Agent Sightings Real agent use cases

Build old and new apps

One practitioner notes that terence Tao's post highlights the use of contemporary coding agents to develop or revive apps.

Agent or tool
Custom agent
Topic
Knowledge & Notes
Reported on
Hacker News
Added
2026-10-15

Why it matters

Notes are only useful if you can find and connect them later. Agents that organise, summarise and link information make a personal knowledge base far easier to keep up. It is one of 44 sightings filed under Knowledge & Notes on Agent Sightings (number 24 by interest), and one of 182 involving Custom agent.

How you could try it

Here is a reusable prompt, written by us in our own words, that captures the task. Paste it into your own agent or any similar agent and adjust the details to your situation.

Notes task: build old and new apps. Propose edits as a checklist, apply after approval, and finish with a short handover.

Tip: Start small: run it once on a low-stakes example, read what the agent did, and only then let it run on real work.

Source

Read the original first-hand account on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880170. Our summary is a paraphrase; details are in the source.

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