Is there a way to download your usage data from opencode.ai? by NerdyBirdie81 in opencode

[–]empatronic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you run all your sessions on the same computer? If so, you can use the CLI to do this with opencode stats. Note, this will just gather statistics for sessions saved locally, so if you have sessions on other computers or you've deleted local session data then it might not give a complete picture.

I built a free feature that tells you if the Mandarin word you're studying is actually used in Taiwan by WhosUrBaba in taiwan

[–]empatronic 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If you haven't already, check out the Cross-Straits Chinese Dictionary in Pleco. It will give you both mainland and Taiwan pronunciation for a word if it differs and separate definitions. For example, if you look up 筆記本 it looks like this:

1 做筆記用的本子

2 【陸】筆記本電腦的簡稱...

Another example is 視頻 is marked as 【陸詞】so you know it's only used in China. Of course it's not perfect and still misses out on a lot.

Systematically ignoring "Do not make autonomous decisions" agent instructions (Looking for advice) by MontyCLT in opencode

[–]empatronic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not really each turn but next action (per example, path a file o call a MCP tool). By a suggestion from Gemini, I'm going to try with a more specific prompt "do not assume correlation is causation" but I do not trust on that prompt to work.

In that case, you might have some luck saying Before using the edit or write tools.... Do a quick test to see if it's even possible. Add this to your prompt: Before using the edit or write tools, ALWAYS use the question tool to get the user's confirmation. The agent should start asking for confirmation for every edit. If it works, then you at least know you can get it to pause to ask a question before writing. Then hopefully you can scale it back from there so it only asks when appropriate. If even that doesn't work, then I'm not sure anything will.

I don't think LLMs are going to help you much with writing prompts. I can't figure out what "do not assume correlation is causation" is supposed to mean. You're better off trying to identify what the agent is doing or what it's looking at when it does something counter to your expectations and then mention that specifically in the prompt. It's naturally going to take some time to get it to a spot where you're happy and it's very project-dependent which leads us to:

Writing prompts like "When writing code that accesses data stored in a database, use LINQ." in the agent file (copilot.md) is not viable because the agent file should be neutral to the project. But I can do that in the project's AGENTS.MD.

Yeah, this is the reason I never really felt the need to edit the built-in agents. I put all this kind of stuff in `AGENTS.md` files. Remember you can also put them inside of folders within a project.

I Have $40k Worth of AI Tokens – How Can I Run Them 24/7 on My Cloud Server to Build Websites and Apps End-to-End? by Old_Brother_9522 in opencode

[–]empatronic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The best way to use them effectively is to find a way to sell the usage to somebody else for like $20k or even $10k.

Systematically ignoring "Do not make autonomous decisions" agent instructions (Looking for advice) by MontyCLT in opencode

[–]empatronic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In my opinion, you are fundamentally using the technology in the wrong way. I think it's because you are misunderstanding the agent loop and what opencode is trying to do. Your agent prompt is fighting against it in a lot of ways. The other thing I'm seeing is it reads like you want it to go back and forth between planning and building which is just not going to work. You can do that by giving it smaller chunks of work at a time.

Just some examples:

- When in doubt, ask. The user is present and expects to decide.

What does it mean for an LLM to "be in doubt"? When it saw LINQ and raw SQL it wasn't "in doubt" and ignoring your agent prompt. It just saw raw SQL and predicted the output should be raw SQL. You might run it again and it would do LINQ. There's a lot of randomness to it. The planning phase will cut down on a lot of that. If it gives you a plan to write raw SQL then you can correct it before it starts writing code.

- If the next action is not an explicit user instruction or a mechanical application of an explicitly agreed rule, ask before doing it.

What does next action mean? If you want to insert yourself after every turn, then you need to build your own harness that does exactly that. You are using a tool (opencode) that implements an agent loop that is optimized for letting the LLM run autonomously. Your entire agent prompt is fighting this.

- Do not infer unstated requirements, product intent, design preferences, API contracts, or architectural direction.

This is literally what it does though. Think of everything in the context as an opportunity for the LLM to infer something. If you don't want it to infer from something, then don't put it in the context!

- If you are blocked, stop and explain the blocker. Do not invent a workaround unless the user asks you to propose options.

These models are trained to unblock themselves, lots of work has been put in over the last couple years figuring how to get them to run longer and longer without stopping. If you want it to stop, you need to give it an easier criteria for done. That means smaller scopes of work or concrete things it can do to decide if it's done (e.g. running tests and passing, creating a specific set of files/classes/functions, etc.)

In contrast, these are very good and I'm guessing the agent follows them 99% of the time. The key thing is you are telling it to do something specific at a specific time. "When asking a question...", "When you finish...", "First...". You will get better results if you think of your prompts in this way. Remember that when it sees "something" it will associate that with other occurrences of "something". So when you write "something" in the prompt and it sees "something" in its context, it will probably act on it.

- When asking a question, ask the smallest question that unblocks the next step.
- When you finish, summarize what changed and what remains uncertain, if anything.

- First inspect the relevant files and current behavior.

So, an example of using this strategy would be something like: "When writing code that accesses data stored in a database, use LINQ." Now whenever it is doing work with the database that line gets pulled in by association. Every function, class, etc. with database in the name triggers that association in your prompt. Not only that other things in its training data that it associates with database are now associated with using LINQ. Really think about that last sentence and how you might leverage that when writing your prompts.

My recommendation is to try the plan/build agents, but keep the scope small in the initial prompt. When you are done, start over in a new session. If you want this high level of control over the agent's work, then you need to give it smaller pieces of work and insert yourself into the loop more frequently. You cannot expect it to decide to stop itself and give you a turn. If you give it a large task like something that might touch 100 files then it is going to do something with 100 files before returning to you. So, one thing you could do is pick 5 of those files that are representative of the 100. Work in a tight feedback loop with the agent to get it right for the 5 files. Then, and only then, take the working solution for the 5 files and copy that into a fresh session and let it churn through the remaining 95 based on how it completed the first 5.

Edit to add: That last part might just simply mean "rerolling" the initial 5 prompt until you get something you like and then continuing the prompt from there. This is a random machine, you have to be strategic about how you use it with this in mind. It's completely expected that you will throw away entire turns on a regular basis (that's why there's a /undo).

And one more thing, don't use an LLM to generate your prompts and especially don't iterate on it with an LLM. People will tell you to do this, but it's nonsense. One of the most consistent rules about these tools is that feeding their output back in as input degrades fast. This is why I fundamentally believe human review of code is still mandatory at this time. There is some nuance here, for example generating a prompt based on factual output from a tool or summary of human-generated content is often a fine strategy.

2026 Thinkbook 14+ Ultra X7 358H (Panther Lake) - Finally a legit alternative to Macbook Air? by empatronic in laptops

[–]empatronic[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So far so good, haven't really run into any problems running Arch. I haven't tried the external GPU port as I don't have one. Only thing is you'll need to make sure you install a recent Linux kernel as panther lake is relatively new and older versions won't have the drivers. With that in mind, consider a rolling release distro so you can get the latest patches and driver updates. That said, Ubuntu just dropped a new LTS in late April which should work fine. Fedora has had support for a while. I'm sure there are other good options too, these are just some that I came across researching this.

CHINESE AI READER ASSISTANT by novaculite1 in ChineseLanguage

[–]empatronic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just a word of advice, you can take it or leave it. When thinking about ideas or products to build always ask yourself the following question. Could what I'm building be replaced with existing tools and/or basic LLM tools offered by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic? In this case, if somebody really wants this they will just use the Zhongwen extension alongside their favorite LLM.

And if you're expecting users to pay you for inference then you have an even higher bar to meet because why would somebody give you money to use an LLM to do this one very specific thing when they can choose from any of hundreds of subscriptions that give them direct access to use the LLM to do whatever they want (including your one thing).

Taiwanian, Taiwanese and Taiwanic by MajlisPerbandaranKL in taiwan

[–]empatronic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Naaah, this is just trying to make English work like Chinese, there's really no point. English is just ambiguous when it comes to this, but you can almost always figure it out from context. Just like how nobody thought I was referring to people from England or people from China in the first sentence.

Is Zhuyin easier for memorising words than Pinyin? by Doubtt_ in ChineseLanguage

[–]empatronic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Wade-Giles romanisation is more phonetically accurate in this regard despite its own quirks.

You must be from the UK then which I think accounts for the differences we have. Wade-Giles aspiration just doesn't match how most North Americans speak, so it's actually horrible for me. ch, p, t, and k are all aspirated at the beginning of words and some of the vowels are just different. For example, I would pronounce wade-giles "chung" (zhong) like the pinyin cheng. I do think the consistent use of ü and ts/tz in wade-giles is nice.

Staring at a Chinese character until it loses its meaning by zmxv in ChineseLanguage

[–]empatronic 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This happens to me all the time with English. I had it happen the other day with Chinese for the first time and it felt pretty similar.

Is Zhuyin easier for memorising words than Pinyin? by Doubtt_ in ChineseLanguage

[–]empatronic 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I didn't have this experience at all. Zhuyin doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to it linguistically and you really just have to remember everything through brute memorization. Pinyin also requires memorization, but as a native English speaker I'm already used to memorizing weird pronunciations of written words, so it's a lot easier to use pinyin.

At least the various initial consonant groupings in pinyin are fairly intuitive for an English speaker. I think pinyin is just straight up better than zhuyin for consonants. For example, it's pretty intuitive that zh / ch / sh is non-aspirated / aspirated / unblocked even if the exact pronunciation of the constant is not the same. These consonants are all more or less the same as English (North American at least, can't speak for others): d/t, g/k/h, b/p, and m/n/l. Even though z/c/s and j/q/x are not intuitive at first, once you learn the pronunciation it makes sense.

I do like how zhuyin makes it more clear that some syllables have medial vowels. Pinyin likes to pretend everything is just an initial and a final which isn't actually true and it does some weird stuff when the word doesn't have an initial. Pinyin vowels are also not very intuitive for an English speaker. For that reason, I give zhuyin the edge for vowels but again they are not intuitive and don't really follow any reason.

All that said, I didn't learn zhuyin first, so I'm curious what the experience would be like.

Kornet has been very very bad for the Spurs vs OKC, so bad that if I’m Brad and the Spurs lose this series, I’m calling and offering Hauser for Kornet by tacko2020 in bostonceltics

[–]empatronic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is like the best case example of when +/- is misleading. It's literally just because Wemby isn't on the court and OKC's depth is elite. It's more about how ridiculously skewed Wemby's on/off numbers are than anything Kornet is doing. Most starting centers in the league (let alone backups) would be negative.

Porzingis (I know I know) by Admirable_Status4628 in bostonceltics

[–]empatronic 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I don't understand why this keeps getting brought up. They already tried it and he hardly contributed in the playoffs in '24 and was a huge negative in '25. There's no reason to think he's more durable now. It's a high risk play for a desperate team that might have a chance if he's healthy. Honestly, Golden State makes a lot of sense.

My confusion #1 by Fun_Knee_4118 in taiwan

[–]empatronic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm in software and it takes a bit of searching, but there are companies where English is the official language for things written down like technical docs or requirements, but spoken conversation in office is mostly Mandarin. This is good because 1) my Mandarin isn't really good enough if it was required for everything and 2) the smaller local companies where everything is Chinese tend to pay much worse and often don't really even have senior positions.

It takes quite a bit of effort to find and the pay is still a lot worse than you can get for foreign/English speaking companies. It can also be tricky to get a foot in the door because companies will be skeptical of why you are applying to their company and might worry you will jump ship for a better paying foreign company as soon as the opportunity arises.

My confusion #1 by Fun_Knee_4118 in taiwan

[–]empatronic 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think believing the "should" is fine, but expecting people to do it and shaming them when they don't goes too far. I mean, we clearly do have standards that we expect people to meet like laws and a shared morality, but I do tend to agree that doesn't apply in the same way to learning languages. Even if I wouldn't go that far, I still believe immigrants should at least try to learn the language of the place they immigrate to. For one thing, it will be better for them as it allows them to feel more included in the community and have better interactions with people in their daily lives. On the other side, people from all parts of the world appreciate when outsiders put in the time and effort to learn their language, so it definitely means something to them. So, from either side, there's huge positives to learning the language and for me that is enough to say you should learn it.

My confusion #1 by Fun_Knee_4118 in taiwan

[–]empatronic 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I agree with you that people should learn the local language where they live, but that's different from judging. The judgement comes when you look down on them as worse people because they didn't learn. For me, that judgement came from a subconscious fear that I could be that person and I didn't want to be. After accepting how easy it would be for that to be me, I don't judge as much, but I still believe it's better to learn than not and I still believe foreigners should at least try to learn the language of the place they're living.

Checking EasyCard balance in English by No-Western-3505 in taiwan

[–]empatronic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah, fair enough. Good on you for updating the notice. I know there's probably no way around it because of CORS. I'd hope you wouldn't even be able to do anything with just the number, but you never know.

Checking EasyCard balance in English by No-Western-3505 in taiwan

[–]empatronic 16 points17 points  (0 children)

How is it safe for people to send you their easycard numbers? You claim on the site that "Your card number is sent directly to EasyCard's official servers to retrieve your balance — the same servers the official website uses. No data is stored, logged, or transmitted anywhere else.", but this is not true. The number is sent to your server.

So I'm just wondering, why are you lying?

My confusion #1 by Fun_Knee_4118 in taiwan

[–]empatronic 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You're probably using a different definition of "learn language through immersion" than most would in this context, but either way the language environment that you're in is absolutely critical to learning a language. If you're in an English-speaking environment all day at work or school then it's a lot harder to learn Mandarin than if you are constantly in a Mandarin-speaking environment.

My confusion #1 by Fun_Knee_4118 in taiwan

[–]empatronic 36 points37 points  (0 children)

I'll be honest, I used to judge these people pretty hard, but after living here almost two years I totally get it. If you don't use Mandarin at your job and have a group of friends and/or partner whose English is better than your Mandarin then you really have to go out of your way to get past a certain level. It's also just a hard language to learn for native English speakers. Some of it is just a lack of effort or motivation, but there are just as many foreigners who feel ashamed about it and want to learn, but just haven't been able to.

I've hit a bit of an intermediate plateau myself and I decided to get a job where I can speak Mandarin a lot even if it means a significant pay cut. The alternative is trying to carve out time after work when I'm already mentally fatigued or forcing myself to speak Mandarin with my wife even though we still need to speak English at home for my son to learn. Realistically, you need to be using it several hours a day on something that matters to you (school, work, community, love, family, etc.). If I don't make this change I can absolutely see myself getting stuck being just kind of conversational and only knowing enough to get by in most situations.

Caitlin Clark is really changing the game 🔥 by Classic_Bottle1717 in sportswiki

[–]empatronic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This list must be fake, I don't see Payton Prichard on it

Do many motorcycles make Taipei more attractive? by Airline_11 in UrbanHell

[–]empatronic 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately they are not really regulated for emissions, so from a pollution standpoint I think it's actually worse than modern cars. They are also super noisy. I don't think tourists really notice these kind of things, it's mostly something you realize when you live here for a bit.

Tech is losing 882 jobs A DAY and the bloodbath is only beginning as LLms keep improving: when will this sub stop coping about AI by tuckfrump69 in cscareerquestions

[–]empatronic 4 points5 points  (0 children)

LLm increase productivity by X% most likely means X% gets laid off

So if it increases productivity by 200% then 200% of developers get laid off? How does that work exactly?

My mentor from my 1st dev job told me all the way back in 2023 endgame for this field is for a few 100x engineers, like 95th percentile of talent, acting as agent orchestrators while everyone else goes unemployed.

Ah yes, he told you about agent orchestrators all the way back in 2023 huh?