[thatjoeoverthr]

In game design we used to call this opacity “hunt the verb” in text adventures.

All chat bots suffer this flaw.

GUIs solve it.

CLIs could be said to have it, but there is no invitation to guess, and no one pretends you don’t need the manual.

[QuercusMax]

For CLIs - most reasonable commands either have a `-h`, `--help`, `-help`, `/?`, or what have you. And manpages exist. Hunt the verb isn't really a problem for CLIs.

And furthermore - aren't there shells that will give you the --help if you try to tab-complete certain commands? Obviously there's the issue of a lack of standardization for how command-line switches work, but broadly speaking it's not difficult to have a list of common (or even uncommon) commands and how their args work.

(spends a few minutes researching...)

This project evidently exists, and I think it's even fairly well supported in e.g. Debian-based systems: https://github.com/scop/bash-completion.

[bangonkeyboard]

> For CLIs - most reasonable commands either have a `-h`, `--help`, `-help`, `/?`, or what have you. And manpages exist. Hunt the verb isn't really a problem for CLIs.

"Hunt the verb" means that the user doesn't know which commands (verbs) exist. Which a neophyte at a blank console will not. This absolutely is a problem with CLIs.

[nextaccountic]

> And manpages exist.

For older tools, sure. Newer tools eschew man pages and just offer some help flag, even though there are excellent libraries that generate manpages like https://crates.io/crates/clap_mangen or https://crates.io/crates/mandown (for Rust, but I am sure most languages have one) without requiring you to learn troff.

[thatjoeoverthr]

All of this is true. “Invitation to guess” is the key phrase in my comment. CLIs present as cryptic, which is a UX _advantage_ over chat wrappers because the implied call to action is “go do some reading before you touch this”.

An AI wrapper typically has few actual capabilities, concealed behind a skeuomorphic “fake person” UX. It may have a private list of capabilities but it otherwise doesn’t know if it knows something or not and will just say stuff.

It really needs to be 100% before it’s useful and not just frustrating.

[dhussoe]

the comment you're replying to said:

> but there is no invitation to guess, and no one pretends you don’t need the manual

which is basically what you're saying too? the problem with voice UIs and some LLM tools is that it's unclear which options and tools exist and there's no documentation of it.

[PunchyHamster]

CLI + small LLM (I am aware of the oxymoron) trained on docs could be fun

[bmandale]

If you like deleting all your files, sure. LLMs, especially small ones, have far too high a propensity for consequential mistakes to risk them on something like that.

[xnx]

The lack of an advertised set of capabilities is intentional so that data can be gathered on what users want the system to do (even if it can't). Unfortunately, this is a terrible experience for the user as they are frustrated over and over again.

[setr]

Given that they made no apparent use of such information in practice, the unfortunate thing is that they had the idea to begin with.

[sakesun]

That's explain why there is a limited set of recommended verbs in PowerShell.

[_ikke_]

Instead, you get to hunt the nouns.

[esafak]

It's called discoverability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discoverability

[pxtail]

Very well written, I'm wondering when current "cli haxxxor assistant" FAD will fade away and focus will move into proper, well thought out and adjusted to changed paradigm IDEs instead of wasting resources. Well, maybe not completely wasting as this is probably still part of discovery process.

[bane]

A lot of AI models also suffer this flaw.

[pixl97]

>GUIs solve it.

Very charitable, but rarely true.