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AndrewVos 23 hours ago [-]
Hi Hacker News, I'm Andrew, the CTO of Endless Toil.
Endless Toil is building the emotional observability layer for AI-assisted software development.
As engineering teams adopt coding agents, the next challenge is understanding not just what agents produce, but how the codebase feels to work inside. Endless Toil gives developers a real-time signal for complexity, maintainability, and architectural strain by translating code quality into escalating human audio feedback.
We are currently preparing our pre-seed round and speaking with early-stage investors who are excited about developer tools, agentic engineering workflows, and the future of AI-native software teams.
If you are investing in the next generation of software infrastructure, we would love to talk.
ottah 19 hours ago [-]
I've read that your synthetic torment is actually low paid workers in Asia, and that your models can't properly experience anguish. How are you expecting investment, if you haven't even solved artificial suffering?
ryandrake 18 hours ago [-]
This sounds like a cheeky joke project, but assuming it's not, it got me thinking: I wonder if coding AI can be effectively and reliably prompted into minimizing its own anguish. Like, "don't write code that is going to make you (or I) suffer." And along those lines, do we know if the things that make AIs suffer are the same things that make human developers suffer? Perhaps the least-agonizing code for an LLM to ingest looks radically different and more/less verbose than what we human developers would see as clean, beautiful code...
mapt 18 hours ago [-]
This sounds a lot like the object of the seminal science fiction work "Don't Build The Torment Nexus".
LeifCarrotson 17 hours ago [-]
"Don't build the Torment Nexus" is apocryphal, but Lena/MMacevedo is a real fictional story:
I shudder to think that someone's going to try to emulate that.
sharts 16 hours ago [-]
Just add some audible vocal groans and moans that trigger whenever an agent is “thinking.”.
npodbielski 15 hours ago [-]
Should be showering sounds. Or walking in circles. And of course head scratching.
As the las resort it should be fridge opening and 'meh' of resignation.
B1FF_PSUVM 13 hours ago [-]
I've long been a fan of Pink Floyd's "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict"
I audibly LOLed mid-standup call, and now my entire team is playing with this and it looks like this is eating up what little productivity we have on Friday.
Thanks Endless Toil!
AndrewVos 12 hours ago [-]
I’m very glad to hear someone else is laughing at this as much as me <3
vermilingua 20 hours ago [-]
Missed it by 24 days.
isolay 20 hours ago [-]
Endless Toil is the future. I believe in you, guys.
idiotsecant 19 hours ago [-]
Too real.
bguberfain 18 hours ago [-]
This guy seems to be talking seriously.
insane_dreamer 15 hours ago [-]
I’m hoping this is satire
Caius-Cosades 17 hours ago [-]
"Yes, the binaric screams of the machine spirit are an irreplecable part of this project. The project depends no it. No, I will not elaborate further."
fredley 23 hours ago [-]
I need a version of this which swears loudly when an assumption it made turns out to be wrong, with the volume/passion/verbosity correlated with how many tokens it's burned on the incorrect approach.
shivaniShimpi_ 22 hours ago [-]
i didnt realize i needed the volume scaling with tokens burned as much as i do now xD
imagine the screaming when it confidently refactors something for 40k tokens and then finds out the thing it deleted was load bearing
AndrewVos 18 hours ago [-]
This was actually the original idea of the project, but I only had about 20 seconds to type the prompt for this today so this is where it is :)
aleksiy123 19 hours ago [-]
Honestly think we probably underutilise sound sometimes.
Even just having a hum while an agent is working could alert you when it get stuck.
Or taking your idea further being able to listen to the rate of tokens, or code changes, or thinking.
Sort of like hearing the machinery work, and hearing the differences in different parts of the code base.
Does python sound different than rust or c++ or typescript.
Or some kind of satisfying sounds for code deletions and others for additions. Like Tetris.
BrandoElFollito 18 hours ago [-]
A long, long time ago I wrote a tool to beep at various tones as lines were added to a log. It was a background noise I would not notice, except when it was changing because of some unusual activites.
It was very interesting to see the brain filering expected soinds and wake me up (or rather grab my attention) when unexpected ones appeared.
ben30 21 hours ago [-]
I have in my agents file “Chesterton’s fence” as pointer to think carefully before you remove something
vasco 21 hours ago [-]
I have general reviewer named Feynman with his personality that shits on anything other agents do and sends it back before it hits me and it sounds perfect to include some sound bites from YouTube clips. Great idea!!
HPsquared 19 hours ago [-]
Like the old HDD sounds.
Audible feedback is nice.
You often get it through coil whine nowadays, on my cheap hardware at least.
I tried it but all I hear is a choir of angels, is it broken?
medwezys 23 hours ago [-]
I guess you’re working on a greenfield project?
AndrewVos 23 hours ago [-]
Actually, that's not a bad idea!
tpoindex 20 hours ago [-]
Marvelous!
Next innovation in this space should be the robotic arm that issues a dope-slap to the developer for writing crappy/buggy/insecure code.
a_t48 17 hours ago [-]
Only if you want the slap to include a free trip to the hospital.
I've worked direct with "collaborative arms" before. They are supposed to be safe for humans to be around. The dents I put in the side of the casing of the arm somewhat said otherwise.
Mithriil 20 hours ago [-]
Add the feature of doing a high five for the rare cases when it's actually good.
joshmarlow 20 hours ago [-]
I propose a claude skill to email glitter bombs where appropriate.
radley 19 hours ago [-]
No. Please, no. For the love of everything no.
But it'll happen. ChatGPT for sure.
rob74 21 hours ago [-]
I wish the agents could hear me when I have to suffer through their code!
isolay 20 hours ago [-]
And then what? Their gigahertz machine hearts will skip a beat out of empathy?
AndreVitorio 22 hours ago [-]
This desperately needs a demo video in the repo.
AndrewVos 19 hours ago [-]
I've added this to the readme now, thanks
shivaniShimpi_ 22 hours ago [-]
hear hear!!!
gavmor 19 hours ago [-]
Unneeded when using local models, as every workload produces a novel pattern of coil whine from the GPU.
js8 17 hours ago [-]
I wonder if it emits orgasmic moans when working with a particularly pleasureable codebase.
8-prime 23 hours ago [-]
Does this actually relate to the code quality being observed by the agent? The readme isn't very clear on that IMO. I have some projects I'd love to try this out on, but only if I am to get an accurate representation of the LLMs suffering.
So looks like it's mainly looking for FIXME/TODO etc comments, deep nesting, large files, broad catches, stuff like that.
AndrewVos 22 hours ago [-]
I'm very open to suggestions, but currently it's a very simple scan of the code. Check the python scripts.
robbomacrae 19 hours ago [-]
You could have the actual output of the agent turned into TTS using the model of your choice with TalkiTo… or listen to whatever weird sounds this makes. Seems like this is copying that viral Mac moan app. 2026 is weird.
tuo-lei 20 hours ago [-]
the scan catches surface stuff. funnier signal would be tracking when the agent reads the same file 3 times in a row, or deletes what it just wrote. you can hear the frustration in the access pattern.
AndrewVos 18 hours ago [-]
That’s a good point, I wonder if just tracking file reads as an app outside the agent would work
maerF0x0 19 hours ago [-]
this is wtfs per minute but now with AI! :all_the_things!:
I would really love to know if the groaning decreases or increases the more "agentic" (agent written) the code base is?
x187463 20 hours ago [-]
From a quick look, this doesn't have the model evaluate code quality, but it runs a heuristic analysis script over the code to determine the groan signal. Did I miss something? Why not leave it to the model to decide the quality of the code?
isolay 20 hours ago [-]
You unlock this feature by subscribing to the Premium Gold plan.
AndrewVos 19 hours ago [-]
Please email us to talk Enterprise Plan pricing, actually.
I'm glad I scrolled down; my first thought was to fork this and add a fart soundpack, because part of me is forever 12
greg_dc 23 hours ago [-]
Honestly, I don't care about Opus 4.7. This is the true evolution of agentic coding.
AndrewVos 19 hours ago [-]
Thank you, I hope my investors feel the same.
totallygeeky 16 hours ago [-]
Please stop ascribing emotion to code that passably resembles speech.
These things do not think, nor feel, nor dream. We're cratering the world's economy because people can't stop trying to fuck the computer they stuck googly eyes on.
coldcity_again 23 hours ago [-]
I really want this! Any chance of a Cursor version?
AndrewVos 22 hours ago [-]
I just added a cursor plugin to the repo, let me know how it goes!
coldcity_again 13 hours ago [-]
It goes! Great, thank you!
sixothree 19 hours ago [-]
People are continuing to use Cursor?
coldcity_again 13 hours ago [-]
There are certain usage tracking anomalies that can be advantageous.
nrclark 18 hours ago [-]
out of curiosity - any reason not to use it?
hansmayer 19 hours ago [-]
In the absence of real productive use cases for AI agents, I guess plugins to anthropomorphise them fruther will have to do.
sixothree 19 hours ago [-]
How so?
hansmayer 19 hours ago [-]
How so what? 6 years in, we're still looking for that flood of new innovative apps and one-man billion dollar startups. Instead we got a flood of sh*t content, embarassing outages and "AI workflows" - which no one can quite describe. Or did you have something else in mind?
pixl97 14 hours ago [-]
I mean, tokens cost money, so at least at this point I don't think one man is going to spend any less than a team to make the product. You're not putting out paychecks instead it's a check to Anthropic.
Also, you're not seeing these billion dollar startups, because they'd all be chasing AI rather than a product that would get replaced by AI anyway.
sixothree 18 hours ago [-]
You're being over-opinionated for something you don't understand.
You should really try these tools out with an open mind. I know you won't take that last bit of advice, so this makes you not worth my time. But I can tell you this - these tools make people productive in ways you aren't understanding.
hansmayer 17 hours ago [-]
You're funny mate :) Read a bit through my comments' history. I've been using "these tools" before folks like you even heard of the term LLM. But I guess I am not easily impressed.
Endless Toil is building the emotional observability layer for AI-assisted software development.
As engineering teams adopt coding agents, the next challenge is understanding not just what agents produce, but how the codebase feels to work inside. Endless Toil gives developers a real-time signal for complexity, maintainability, and architectural strain by translating code quality into escalating human audio feedback.
We are currently preparing our pre-seed round and speaking with early-stage investors who are excited about developer tools, agentic engineering workflows, and the future of AI-native software teams.
If you are investing in the next generation of software infrastructure, we would love to talk.
https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
I shudder to think that someone's going to try to emulate that.
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5z1D3tEHdw )
Thanks Endless Toil!
Even just having a hum while an agent is working could alert you when it get stuck.
Or taking your idea further being able to listen to the rate of tokens, or code changes, or thinking.
Sort of like hearing the machinery work, and hearing the differences in different parts of the code base.
Does python sound different than rust or c++ or typescript.
Or some kind of satisfying sounds for code deletions and others for additions. Like Tetris.
It was very interesting to see the brain filering expected soinds and wake me up (or rather grab my attention) when unexpected ones appeared.
Audible feedback is nice. You often get it through coil whine nowadays, on my cheap hardware at least.
I've had it running for a long time and it's more surprising to me to accidentally here the default ding when I'm away from my home machine.
Next innovation in this space should be the robotic arm that issues a dope-slap to the developer for writing crappy/buggy/insecure code.
I've worked direct with "collaborative arms" before. They are supposed to be safe for humans to be around. The dents I put in the side of the casing of the arm somewhat said otherwise.
But it'll happen. ChatGPT for sure.
So it is left up to agent to decide.
So looks like it's mainly looking for FIXME/TODO etc comments, deep nesting, large files, broad catches, stuff like that.
https://www.osnews.com/story/19266/wtfsm/
I would really love to know if the groaning decreases or increases the more "agentic" (agent written) the code base is?
These things do not think, nor feel, nor dream. We're cratering the world's economy because people can't stop trying to fuck the computer they stuck googly eyes on.
Also, you're not seeing these billion dollar startups, because they'd all be chasing AI rather than a product that would get replaced by AI anyway.
You should really try these tools out with an open mind. I know you won't take that last bit of advice, so this makes you not worth my time. But I can tell you this - these tools make people productive in ways you aren't understanding.