> Checkpoints are a new primitive that automatically captures agent context as first-class, versioned data in Git. When you commit code generated by an agent, Checkpoints capture the full session alongside the commit: the transcript, prompts, files touched, token usage, tool calls and more.
This thread is extremely negative - if you can't see the value in this, I don't know what to tell you.
What kind of barrier/moat/network effects/etc would prevent someone with a Claude Code subscription from replicating whatever "innovation" is so uniquely valuable here?
It's somewhat strange to regularly read HN threads confidently asserting that the cost of software is trending towards zero and software engineering as a profession is dead, but also that an AI dev tool that basically hooks onto Git/Claude Code/terminal session history is worth multiples of $60+ million dollars.
> HN threads confidently asserting
I have never seen any thread that unanimously asserts this. Even if they do, having HN/reddit asserting something as evidence is wrong way to look at things.
The same moat that git had on svn, a better mental paradigm over the same fundamental system, more suited to how SWE changed over a decade.
git didn't succeed based on the mental model. It got a foot in the door with better tooling and developer experience then blew the door open when GitHub found a way to productize it.
Sure... you `git add` the context text generated by AI and `git commit` it, could be useful. Is that worth 60 million?
It's funny how HN'ers frequently judge ideas based on complexity of implementation, not value.
I still remember the reaction when Dropbox was created: "It's just file sharing; I can build my own with FTP. What value could it possibly create".
It’s good to know that a few decades later the same generic Dropbox-weekend take can be made.
99% of projects the take applies to are massive flops. The Dropbox weekend take is almost always correct.
Survivorship bias. How many failed and commenters were right?
predicting that a startup will fail is.. well, you got a ton of probability on your side there. so it isn't a particularly impressive thing to be right about.
Unimpressive doesn't mean incorrect, sometimes it's good to take the side of the most probable. And yet at the same time I am reminded of this quote:
> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw
I'm not disagreeing, just soliciting. Does anyone have examples of products that failed in the early stages because their implementation was too trivial?
How exactly are we supposed to hear about something that failed in the early stages?
By listening to your friends and circle
People keep saying that, but it's hardly the same thing. We're talking about developer workflow here. It's like someone coming up with Brancher. It's a git branch manager. Use `brancher foo` to replace `git checkout -b foo`. "Remember that comment about rsync and dropbox? Brancher is to git, what dropbox is to rsync"
How is LangChain doing? How about OpenAI's Swarm or their Agent SDK or whatever they called it? AWS' agent-orchestrator? The crap ton of Agent Frameworks that came out 8-12 months ago? Anyone using any of these things today? Some poor souls built stuff on it, and the smart ones moved away, and some are stuck figuring out how to do complex sub-agent orchestration and handoffs when all you need apparently is a bunch of markdown files.
Just saw a Discord-weekend take on reddit! Haha. Guy was saying he could create it in a day and then self-host it on his servers so that he doesn't have to put Nitro ads on top of it
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Discord is not prized because you can send a message to a chatroom, or any of the hooks and functions.
It's because of everybody there.
Currently no one is on Entire - the investor are betting they will be.
They raised 60 million. The investors think it’s worth 600M+
It's the valuation that is wild to me (I think the idea itself has merit). But these are the new economics. I can only say "that's wild" enough before it is in fact no longer wild.
These aren't new economics, it's just VC funds trying to boost their holdings by saying it's worth X because they said so. Frankly the FTC should make it illegal.
That's not impressive. That's an incredible amount concentrated in the hands of a few looking for a place to live. It has to end up somewhere. Some of it goes everywhere.
We have had this for ages now.... I just don't have access to the sort of people willing to pass me 60m for that. I never thought it to be worth anything really ; it was a trivial to implement afterthought.
Couldn't we capture this value with a git hook?
I love this one so much! The arbitrary decision to cherry-pick critique a particular product to this degree, when it’s something that could be said about 99% of the stuff SV churns out, including in all likelihood anything you’ve ever worked on.
Good thing the comment you're replying to does not lionise 99% of the stuff SV churns out, including in all likelihood anything they've ever worked on. I guess we should just not critique anything out of SV because it's all shit?
The unannounced web collaboration platform in-progress might be.
300 million, apparently.
That is their first feature.
If it were also their last, I would be inclined to agree.
Wow, read through the comments and you weren't joking. I attribute this to crossroads of "this release is v0.1 of what we are building" and the HN crowd who have been scrolling past 120 AI frameworks and hot takes daily and have no patience for anything that isn't immediately 100% useful to them in the moment.
I find the framing of the problem to be very accurate, which is very encouraging. People saying "I can roll my own in a weekend" might be right, but they don't have $60M in the bank, which makes all the difference.
My take is this product is getting released right now because they need the data to build on. The raw data is the thing, then they can crunch numbers and build some analysis to produce dynamic context, possibly using shared patterns across repos.
Despite what HN thinks, $60M doesn't just fall in your lap without a clear plan. The moat is the trust people will have to upload their data, not the code that runs it. I expect to see some interesting things from this in the coming months.
100% agree because there’s a lot of value in understanding how and why past code was written. It can be used to make better decisions faster around code to write in the future.
E.g., if you’ve ever wondered why code was written in a particular way X instead of Y then you’ll have the context to understand whether X is still relevant or if Y can be adopted.
E.g., easier to prompt AI to write the next commit when it knows all the context behind the current/previous commit’s development process.
I wonder. How often will that context actually be that valuable vs just more bloat to fill up future API calls with to burn tokens.
I know about "the entire developer world has been refactored" and all, but what exactly does this thing do?
Runs git checkpoint every time an agent makes changes?
A year ago I added memory to my Emacs helper [0]. It was just lines in org-mode. I thought it was so stupid. It worked though. Sort of.
That's how a trillion dollar company also does it, turns out.
0: https://github.com/karthink/gptel
I haven't read the article yet but this conversation reminds me of Docker. Lots of people "didn't get it." I told them at the time: if you don't get it you aren't ready for it yet so don't worry about it. When you do need it, you'll get it and then you'll use it and never look back. Look at where we are with containers now.
Maybe use critical thinking instead of a mindless dismissal?
The fact that you aren't haven't offered a single counterargument to any other posters' points and have to resort to pearl-clutching is pretty good proof that you can't actually respond to any points and are just emotionally lashing out.
ehhhh is it really that useful though? Sounds way more noisy than anything, and a great way to burn through tokens. It's like founding a startup to solve the problem of people squashing their commits. Also, it sounds like something Claude Code/Codex/etc could quickly add an extension for.
How would this use any extra tokens? Just seems like it's serializing the existing context
This is literally what claude code already does minus the commit attachment. It’s just very fancy marketing speak for the exact same thing.
I’m happy to believe maybe they’ll make something useful with 60M (quite a lot for a seed round though), but Maybe not get all lyrical about what they have now.
Claude Code captures this locally, not in version control alongside commits.
I wonder how difficult it would be for Claude Code to have such a feature in a future release.
I see the utility in this as an extension to git / source control. But how do VCs make money of it?
I built out the same thing in my own custom software forge. Every single part of the collaborative development process is memoized.
And how are you using it now? Have you seen real value weeks or months on?
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Please don't use quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting someone when you aren't. That's an internet snark trope and we're trying to avoid those on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Look it’s obvious at this point to anyone who is actually using the tools.
We can articulate it but why should we bother when it’s so obvious.
We are at an inflection point where discussion about this, even on HN, is useless until the people in the conversation are on a similar level again. Until then we have a very large gap in a bimodal distribution, and it’s fruitless to talk to the other population.
Not really, because those details aren't actually relevant to code archaeology.
You could have someone collect and analyze a bunch of them, to look for patterns and try to improve your shared .md files, but that's about it
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I think if you add some more emotional vitriolic language to your reply you’ll finally, finally get your point across. /s