I’m working on some applications that use LLM’s for some features, and everything you run yourself is 100% free:

https://circutforge.tech/

Source: https://git.opensourcesolarpunk.com/

Much participated on the advice!

For sure on the art. I’m a graphic artist by education and I’m already working with another full-time artist on the application logos. When I make enough I’m planning to hire a proper web developer for the frontend/web design as that’s onc area I do lean pretty heavy on the LLM’s for assistance.

Funny you should mention the AI vs LLM labeling as I much prefer to call them LLM’s or “models”, but I’m trying to keep it accessible for non-technical people. I think I’ll go back through and rename though.

Also most of the tools are deterministic, with the LLM’s filling in gaps where there needs to be some amount of probabilistic interaction, like figuring out what you could cook given only the ingredients in your pantry, or rewriting a resume 26 million ways to satisfy the ATS filters.

If you don’t want to use those features, nothing forcing you. They’re useful for tracking and organizing without the LLM at all.

I’m in the process of launching a new business as a single dev, and I want to be upfront about my use of AI, but I notice as soon as I mention any LLM, most people assume what I’ve built is “vibe coded” without even looking at the applications themselves.

I spent almost two months just setting up the devops side of things before I even considered publishing. Feedback buttons in the apps automatically open issues on my Forgejo, push mirrors to GitHub and Codeberg, and I do weekly progress reports internally (I stopped posting to Lemmy after people felt spammed and now I just post on the site blog)

I’m just not sure how to make it easy to tell that I’m actually putting my heart and soul into building software that should help people.

If curious: https://circuitforge.tech/

The loop in that article is deliberate. ATS exists to externalize the cost of screening onto applicants while giving employers plausible deniability about who gets filtered. The “objective” framing is the fraud. I built a tool for this (CircuitForge-Peregrine, open-core, local-first). Not because I think the system should exist, but because I kept watching people get filtered before any human ever saw their application. A lot of neurodivergent folks especially, people who interview brilliantly but get wrecked by the performance art of keyword optimization. Resume coaches and LinkedIn premium exist for people who can afford to play the game. Peregrine is for everyone else.

Using AI to survive AI screening is genuinely stupid and I don’t love it. But I’d rather the tool be free and local than have the only options be “pay someone” or “lose.”

Very cool! I’m actually interested in helping with testing and porting to other architecture. Made a comment on the open issue for ARM support, happy to open a PR if you’re interested

Basically for fun yes, gamifying development. Anyhoo yeah the idea is you would encounter bugs when discovering bugs or working on bugfix branches, and other types for a few other circumstances.

At the moment the only real rewards are having specific buddies you can assign to specific sessions or threads and they’ll chime in like the OG buddy system, level up based on goals accomplished, no real effect on the code itself, just emergent complexity from whatever the user is up to.

Just FYI, I’m not using LLMs for art apart from placeholders till I can hire someone or find and dust off my old copy of CS6 to start making my own assets. (Inkscape drives me nuts and nobody made a PhotoGIMP-like option for illustrator yet)

All the software I’m designing is deterministic and local first, LLMs and cloud dependencies as fallbacks or gap fillers. And nothing critical without a human to review, etc.