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Hi HN — I’d love feedback on a starter repo for building unattended/background agents in Python:

https://github.com/weakincentives/starter

It’s built on top of WINK (Weak Incentives). The goal is to make the “agent definition” a first-class artifact: prompt structure + tools + policies + feedback/evals, separated from whatever runtime/harness drives the loop.

The demo is a toy “secret trivia” agent, but it showcases: prompt sections that bundle instructions + tools, progressive disclosure, tool policies (ordering constraints), feedback providers, and evaluators.

Questions: - How are you approaching building agents that run unattended? - Are these abstractions useful, or would you do this differently? - What works? What doesn't? What feels weird?

Thanks for any critique.


If you try it, I’m most interested in where the abstractions are too thin or too heavy or lacking.

Install: uv add weakincentives (extras as needed)

Start with the code‑review example; it ties together prompt construction, overrides, telemetry and using the adapters.

Status: Alpha; APIs may change

Roadmap: parallel sub-agents, built-in GEPA prompt optimizer that uses the overrides store


Most System Dynamics (SD) software still treats a model like a slide deck. I wrote a short piece arguing that models should live as code—versioned, tested, observable, and fed by real‑time data—just like any service. It sketches the platform building blocks (registries, query engines, runtimes) rather than pitching a monolith.

I’m interested in counter‑arguments: where does the diagram‑first approach still win?


Did you also consider Java or any JVM-based language?

Modern Java is a lot less verbose than it used to be and it knows a lot of tricks (e.g. akka, play framework, dropwizard, Rx, dependency management, good IDEs, advanced profiling and instrumentation etc.)

Netflix is an excellent example of how you can leverage the JVM to build one of the most advanced system architectures hosted on AWS.


Hi Brad! I'm glad you like Sunnytrail. Your problem can be easily solved. I suppose that you are generating for each users some sort of unique ID. My advice is to use that to generate an username (if not already available) and a dummy email address. You should be able to update those later when that customer upgrades to a paid plan. TweetSaver looks great! Get back to us on email if you've got more questions.


that feels pretty hacky to be honest.

the real issue is that one person may have multiple accounts in the app, and they may want to use the same email address for all accounts... I have no reason to enforce a unique email address.

It's odd that Sunnytrail would when there is usually a common unique identifier across all apps for users.. user id


Sunnytrail does not enforce an unique email address or an unique username. We are tracking users based on the supplied internal user ID (or an email address hash if an internal user ID is not provided).


hmm, I'm pretty sure that's what Octav had told me in chat.. either way you require an email address...

    RuntimeError: The request is invalid: {"message": "invalid JSON message", "errors": [["", "A valid email address is mandatory"]]}


required but not unique. just generate a dummy one based on the user id.


so just really curious.. what's the reasoning behind requiring it?


we are planning to add some features that depend on that email address (some sort of advanced client profile)


Honest answer: I also care. It's not like we are trying to hide something. Most of the time Octav it's available on the Live Chat and we write individual emails to all the users that signup for the service. As side note security is really important for us and we are taking all the measures needed to ensure data privacy.


We are two founders: Octav Druta http://www.octavdruta.com/ and Andrei Savu http://andreisavu.ro/ working from Bucharest, Romania. We've got no investment so far.


Are you bootstrapping this entirely (i.e., have quit your normal job and working solely on this?) or are you working at a regular job and working on this on the side?


We are working mainly on this. We don't have a regular job.


Awesome! Romania is a huge hotbed for technology right now! (i'm literally sitting in our offices in Cluj right now) Good luck to you guys.


Did you guys do the design as well?


I feel very proud when a fellow (or two) romanian comes out with something like this. I love it, and I think I'll use it in the future. Great work!


Exactly and that's just the beginning. We are working on adding more metrics and better visualizations.


I believe you can write a wrapper in node.js in minutes. Check the raw API docs at https://www.thesunnytrail.com/developers I would do it myself but I'm not familiar with node.js. Let's get in touch. You can find me at andrei@thesunnytrail.com


coding it up now :)



And this is why HN is fucking awesome.


that was quick! thanks Richard!


Thanks for feedback. You are unable to click on Stream, Overview or Plans because you haven't sent any data. I agree this behavior can be improved. :)


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