Yeah as far as what I'm talking about bash CLI vs MCP doesn't matter (there could be a file_sample MCP tool)---I'm saying that by default Windows, Linux etc don't have this venetianblinds affordance of seeing equally spaced samples. It's a trivial algo but it's very handy these days cause LLMs can't really just be like 'okay I'm gonna open this file at random and scroll around'--the file itself is an unknown blob (JSON data, Python, Typescript, a log file etc) without coordinates. So they fall back to thinking they've gotten a good sense of the file from head/grep or they write ad-hoc Python to manipulate the file.
Another venetianblinds survey, of the Paul Graham 'What I Worked On' article that's used in many LlamaIndex examples:
npx github:firasd/venetianblinds pgworkedon.txt
--- sample 1/20 char 0 line 1 col 1 range 0:60
Before college the two main things I worked on, outside of s
--- sample 2/20 char 3946 line 19 col 237 range 3886:4006
d an intelligent computer called Mike, and a PBS documentary that showed Terry Winograd using SHRDLU. I haven't tried re
Problem is that bash is too sharp to handle to smart and gullible clankers without a sandbox - That I think everyone should be using anyways, for everything, even things not related to clankers - Android and Qubes are right. The app/vm, and whatever it tries, should not be considered trusted by default.
Qubes is directionally correct, Android is extremely not. Safety must not be obtained by preventing users from controlling their own computing devices, or else we face a dire future.
Yeah as far as what I'm talking about bash CLI vs MCP doesn't matter (there could be a file_sample MCP tool)---I'm saying that by default Windows, Linux etc don't have this venetianblinds affordance of seeing equally spaced samples. It's a trivial algo but it's very handy these days cause LLMs can't really just be like 'okay I'm gonna open this file at random and scroll around'--the file itself is an unknown blob (JSON data, Python, Typescript, a log file etc) without coordinates. So they fall back to thinking they've gotten a good sense of the file from head/grep or they write ad-hoc Python to manipulate the file.
Another venetianblinds survey, of the Paul Graham 'What I Worked On' article that's used in many LlamaIndex examples:
npx github:firasd/venetianblinds pgworkedon.txt
Also, this is a trivial example but I would rather an LLm call a recursive "grep" than using 1000 read_file MCP calls.
Having a scripting language as a tool is powerfull, and can help remove unnecessary stuff from the LLM's context.
Problem is that bash is too sharp to handle to smart and gullible clankers without a sandbox - That I think everyone should be using anyways, for everything, even things not related to clankers - Android and Qubes are right. The app/vm, and whatever it tries, should not be considered trusted by default.
Qubes is directionally correct, Android is extremely not. Safety must not be obtained by preventing users from controlling their own computing devices, or else we face a dire future.