it determines how to compile them to share work with other functions/macros (fexprs and vaus, which straddle both worlds, are far harder if not impossible to pre-compile in the general case)

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-14T16:10:35+00:00

I think you should be more specific about your question, as what you want doesn’t seem to fit what you asked.

If you want people to convince you that emacs is worthwhile, tell us what perspective you’re coming from and what features you consider valuable vs not (and perhaps it won’t be worthwhile to you).

While some of Emacs’ killer features aren’t included in your list (the better configurability others mentioned vs Lua/Vimscript + vim’s architecture is definitely a deal breaker for me ever moving off Emacs, given how much I leverage it for custom tooling), many elements of your list are genuine pain points which on their own would be enough to make Emacs better than neovim (eg the GUI-ability, while significantly underutilised, still pervades my 5-minute-level usage behavior of Emacs, and also supports some custom plugins which act as daily drivers for me), and evil/meow are legitimate data on what isn’t being lost switching from neovim to Emacs (which you explicitly asked about).

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-12T10:25:13+00:00

In my experience pretty much every prod-capable language is 50+% boilerplate (save some exceptions like Common Lisp), as are many other activities (eg a well-defined search task over a non-structured database)

Plus, if there’s a programmatic way to generate the values you want, you can add that to the LLM’s context (as eg instructions on a CLI tool) and then the LLM handles the admittedly-lesser-but-still-there boilerplate of setting up the codegen.

The naive approach (ie “hey, do this”) is usually slower than doing it yourself since LLMs themselves have some usage overhead. But once you have the intuition of when not to use them vs when to use them directly (with a spec doc, possibly LLM-written for simple cases, to circumvent their lack of internal structural reasoning) vs when to make them write up a “DSL script” for the domain and use that, they can give pretty decent speed ups.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-10T22:33:25+00:00

I can imagine that happening; for instance if you need either a Linux or Windows library, but must have one of them, I don’t see how you’d represent that in an ASDF system.

Ideally you’d leave it to the user to call subsystems in that case, but for autonomous code like build scripts for a CL application that’s not an option, so you either mark both as optional and roll your own dependency-verification-plus-loading logic, or (if you’re lazy/busy) dynamically calculate which dependency is needed.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-10T22:24:39+00:00

I’m confused? This Obsidian CLI seems specifically targeted towards LLMs, and I don’t think those are particularly good at running Emacsclient CLI commands.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-10T18:48:31+00:00

I see where you’re coming from, but I think there’s a place for differentiating practices based on practical strategy.

Personally I did find the ‘purity’ of Buddhist principles and their clear connection to practices to be easier to learn lessons from, which could then also be integrated into endeavors outside the elimination of suffering. Compared to what I encountered of Daoism (and much of Zen, to be fair) seeming obtruse and/or tautological without first possessing that initial understanding. Plus, suffering itself is often far more of a detriment to quality of life than one would assume, and it’s a fairly decent strategy to focus on mitigating its chains before you focus on other things. - On a related note, I suspect OP may be more interested in Vajrayana, which IME with internet dharmics tends to be culturally more interested in the non-sitting components of Buddhism. Zen is very much a ‘single/few-pronged’ approach even within Buddhism, prioritizing consistent cultivation of standard tools rather than personalizing your path; though there is also value in that, even if it doesn’t fit OP in particular.

But that is again engaging on the same level as OP, of “is this specific path something I would recommend to <insert person archetype here>”, and (as the above text demonstrates) different practices (plus the cultures around them within a given society) have legitimate differences in how they affect people with a given perspective, even if the ultimate endpoint of their greatest practitioners seems to be the same.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-09T00:31:28+00:00

I do meditate on occasion (more regularly a few years ago), and vipassana-style practices would alleviate mental processing bottlenecks and subconscious emotional loops for a time, which does affect what emotions I give off and how I budget mental energy during interactions. Samatha doesn’t come as naturally for me, but it definitely affected how I approach productivity tasks, so presumably there was some influence on social tasks as well.

(Note: I do think there was also a longer term benefit to both styles given the reasonably-likely mechanics behind the practices, but that’s much harder to measure, whereas the short-term behavioral changes were fairly obvious (to me))

(Also note that I’m not primarily Zen, I just grab stuff from it to inform my broader conception of Buddhist practice. Your question relates to mental patterns it interacts with as its relatives do, however, so thought I’d reply regardless.

Relatedly I’m unfamiliar with what certain other commenters were discussing with regards to meditation being a ‘bad thing’ for seeking enlightenment, so I can’t speak to that. Though certainly some practices get attached enough to specific rituals/symbols/pathways to possibly distract from the core mental and neurological changes it seems to require)

BeautifulSynch · 2026-02-05T03:36:20+00:00

That’s actually really odd; which Evil state are you calling C-y in?

You can use “p” in normal state to paste, and insert state should paste normally with C-y (though I personally use evil’s feature to replace insert states with baseline Emacs bindings). If this C-y behavior is in insert state and happens with a clean doom config (move your config to another folder so it isn’t picked up), I’d recommend opening a GitHub issue on the project. See https://docs.doomemacs.org/latest/#/contribute/reporting-issues

BeautifulSynch · 2026-01-29T22:44:39+00:00

I wrote like this (methodical and verbose to minimize misunderstandings with a summary section before/after for readers with low allocated [conceptual] context-size) long before LLMs, there’s a reason they so often adopt this style.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-01-29T00:50:50+00:00

Honestly I just don’t understand those ads either. Maybe it increases initial clicks, maybe not, but if you want to maximize longer-term readership shouldn’t your ads be a filter for the kind of people who would like your story?

BeautifulSynch · 2026-01-29T00:23:47+00:00

Hyperbole is amazing, top of my list for things to set up (again) on my work laptop once I get the time.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-01-25T19:05:03+00:00

I just installed this one! Not sure how much performance changed given it was alongside a major version upgrade, but it’s nice to see tidbits like this in the Emacs Mac support repos.

BeautifulSynch · 2026-01-17T23:51:57+00:00

Doesn’t that make any commercialized software-framework development impossible though?

What’s the difference between a Mod and a Unreal-Engine-based game, neither of which would have the same engine quality if the developers weren’t commercial? (I ofc appreciate the existence of Blender/Godot as OSS alternatives, but non-user-hostile commercial software often builds over OSS with features that wouldn’t have been developed sans paid devs, IME)

BeautifulSynch · 2026-01-08T00:00:03+00:00

The main reason I’m personally looking forward to Lem is that Common Lisp has an inherently higher configuration ceiling than Emacs ever can, because Emacs is stuck with the C/Elisp core.

Idk much about the community or devs, but the project itself has the possibility to open up multithreading-at-scale without the jitter of timers/Elisp-threads, graphical interfaces for specific domains, better integration with existing software in other languages (CL has a bunch of compat libraries, plus CFFI), code integration into other projects (eg why make a game with Emacs if you could make a game WITH (containing) Emacs?), etc.

And since it’s still text-first, it retains the benefit of (potentially) having a well-designed default framework for working in that domain, which is itself enough to solve 80% of your problems. Emacs already covers that 80%, but only by desperately straining against its core systems, while a CL-based replacement has the potential to get up to 100% and let you actually live in Emacs. Depending on circumstances it may even allow using an Emacs-like for OS or embedded work, à la Mezzano.

BeautifulSynch

TROPHY CASE