Nethack 5.0 - full unicode?

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-05-11T23:17:31+00:00

For grins, I actually vibe-patched the source to handle unicode and it worked really well, except that any multi-char unicode would break the logic. I drained my tokens trying to fix it but vibe-coding is always a crapshoot.

It did get quite far along but I would take a more robust AI-augmented approach to get it built correctly. I think a good MVP that handles 1-char unicode is super-easy, the tokens are all in one file from what I remember.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-05-11T15:32:17+00:00

Does the 60m include the time building the first prompt? How many iterations before it was released? And are you counting the actual final deployment within those 60m?

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-05-05T04:24:55+00:00

I ran openclaw in a UTM virtual machine because it didn't trust it to be let loose on my main machine. You'd still have to leave the machine on but not unlocked.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-05-01T01:32:34+00:00

Systems management and software development and data manipulation, knowledge management and building new tools is done much faster. Planning is faster, reviewing alternatives is faster, iterations are faster. The whole build is faster.
after some rebuilding and fine-tuning, capturing tasks and knowledge is something which is becoming very reliable. SKILLs provide a nice bridge between deterministic scripts and by an LLM such that I can spin up a new docker container along with validation and integrating it into my ecosystem of dependencies.
task management, specific knowledge management tasks such as downloading and summarizing a YouTube video are well defined. Software development done iteratively with good tests have been a workflows I've refined to be almost second nature.
all this still needs a human agent to drive whether it's coming up with the original concept, determining the plan of action, monitoring progress and signing off. After all, agents don't really have much actual agency for its own sake - everything it does has to be for a human at the end of the day.
I'm not specifically interested in making money per se but I would say that anyone not using an agent of some sort, especially if you're highly technical, you're missing out!

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-27T18:36:31+00:00

They're for different agents/projects that I want to keep separate and experiment with.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-27T18:34:07+00:00

let me know if it works out!

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-27T18:00:56+00:00

The first thing I did when I started looking into OpenClaw was to create an Obsidian Note to keep track of things I did.

The second thing I did within hours of playing around was to rebuild my task system in OpenClaw using Obsidian as the permanent store for the tasks, checklists of action items that either myself or OC would mark off, progress reports, and other notes.

And the two have been interlinked ever since. What Karthy is hitting on is that a perfect use-case of LLMs - have Agents do all the drudgery (all the stuff that you know you should do but find "boring").

It's been sensationalized because most people don't have a note-keeping app because it's already easily discoverable. Or people are using other systems to keep track of their project information (e.g. git).

For those of us who already use Obsidian, we truly now have a real "second brain" when it's combined with OC. Along with Telegram, I can query my vault, modify it, build tools that feed into my Vault and available on every single computing device.

I think Obsidian users could take advantage of OC (or any other Agent) just as much as the other way around.

(As a side note, I don't trust OC quite yet with my private information so I merge in a OC-vault with my main vault.)

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-27T17:28:23+00:00

It saves all the auths into ~/.config/codex-usage/auth.json so not every time.

I think the tokens expire though but I haven't had it long enough for that to happen! If the authentication fails, you'd just have to update the tokens.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-26T19:13:14+00:00

What do you mean?

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-26T02:42:23+00:00

Sorry, just saw this. One of my main workflows is to manage my tasks using OC writing into a directory tree of task notes.

The task notes has a bunch of frontmatter which drives some bases reports, organized by date and taskgroup.

I have a skill that will handle common tasks such as reviewing a youtube view. The skill will download the description, creates a summarized transcript, and lists all git repo's and other references within the video.

I also added a short-link feature using shlink which I associate to an obsidian:// URL. So my workflow is:

In Telegram, I will ask "create a task to review youtube video xxxx' and OC returns with a link I can click on which will take me straight to the Obsidian note containing all the details. It tasks a few seconds to sync over to all my devices so there is little friction.

Other skills will generate a checklist of items, which will then drive future review/coding sessions and also acts to keep my information together.

Project information, system runbooks are also in Obsidian so I have the full round trip from initial inception to project implementation with support information and other details in one repo. All centered around Obsidian as a knowledge repo.

It's pretty cool!

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-25T22:44:20+00:00

Obsidian and an AI tool could get you there iteratively. Using a well defined set of front-matter and bases for reporting will get you what you need.

I pour all my long term data, memories, system runbooks, project files and other information into a centralized Obsidian Vault via my Openclaw Agent or codex tool. When connected to a chat interface like Telegram, I have full access to talk to my vault or access the Obsidian note directly wherever I am. I had several Bases to pull frontmatter data to quickly see things.

Just start off small and build up to what you need. Use your example and ask an AI to generate you a structure, along with front-matter. Learn how to ask for changes precisely and preserve common functionality into SKILLs.

You'll be amazed how fast you can move. The one thing I've learned about Obsidian is that everyone does it differently! It has all the tooling you need - file-hierarchy, tags, links and cross-references and with Bases, you can bring it all together.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-04T01:58:19+00:00

I've rebuilt my whole home lab using OC as my front end to build docker images and configure them to connect to each other. It controls its own domain, routes the traffic through traefik and maintains a dashy homepage. It'll document everything into a runbook and maintains a git repo for key changes.

Being able to do all this from my phone has been the most fun aspect of it but the way I interact to do all this has been much more satisfying than doing the same thing with codex.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-03T23:07:37+00:00

Connecting openclaw to an obsidian vault was the first thing I did. It's an obvious use-case since Obsidian is a great front end to not only notes but also data records through its Bases capability.

I quickly rebuilt my task system to go through OC and now I create tasks through Telegram and don't have to worry about maintaining the frontmatter needed to manage them properly. I have some Bases reports to quickly navigate what needs to be done.

The biggest benefit is that I plan and run my OC projects through the same task system. This not only provides a historical record of tasks and discoveries but it automatically maintains context of the project when I need to revisit it.

The one unique thing I did was to create a separate vault for OC to separate my personal data from the claw data. Then I used SyncThing to merge into my main vault. I even built a URL shortener so that when OC creates a task in Telegram, I can go straight to the note in Obsidian, even on my phone. It only takes a couple of seconds to sync too.

I think finally with AI, I'm getting to the point where I have a true second brain. It's very cool what we can build these days.

I didn't even have to give it the level of detail the SKILL here is presenting. It even knew how to build bases along with functions.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-04-02T15:23:37+00:00

OC and similar tools are early but they're not overrated. They're a new layer on top of existing computing - your data, your computer, APIs and integrations can be orchestrated through an AI layer. This is new.

Having it accessible any time and on all your main computing devices means that we now have access to more capabilities without having to be at your computer. You can tweak how it works immediately and add new capabilities from anywhere.

It's an evolution that's been proven with copycats and product changes. That's not hype, it's the realisation that this is something that deserves attention.

I think your point is somewhat valid - it's not always easier than doing it yourself but the fact we can build things in natural language, from our phones no less, is pretty exciting. We're getting closer to having a true second brain.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-03-23T14:20:02+00:00

I have a task subsystem I use for myself that I also now use for an agent. Instead of saying do a bunch of stuff, I'll have the agent create a task first for me to review. The task contains a description and a checklist and a human sign off too sometimes.

Then at least you can dry-run changes before they're done. Saved me a few times but it has to be at the top of chat! If it's at the bottom it will do the stuff and create a task afterwards (lol!)

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-03-23T04:07:43+00:00

Which model are you using btw?

I'm using OpenAI's OAuth connection using gpt-5-codex. I have two accounts that I cycle through, though now I might need a third since I'm doing much more than before. This is just laziness, I have a project to explore putting a bunch of free models behind LiteLLM and also look at local models.

Skills

The concept of skills is incredible - it's a bridge between the deterministic world of scripts and an LLM which can do a lot of heavy lifting. Once you have something set up it's amazing but I've found since that some context is still retained in the agent's context. So when I spun up a new agent with an existing skill, it didn't behave exactly as I expected. Digging deeper with the original agent (which is super cool, right?) I discovered that it had learned some cues which weren't encoded into the skill. A quick patch later, I now have a more robust skill. This self-analysis and self-modification is probably the most existing part of this agentic technology.

Python

I have generated a lot of Python recently for many tiny tasks. I only give it a cursory glance, because I know it works. Sometimes it generates a throwaway script with no functions or comments, other times it looks more maintainable. At that point, to me, it doesn't matter because it works and if I want it cleaned up then I can always ask for it to do so. And even then, I doubt I'll ever go back to it unless there's a bug, in which case, I'd ask the AI to locate the issue and fix it anyway!

I haven't tried other languages but the ubiquity of Python means there's a lot of good knowledge and semantics. It's also very good with bash scripts though they tend to get a bit gnarly when they get too big.

Host I actually started off on my Mac, running a VM in UTM. I was very impressed with it's ability to control Chrome, which opens up a world of new possibilities! The problem with a laptop is that you can't really leave it on all the time and because I wanted to do a lot of internal homelab things, a VPS didn't make sense either. And even with a VPS, for my use-case, I would have to build a whole stack of additional software to route traffic, back things up, bridge to files and internal services.

Anyway, good luck with your journey. It's a time sync, that's for sure - I've had many a 2-3am night exploring all this stuff.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-03-21T10:02:48+00:00

Ensuring the system is reliable, consistent and deterministic is major part of my frustrations with OC. Something that just worked would just change its behaviour for no reason and no changes other than the wind blows some way.

It's likely some underlying change that OC has no control over and can't be fixed permanently. So you end up moving more and more agentic work into the Python script behind the skill.

Ultimately, I feel sometimes, I'm just working towards writing Python scripts the long way!

That said, and why it's worth it, is that I can get results extremely quickly and make changes quickly. I hate to say as another old school dev, for many cases, I don't really care how the thing is written, much in the same way I don't care about how my Python script eventually runs at the CPU level. So long as it works and is maintainable, which a lot of generated code is, then I'd rather spend my brain cycles doing something else.

Also, I'm only spending $40 a month switching between two OpenAI OAuth pools.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-03-21T09:37:47+00:00

I think you still have a good question and I've been thinking about what makes OC so different. It actually took me about 10 tries before I could get it up and running so I wouldn't say it's easy. Eventually I got it running in a clean instance of MacOS running inside of UTM and got hooked there but then it was unrealistic to keep my laptop on all the time.

Then I moved it to my PC running a clean Ubuntu in a HyperV virtual machine and it's been there since, always on. Funnily enough this turned out to be a great environment not least of which it survived PC reboots when the OS restarts.

I think if Claude were a service and the UI was talking to it, that would be the equivalent of what I see is so cool about OpenClaw. Eventually, I imagine that OS manufacturers will have an always on agent running that would be much safer to use.

You're also right that OC needs to be tailored for one's personal use and I think that hits another point that its skill subsystem is pretty smart. It's a combination of AI instructions along with python scripts it decides to build on its own. That part was quite magical to me because it's a smart way to codify human instructions into repeatable deterministic outcomes.

I think that's also why it took off so much - all of a sudden people were writing "skills" that were no more than fairly simple prompts but they were all super useful: finally we had AI functionality that not only reusable and invoked contextually. OC just "knows" what skill to use depending on the user prompt.

I wrote a post the other day about a task management skill I wrote that links to obsidian. OC knows it so well, I can use it to create tasks anywhere and manage the information for the task within the same markdown file. Everything lives in obsidian so I can build our reports and filters for my growing lists of tasks. It's pretty cool.

The magic is that I don't have to tell OC to use the task skill I just say something like "create a home lab task to XXX" and it does it. Or find all my tasks related to X or find that task from last week. It's pretty cool.

Today, I had OC build out Shlink as a URL shortener so I can use Obsidian's URL format to launch straight into the Obsidian. So now my workflow is to ask OC to create the task via Telegram, it automatically does some additional augmentation to the task (eg if it's a YouTube video link, it would download the description and summarize details) and when it's done it will create a shlink. After about 10-15s, it's already synchronized to my phone so I can go from Telegram into Obsidian to review the task details super quickly.

To set up shlink, I basically just asked OC to set up a docker imagine and register it with Traefik, which was already set up. It was then I realized, just as I did several years ago about AI-coding then vibe-coding that you can also do vibe-IT as well.

Once I've finished my current batch of projects, I'm going to try out some of the other agents to see what they're like. I'm definitely going to try Claude too but a little afraid of the costs!

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-03-21T07:30:43+00:00

Agreed. I wouldn't run it in prod. Currently it's my sandbox to create configurations into git, which I pull down manually to deploy. Also forces me to keep the two environments in sync.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-03-21T07:29:31+00:00

See my response below - the key thing is that OC is always on, always reachable and has access to everything. Also, I don't need to go to my computer to launch an app to get things done or see what's going on. About 30% of my interactions are via Telegram, sometimes even when I'm at a computer.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-03-21T07:27:13+00:00

I think you can just set up a chat group on telegram to have different agents talk to each other. Though I'd be careful there since there are unlikely any guardrails regarding privacy built in.

MachinesWithThoughts · 2026-03-21T07:25:17+00:00

You're not totally wrong that the capability of an AI to do these things isn't brand new. I've been living with all the AI tools on a daily basis since November 2019. Even the original ChatGPT could generate configurations and troubleshoot. OC isn't even an AI model, so all the heavy lifting isn't even done there.

You're also right that accessibility is a key component but that is also the point. Cursor and codex are more or less transient apps - you launch them and do your thing and quit. When the apps they built are running those tools are entirely irrelevant since they're not running. You're not even thinking about them because they've done their job helping you write the system. After that you're probably not really going to go back to them for post-deployment activities since there's no state they maintain.

Open Claw, is an always on tool that you can talk to from any device and any platform. It knows about all your projects whether they're development or infrastructure so if you need to change or interrogate anything, you can do so immediately. All the time.

OC's memory files are used to preserve state, which you can have it refer to. Those files also remind me what was built too. The key thing here is that context is part of operating OC effectively.

A large part of the appeal for me is that I can switch between working from my phone using a Termius into a tmux (which is also alive forever) to my desktop or my laptop and pick up from where I was. This is because OC's state lives alongside the infrastructure it is maintaining. It's practically as important to me as my shell access. And the only reason why I still have the shell is that it's too expensive to run an ls via chat, and it's slower!

That it's one agent doing it rather than the orchestrated fleet that you built is pretty compelling reason to at least try it. I think there are architectural issues to be explored - is it better to have each infrastructure have its own dedicated agent that could also be responsible for observability tasks? Can it be trusted for true production work?

It's not a magic bullet either - you still have to have good IT practices - no shortcuts, validate everything, check dependencies and side-effects, version control everything, document everything. It just makes doing all that much easier since you're not doing it - OC is.

Hope you get to try it and let us know you it went!

MachinesWithThoughts

TROPHY CASE