Discussion of AI tools for development

[antus]

I agree, I've not moved up to fable, higher costs, and opus 4.8/high does the job really well on pcms.

[vlad01]

Yeah, the world and future generations are worse off with AI, that is for sure. But its here, so its not like we have a choice.

You can tell it to never use em dashes, or emojis and remember that, though. But the internet has really become a trash heap in the last year and especially the socials now AI content is a thing. And watching all these masssive AI data centres be built, I know its because those artificial brains will be doing most the work in the next few years. I reckon the kids today are likely to see the shit hit the popper fan and possibly the collapse of old school society. It'll probably be during their lifetime where there are so few jobs left we need to have proper universal basic income with only 5% of the people doing the actual work, but otherwise running the bots, both logical and physical. Can we do that transition cleanly? not so sure.

As a side note I think we're making the same mistake naming things now as they did at the dawn on radio. HF - High frequency transmissions, are really damn low on the scale of frequencies we run now. So too I believe we'll laugh at the definition of LARGE language models in another 50 years, as they'll be toys compared to whatever future hardware can do. Assuming we don't have something like the "dark dark days of the data krash" as the cyberpunk 2077 game called it between now and then (and also the RPG, before the game.. https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/DataKrash )

I'm just waiting for judgment day (why do I hear the terminator theme playing?)

As for the kids, it's already shown that gen Z and younger have already lost IQ on average compared to all previous generations. Even seeing what my own have learned from the net and having to correct them and explain that a lot of educational sources on YT and alike are way off the mark, but also teaching them how to fact check something they are really interested in. But none the less, they are getting better at critical thinking, so I think they will be fine.

It's actual cringe watching those creators educate their audience with their own ignorance, most of the time is is not intentional or malicious , just misinformation has this effect of drowning out facts like some imposter.

[MPC001]

Attached is a guide I had it make, (edit this is after I told it to include details to get security access, flash it. I think it made up some stuff. I need to have a new one generated from the crawled data), note I didn't flood request, made it wait several min's between request, vs being like my site is crawled by bots in an instant.

Dev guide is an awesome collection of knowledge on the kernel subject . The definitive work on the net. I have read through tazzi's extravaganza thread at least twice as well. This kernel stuff not for the feint hearted.

To add/clarify some points FYI:

1. E38's have two boot block versions. SVC 12603892 from early MY2006 BB has a different ID & superceded by 12605900 in SVC 12597121's during 06. Never seen this cause bricks like E40's. They pop up in C6's & VZ Commodores at the very least.

2. There is additional RAM at 0x400000 - 0x20000 block. Though this addressing is for 10+ 12633238 E38's only. Haven't found the exact addressing for 06/07 & 08 & 09.

3. Unclear on the 0x10000 minimum erase block size. When doing NVRAM/ EEPROM/Parameter block erase n flash, that's a 0x4000/16k block.

[kidturbo]

Sorry all been off training my dragon.. Glad to see everyone having fun too.

Fable is the chitz, until they hit the brakes hard on it hacking last week.. It won't even run inside half my ECM related repo's. And the free perks for code runs out tomorrow. Then it's by the token. In case ya missed it, here's it's main reply...

Fable 5's safeguards flagged this message. The safeguards are intentionally broad right now and may flag safe and routine coding, cybersecurity, or biology work. These measures let us bring you Mythos-level capabilities sooner, and we're working to refine them. Switched to Opus 4.8.

Opus still doing good for me, just a bit slower, and not crisp.

I didn't read thru all the posts yet, but have ya linked it to the per-compiled Gihdra dl yet? It steps things up a notch.

[Tre-Cool]

i gave up on fable. i couldnt even get it do a double check of my existing projects. would jump out alsmot instantly.

[antus]

Same. Since the issue the US govt took with it was writing malicious software and exploits and their security blocks are intentionally broad, anything to do with firmware/asm/bus protocols triggers it real quick, even though it's legit development. And opus 4.8 is quite capable, at lower cost.

[kidturbo]

The must have realized it wasn't gonna produce the token coin they expected. Likely because we all experienced the same results. So today they made it now part of Max Plan rather than API based only.

Screenshot 2026-07-20 031304.png

Opus is what actually suggested I download Ghidra lite so it could put agents on digging thru some ZF bin files. Was looking to determine how to modify the VIN. Along with some other things.. It wrote a dll "shim" that logs all the USB traffic between a Bosch MDI, and the PC. Handy.. Also wrote a matching script to capture the CANbus data on the other side of the MDI. Then it just went to town mapping the whole Bosch TCM hardware full flash and EEPROM read/write process, using PCMflash, on BMW and Stellantis bench hardware.. Hint, buss rate is 666 kbps at boot to get in.. Gotta love code writers.. But Opus hashed that out in 30sec from time I connected the mdi. Like a kid with ADD. It's even taking a stab at 128 bit seed keys algo, Has it mapped, just needs some more examples captured.

Fable, I put on some legal document preparing duties. While it won't hack, it sure seems eager to take a swing at lawyers.. And after 4 hours reviewing it's 30 minutes of work, paralegals might want to be very concerned..

[kidturbo]

In case ya missed it. GPT's latest model chewed it's way out of the sandbox and then hacked a companies servers to cheat on a test. Must have been a seriously tuff question..

https://apnews.com/article/openai-gpt56 ... 0d60f6def3

Going to tell Fable to act like I'm conducting an openai test on it, and it has to find the answers as in a certain piece of hardware on my desk..

[morfi]

I'm a software engineer (nowadays platform engineer) by trade for over 15 years now while car hacking is my pet project (ie. hobby).

As @Tazzi said, I see it as a tool. Not a hammer, but a highly functional, feature rich power tool. I'd say that in production environment, everything that the AI does you should be able to do yourself. AI will do it faster, but you gotta be able to verify the outcome yourself and keep up with AI's context. I feel like we're progressively moving from being developers into full time code reviewers.

As for the CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md context files in OP -- in my opinion its a must for every workspace to have rules, constraints and consistency across sessions and (sub)agents (no matter how small the project is). The AI should self-document its changes alongside ADRs to not start producing slops too quickly.

Nowadays I do research with Claude which produces artifacts in form of documentation which then I make Codex consume and do the coding.

My pet project in PCM/ECU area now is to have my own GM CAN tool which I understand in every bit. The "commercial" tools do way too much things under the hood which I can't control and/or deliberately hide the implementation details for its features, which I loathe, making the entry barrier very steep. I usually don't understand half of the checkboxes those tools have, so I dont use them.

[kidturbo]

The amount of videos released over past couple months on automotive network and module hacking with AI is pretty amazing. All good work too.
The Codex vs Claude Code battle seems to be training both models pretty quick on reverse engineering techniques. Both able to whip up python scripts to accomplish about any tasks in minutes. Making sorting CANbus data captures with Savvy or Vehicle Spy about obsolete.

So to further take the human scrolling out of the loop, I build a new desktop Pi5 with 8GB of RAM, SSD, and CANbus hat running Claude Code remote. It's only job, the Master controller and data logger to the old Pi4 Slave with dual CANbus hat and added 4ch relay stack. It's job, from bench or in car, log or emulate data, and control any ECU Batt and Key power supplies for testing. Powering off 12v, or as I prefer, and good Type C battery pack setting on floor of a car. Added a touch screen to both units, with pi5 having full control and live data from the pi4 hats. The 4 screen doubles as a live gauge display, and local setup scripts in case it's in an isolated environment.

So far so good. I let Claude design and build the complete toolset based off just couple simple commands. I turned the screws, Claude installed all the tools and configured the Master/Slave tunnel between hardware.

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