Agentic coding workflows

[gorangrooves]

@Christoph-Hart When I started using ChatGPT to help me scale and optimize scripts in HISE over 2 years ago, I foresaw the very thing you are describing now as the future of HISE. I never got around to writing a post of my vision.

I didn't come to HISE because i wanted to learn coding. I had to grasp coding in order to make the instruments I wanted to make. Whatever is the most practical approach to archive a goal is the one I use.

I am delighted to hear about this new direction and the progress you are making. The more of a seamless, logical, frictionless, straightforward experience you make for us using HISE, the better the platform is. I'll code what I can when I have to, but I'm not here to code.

Ai has been an indispensable help for me with web stuff as well, helping me troubleshoot, fix, clean and optimize things.

Good on you, Christoph, for moving into this direction.

[Bart]

@Christoph-Hart said in Agentic coding workflows:

I'm pretty confident that I'm 80% there with the MCP server and the latest models

Hi Christoph.

Is there something ready to test regarding this?

With simple instruction for use with Google's Antigravity if possible..

[Christoph Hart]

@Bart yes the MCP server and LSP servers are fully functional, but I‘m only using Opencode with Claude here so I can‘t say how it works with Googles toolkit.

[Sifres]

@Christoph-Hart

Really nice work man! Gonna play around with it. Its already mouthing me off on button placement

[dannytaurus]

@Christoph-Hart How are you finding Opencode? I'm trying out a few but haven't landed on one I like best yet.

Cursor: love the chat history and better context management, but steering messages are janky
Claude Code: like the simplicity of single terminal window but not really the resulting view
Codex: love the split chat/diff layout and it has chat/task history too, best so far for me

Haven't tried Opencode yet. Looks a lot like Claude Code in layout and style.

[David Healey]

@dannytaurus I'm also thinking of trying the integration in Zed
So many choices, so little time.

[Lindon]

@David-Healey @dannytaurus .. Im just going to wait until you all decide what the best one then use that....

[Christoph Hart]

I actually haven't tried anything else than opencode - it sometimes crashes after sessions but that's the only thing that annoys me, the rest is close to perfection for my taste.

I just noticed that anything lower than Opus 4.6 or equivalent models from competitors is complete trash for almost every task I threw at it - a notable mention goes out to GLM5, which they advertise as a replacement to opus-type models but it spectacularly failed with a simple and deterministic refactoring job.

[HISEnberg]

I finally had a chance to dig into the new setup this week and my head is still spinning with the possibilities. I agree with Christoph that there is something almost uncanny about Opus 4.6 (I'd add Sonnet 4.6 which I use for most tasks) when it comes to writing Hisescript and editing the source code. Next best models which I find produce useful enough results are GPT-5.4, and Gemini's new multimodal embedding model has piqued my interest as well.

It's still early days of trying out different workflows but what does everyone's setup look like currently? Are you still using the HISE script editor or do you find working out of a separate IDE more convenient at this point? I've been using Visual Studio for the most part launching Claude Code or Codex in Terminal. Admittedly, I still find HISE script editor too useful to completely separate with it...

On another, note how are you all getting along with specific HISE projects at this stage? One thing I am noticing is how much more aggressive Claude code can be on token usage if you don't prompt and direct it right. Previously I would consolidate all necessary information (Scripts, xmls, Dsp Files, scope of work, bug checklist, etc.) along with specific examples, API documentation, or source code from HISE, and create a new project with an LLM. This seems to have the added benefit of keeping the model more focused, faster, use less resources, and most importantly, retain memory. The main drawbacks are lack of project/HISE context and lack of writing to project.

So the MCP server approach does allow for read/write to the project and clearly performs significantly better, but requires careful prompting and project context to avoid significant token usage. Figuring out the right balance between comprehensive context and efficiency is the real challenge for me moving forward. I imagine this just boils down to reformatting my setup to include the right sort of skill, tools and spawning subagents in the right context.

I'll have to try out opencode as Chrsitoph suggests and using this to make edits to the HISE source code are next on my bucket list as well!

[Christoph Hart]

@HISEnberg I'm trying to optimize the MCP server for token usage and it's highly more efficient than a web search of eg. the HISE docs - eg. the current scripting API enrichment pipeline that maxes out my 200$ claude max subscription within a few days creates a highly concise LLM summary for each class that strips all the fillers that humans need to parse text.

The MCP resources are also structured in a nested hierarchy - so there is a general coding style doc, a coding style documentation for LAF / ScriptPanels, etc. and you can instruct the LLM to only pull in the resource it needs for the job.

Are you still using the HISE script editor or do you find working out of a separate IDE more convenient at this point?

Funnily the side-effect of writing a LSP server that the LLMs can use to lint HiseScript was that vibecoding a VS-Code extension is pretty trivial - it can just reuse the same logic and all the heavy lifting (shadow parsing - multi-error diagnostics etc) is already implemented. As much as I love my little code editor in HISE, I think its days are numbered - it's just too tempting to pull in the industry standard code editors and the missing runtime inspection and integration with HISE was the only thing holding it back.

I'm currently also toying around with a TUI interface that connects to HISE with a REPL - from there you can just do stuff like :switch_project MyProject or builder add SineGenerator to Container - same concept: stuff that the LLM can use to remote control HISE can also be packaged into a nice experience for the human.

[David Healey]

@HISEnberg said in Agentic coding workflows:

Are you still using the HISE script editor

I'm still writing HISE script myself in the script editor. Other than complex look and feel and DSP I haven't found anywhere in my workflow where I think handing off the scripting to AI would help me. What kind of tasks are you using it for with regard to HISE script?