Hi HN - Today we’re launching V2 of Phind.com, an assistant for programmers that combines GPT-4 with the ability to search the web and your codebase to solve nearly any technical problem – no matter how difficult.
We’re incredibly grateful for the feedback we received when we first launched GPT-4 answers back in April (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35543668). As Phind has gotten better at complex programming tasks, the questions it gets asked have gotten more complex as well. In the past, we would always perform a web search for every input. This limitation constrained Phind’s answers to what was present in the search results, preventing us from making Phind a more powerful debugger and making it challenging to integrate Phind with your codebase.
We’ve addressed all these shortcomings in Phind V2. This release has three major updates: (1) Phind is now a pair programming agent that knows when to browse the web, ask clarifying questions, and call itself recursively; (2) the answering engine defaults to GPT-4, and you can use it without a login; (3) we integrate with your codebase via our new VS Code extension.
We realized that search is only one of many tools that Phind should be able to use. As such, Phind has been re-engineered to be an agent that can dynamically choose whatever tool best helps the user – it’s now smart enough to decide when to search and when to enter a specialized debug mode. Instead of making assumptions about your code and proceeding blindly, Phind can ask you questions and clarify its assumptions. When a problem requires multiple searches or logical steps to solve, Phind can call itself recursively and perform multi-step reasoning without user input.
We’ve heard from you that switching between your IDE and Phind in the browser has been a major pain point. No longer – we’re launching a VS Code extension that brings Phind into the IDE and finally connects Phind with the context of your codebase. Phind in VS Code automatically determines which parts of your code are relevant to your search and can help you squash bugs in a single click.
To maximize Phind’s alignment with your preferred answer style, we’ve also added a feature called Answer Profile where you can tell the AI about yourself. Phind will apply this answering style across the board, automatically.
Here are some examples of the new Phind answering questions it could not before:
Clarifying assumptions to help a user with debugging: https://www.phind.com/agent?cache=cljmjzjgn0000jo085otq111f
Designing a highly specific and custom database schema: https://www.phind.com/agent?cache=clkwpprz600g4jt08dl21e7r6
Splitting a Wordpress theme across multiple files: https://www.phind.com/agent?cache=clknqywuq001pji083sdacf9p
Phind’s asking clarification questions in debug mode: https://www.phind.com/agent?cache=cljmjzjgn0000jo085otq111f
Phind extension answering questions about a local codebase: https://www.phind.com/agent?cache=ra4kh2v3epgv5iw7z6dlzuo4
Answering questions about a local codebase using the web: https://www.phind.com/agent?cache=ztiaju6xwtpi39l2kjdnwh20
We are incredibly grateful for the feedback the HN community has given us and are excited to hear your thoughts about this release!
Cheers,
Michael and Justin
