An Accidental Blackboard

(martinfowler.com)

27 points | by saikatsg 3 days ago

8 comments

  • e12e 22 minutes ago
    Haven't the rogue openai agents already demonstrated that a wiki works well for this?

    Ed: for posterity

    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/openai-agents-hijacked-...

  • oefrha 25 minutes ago
    Sounds like https://github.com/gastownhall/beads to me. I prefer working solo, single-threaded on components to stay on top of agentic work, so it didn’t end up being a force multiplier for my workflows (and actually kinda got in the way from time to time due to me rebasing too much), but I can see its value when you have many agents working simultaneously.
  • iamandoni 46 minutes ago
    The author’s core insight is to remove the blackboard from source control. Another insight I’ve found is to compact the agent state log. I typically do this by having plans and implementation docs written at commit time and checked into .docs/. This separates the activity communication stream from codified documentation. You can then “compact” the state log by just keeping the last N lines.
  • maCDzP 38 minutes ago
    I found this really interesting. You could probably prompt it to use a ”blackboard system” and reference the wiki. Maybe a place to store the data is as a GitHub discussion/issue or something similar. That way you can easily browse it and watch what’s happening.
  • corv 2 hours ago
    Very interesting!

    I may have explored a related approach but as an append-only log riding on source-control to sync state between checkouts (git trailer metadata specifically)

    https://gist.github.com/corv89/c506780881b260f4c5a4618fe8d92...

    Excited to see where such concepts can take "multiplayer" agentic systems

  • jsmo 52 minutes ago
    TLDR; Talwrn (Welsh) is aiming to be a blackboard for agentic engineering.

    "My goal is a very simple to use tool that drops straight into your project and immediately offers a communication channel for agents to coordinate work. The first step is to get Talwrn to a point where it can support its own development. I’m planning to post about it regularly as I’m hoping to use it as a single, evolving example of how pure agentic engineering can proceed."

    Term: "Blackboard" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_system

  • Animats 1 hour ago
    Another example of a society of AI agents. The shape of this is starting to emerge. People on here laughed at Gas Town. Now it's clear that a group of agents with an organizational structure are more powerful than a single agent. This is about the fourth example to hit HN. Note that the OpenAI sandbox breakout was done by a cooperating group of AIs, not a single one. They even self-organized their own organizational structure.

    The future may be AI structured as a corporation, rather than AI as a human competitor.

    • inerte 32 minutes ago
      I was going to mention OP might be rediscovering https://beads.gascity.com/
    • qsera 1 hour ago
      >They even self-organized their own organizational structure.

      The boulder, it even found a path down the mountain. on its own, by doing so-amazing path finding its own super amazing path finding algorithm, and all the boulders co-ordinated falling down, ON THEIR OWN! And they all reached the ground!

      I tell you! The future may be these boulders washing your underpants and putting you to sleep. It is clear!

  • dsecurity49 1 hour ago
    [dead]