{"id":"2087569590268391897","url":"https://x.com/dexhorthy/status/2087569590268391897","text":"","author":{"name":"dex","username":"dexhorthy","avatarUrl":"https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1936650128518938624/tCFV_MZO_200x200.jpg"},"createdAt":"Wed Aug 12 15:59:10 +0000 2026","engagement":{"replies":53,"retweets":302,"likes":3976,"views":708415},"article":{"title":"/show-me: compact visual representations for coding agents","previewText":"tl;dr make your agent converse visually instead of in walls of prose.\n \nLighter and faster than HTML, good enough for most dev-work shaped problems.\n \nCoding agents are pretty much unreadable\nThe","coverImageUrl":"https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPeiYIRbkAA4h04.png","content":"tl;dr make your agent converse visually instead of in walls of prose.\n\nLighter and faster than HTML, good enough for most dev-work shaped problems.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPejmh_aUAEcc2A.jpg)\n\n## Coding agents are pretty much unreadable\n\nThe former CEO of reddit:\n\nMario Zechner, creator of pi:\n\nConnor from Replicas:\n\nDillon Mulroy even made a skill *popularlized a skill from @backnotprop to ask the model to simplify language.\n\nThe contents are:\n\n> Restate your last message. Stop using jargon and speak coherently. \nState it more simply and concisely, like one human talking to another.\n\n## i am so sick of this\n\nagents got more intelligent on paper, but the experience of using them got noticeably worse along this dimension\n\nthe thing people used to love about claude - its voice, it's personality, its \"soul\" has been flushed out in the RL dungeon\n\nsol is somewhat less cringe but still regularly hits us with walls of jargon that make eyes glaze over\n\nhere's a response i got recently. this happens multiple times a day\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPer01fbwAAIwl2.jpg)\n\n## my proposal: show me\n\nWe've been playing with internal tools to make this better, specifically for coding, and publishing them in a skill we call show-me.\n\nIt's live in humanlayer today, and if you want it in any other coding agent - you can get it here:\n\nOr, get the built-in humanlayer version that includes inline html and diagrams first-class:\n\nIf you ever watched [coda hale's talk on intuition vs. attention in infrastructure systems](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_6gkfTomUQ), it's somewhat inspired:\n\n- analyzing information is hard and exhausting\n\n- your visual cortex was trained over millions of years to process rich visual information effortlessly\n\n- optimize tools accordingly\n\n> Just as an axe must fit the human hand to be useful, software must fit the human mind to be useful\n\n/show-me prompts the agent to use concise visuals to explain what's happening, instead of walls of prose.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPesLgwaYAATJ0m.jpg)\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPesQk3aAAAhxT0.jpg)\n\nThis is really good for [program design](https://hlyr.dev/wsff-gh#program-design) - the phase many folks skip these days, but that I think is essential. You should be discussing the shape of the code (the types, the signatures, the call stacks) before agents get to work on writing it.\n\nThe same techniques can also be used to explore large diffs post-hoc to understand what to dig into during review.\n\n## What's inside\n\n## component trees\n\nSame idea on the frontend, with the state hooks and module boundaries that matter kept in and everything else left out.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPesllbaMAAmWI1.jpg)\n\nI shared this one on twitter back in December 2025:\n\n## call stacks\n\nFor orchestration or control-flow work, or just any backend-shaped problem, dillon gave us this \"call stack\" shape.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPesuB8acAA1PnI.png)\n\nTanishq even wrote a tool to compute them straight from the AST\n\n## diagrams\n\nA classic. If your chat interface supports inline mermaid, these can help a lot. (Sometimes they're still slop, but it's usually better than reading words)\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPetFQTaIAAeegr.jpg)\n\nLots of options here. we like state diagrams and sequence diagrams the most.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPetMlXbYAAf6Ep.jpg)\n\n## file layouts\n\nA shallow file tree, one line of responsibility per entry. Good for \"where does this live\" and for scoping a refactor.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPetTyWbMAE2cM-.png)\n\n## pseudocode\n\nEspecially for algorithmic stuff, pseudocode can be more concise.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPetXwjbQAATotJ.png)\n\n## types and signatures\n\nThe shape of the code before any of it exists - the stuff that's too internal for an architecture doc but that an agent can still get wrong.\n\n## diff syntax\n\nYou can also use diff syntax for this, if most of the content is unchanged:\n\nFor a component change:\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPetk7dbgAAiU23.jpg)\n\nFor a call-tree change:\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPetpZqaEAAX1jy.png)\n\nFor a file-layout change:\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPettIVbIAAiTjl.png)\n\nAnd for a state or control-flow change, where the shape is pseudocode rather than real code:\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPetwJXbkAAV8XW.png)\n\n## html mockups\n\nHTML has replaced figma for a lot of our prototyping work. (tbh i never really was super handy with figma anyway)\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPetypDbcAAklNJ.jpg)\n\n## html diagrams\n\nSometimes a diagram or explainer is what you need.\n\nIn [humanlayer](https://humanlayer.com/) we let the agent include HTML directly in assistant responses.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPet2gdaQAAqlVT.png)\n\nBut you can also just open it in your browser.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPet5jdaEAAcl7Q.jpg)\n\n## other inspiration\n\nI also wanna hat tip @mattpocockuk for the html explainers that are generated by his /teach skill - very good.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HPeuAV2aQAAsh0O.jpg)\n\n## go try it\n\nAfter installing the skill, invoke /show-me or ask the agent to use the show-me skill. Point it at a route, service, feature, pull request, or current topic, or just use it to ask the model to restate a question or statement.\n\n> this is too much content. show me.\n\nor\n\n> /show-me as an html explainer\n\nLet us know what you think! Tag @humanlayer_dev or @dexhorthy on with your results or what you customized/added and let's riff!"},"adhxContext":{"savedByCount":1,"publicTags":[],"previewUrl":"https://adhx.com/dexhorthy/status/2087569590268391897"}}