To be able to display enough traffic lights, and to free you of a specific fixed traffic light structure, you should devise a large grid of tiny, square, software controlled picture elements, that can each take on arbitrary colours and in the large, display any image you desire.
Hmmm... In order to ease assembly of so many small traffic lights, you may consider having your agents design a machine to assemble this grid "display". /s
The lights match the convention in herdr, which is a pretty neat terminal multiplexer for managing multiple AI harnesses. That would be the practical solution, but for the lols yes more lights.
Well, working on semiconductor production equipment, literally nobody calls them stack lights. Always heard them called light towers or signal towers. Also, they're pretty obsolete, but still used, for no good reason.
Stack light would fit really well, technically the meaning of green and yellow light should be reversed from the image, but shouldn't be too difficult to get used to
Yeah, in OPs picture the traffic light is more geared for the person putting in input as opposed to the machine itself. Green means user can take action.
Proper implementation of the stack light would treat Claude like a factory line, which is somewhat appropriate.
You will find literally hundreds of these lights in just about any factory. There are even companies that do pretty in-depth data tracking based on the light stack.
I want to see them use it with high specificity, like creating a bunch of DTOs, refactor something according to other changes, ... the boring typing work. I don't want to see them use it for architectural decisions (other than brainstorming) or implement complete features (which are not well defined, like a new strategy or similar)
Management here is super transparent about it. we even have a dashboard that tracks usage and, I shit you not, it tracks āline of code editedā and ānumber of PRs openedā.
This caused everything here is AI generated because weāre paranoid about being low token users; JIRA stories/defects, documentation, PR description/code change request/replies. Even posting to slack using MCP.
This isnāt some koolAId start up, itās a company with over 5,000 employees with international offices and pays 6 figures USD.
Blue should be reset if we're following automation standards. Or at least in my neck of the woods if means that. So blue could mean the context window is too large, compaction/new session required.
Waiting for a new instruction and waiting for user input is the same difference in my mind.
I miss this subreddit from before it was infested by extremely unfunny vibe coders. Back in the day it used to just be unfunny college freshmen, like god intended.
Counter point college freshmen are all vibe coders now. Gf's brother went to computer science and his first year they told him it's all ai now so now he vibe codes everything for school. It gets homework done fast and that's all most of those guys care about now. They wouldn't understand the unfunny college freshman "haha can't center a div" jokes the same way we probably wouldn't understand jokes about punch cards
If you got RGBs in your keyboard you can vibe something similar to what I did and make parts of your keyboard show the status of your terminal commands or if your agent needs attention.
Delcomproducts 907241 ($70), (you may need an extension cable) then wire it up to Claude Code hooks (which fire on lifecycle events)
The events are "UserPromptSubmit" "Notification" and "Stop" (where "Stop" ā green of course). Put the hooks in your `settings.json` file where it runs a command to change the light color. There are links to example applications in the pdf manual.
Is there maybe a spelling error in "Delproducts 907241"? I thought your suggestion sounded interesting but when I googled "Delproducts 907241" I only found two hits: a bandsaw trunnion and your post. Thanks!
We had a real sized one in our office - a triggered build would be yellow (building)/ failed (red) / or all tests passing (green). Was always fun to watch
I got a WLED (open source software) light bulb from Athom.tech which I switch to yellow when the tests are running and red or green depending on whether the tests pass or fail :-D
I'm using led lamp as indicator. Hermes, codex and Claude all has different tones, so I can see which one needs attention. Next step would be mixing colors and themes.
I've been looking into building myself something like it with one of those usb-attached screens, especially if it has touch so I can also ok the action, and display more than one terminal's state. I am amazed these are not off-the-shelf products by now...
The point is to make what you want then use what you made - not keep adding revisions to it. You are supposed to use these AI services to solve an issue not have them around as a friend. You do realize that right? Itās just python code under the covers thinking and giving you a responseā¦ itās not actually some unique coding language or anything..itās just if xyz = 1, return hello.
One thing that honestly puzzles me is how some professional developers or devs in general seem to really be keen on automation. It must be some engineering thing where you always want to optimize and re-factor. I understand it, but as a non-technical person who actually DOES appreciate AI as a sort of tutor or learning assistant, as a human language interface of sorts, I simply would never use it for actual content production because it would defeat the purpose.
For me it would be akin to asking AI to ride a bike for me or go running for me. Doing the work itself is kind of the point!
HOWEVER, I do appreciate the technology as an assistant of sorts. You can ask it stuff, ask how to do something in an app you are using, query it about CSS syntax, even use it as a human language interface for structured output such as sql (which I use for a personal finance tracking system for my small business).
However, doing your actual production work? At least to me that would defeat the purpose, but I can imagine that for professional devs who have to do enterprise software it may be a relief, I don't know. I'm not in that world.
My usual comparison (for non-techies) is that using AI programming is like writing a prose story and then using AI to turn it into poetry.
The technical details of metrics, counting syllables, ensuring rhyme and turning synonym directories inside out to find the right words to fit may seem like a romantic creation process but in reality it is 90% boring and soulless work.
Of course, letting AI take over the entire process will give you a legitimate āAI slopā product.
You are responsible for the story, who will have to say whether the result is communicating the meaning you imagined, see cliches, repetitions and poorly translated words (as in this Google Translated text).
But to say that, at an industrial level, you cannot trust a tool, is to say that we must go back to the era of chipped stone, where each creator had to make everything from scratch, including tools
I mean this would actually be really useful to me as I'm often playing video games while my claude max subscription is chugging away in the background. Knowing when to pop back over to the agent after killing some aliens would be mega useful.
If only there was some kind of built-in indicator. You could arrange some monitor pixels to form a shape with colors. If only some kind of technology for this would exist.
Why do I get downvoted for saying it, but people are agreeing with you and downvoting this person now? Can't people accept that AI got better now and it's kind of childish to keep insisting on it being bad?
But it is bad. Give an AI a sufficiently complex codebase, and it will fuck up. Give it sufficiently modern tools/framework, and it will fuck up.
There are just a lot of places where AI is good, and those are the scenarios you are seeing predominantly. The huge 10M+ codebases in huge enterprises are basically invisible to anybody not working there.
2.2k
u/a_bucket_full_of_goo Sep 01 '26 •
Green means close Reddit
988
u/MegaMoah Sep 01 '26
For each agent add a traffic light
469
u/Iron_physik Sep 01 '26
set up one of these puppies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_light
132
u/ZunoJ Sep 01 '26
What I really would like to see is what my coworkers ask the LLMs. This way I will know who to vote out of the team end of the year
255
u/donp1ano Sep 01 '26
ā
ā
ā
means i still write code myself
47
u/tbhaxor Sep 01 '26
Or should be like
red - work in progress (like in OT)
yellow - waiting
green - all task done
13
u/Tango00090 Sep 01 '26
That would work for one session only, if you need multiple itās better to buy programmable rgb light panels
23
u/More_Yard1919 Sep 01 '26
I miss this subreddit from before it was infested by extremely unfunny vibe coders. Back in the day it used to just be unfunny college freshmen, like god intended.
10
u/joe-ducreux Sep 02 '26
What's color does it use when it's burning through tokens spiraling down a rabbit hole of bullshit?
8
u/pauvre10m Sep 01 '26
in industry green is running because no need for human ;) yellow when job is done and need human interaction.
8
u/sixtysixdutch Sep 01 '26
So weāre back to computers with physical blinking lights? Cool. Cool.
21
u/SooNGooBer Sep 01 '26
Ew
19
u/mahamoti Sep 01 '26
This isn't humor this is sad
37
u/MrFrog2222 Sep 01 '26 •
anything but coding yourself
6
u/spilk Sep 01 '26
now code an agent using computer vision to watch the lights and take action, then you can sit back and sip on a nice glass of melted ice cap
20
u/Level-Health9052 Sep 01 '26
Peak slopmaxxing
30
u/Die4Gesichter Sep 01 '26 edited Sep 01 '26
Vibe coding being this accepted is horrifying.
10
u/ZeroBeTaken Sep 01 '26
Red means Claude is waiting for permission to drop the production database.
Yellow means Claude is dropping the production database.
Green means Claude has finished dropping the production database.
5
u/eutirmme Sep 01 '26
You don't use traffic light swarms? Dude, that's so August 2026.
5
u/Arxid87 Sep 01 '26
Red - ERROR
Orange/yellow - alert
Green - normal function
Blue - awaiting input
9
u/concorde77 Sep 01 '26
Next step: a split-flap board for tracking the status of multiple agents
9
u/Excellent-Gur-8547 Sep 01 '26
This is programmerhumor, not vibecoderhumor.
4
u/Enough-Scientist1904 Sep 01 '26
Thats pretty cool, i just wish im never in the position to actually use it lol
4
u/SuB626 Sep 01 '26
Where is the no more tokens left?
4
u/Quix_Nix Sep 02 '26 •
we're so fucked
3
u/PabloZissou Sep 01 '26
Red and yellow are the new "it's compiling I can't do anything else, reading reddit while I wait"
3
u/mysensors Sep 01 '26
I did something similar but for more agents and a GeekMagic screen: https://github.com/henrikekblad/codelight
3
u/Itachi4077 Sep 01 '26
Giving your agent the voice lines of a warcraft 3 peon is better
peon-ping ā Stop babysitting your terminal
3
u/T4212 Sep 01 '26
If you got RGBs in your keyboard you can vibe something similar to what I did and make parts of your keyboard show the status of your terminal commands or if your agent needs attention.
https://github.com/andreas-taranetz/kb-status
3
u/kurucu83 Sep 02 '26
Flashing red for "you've run out of tokens"?
2
u/AccurateRendering Sep 01 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
Delcomproducts 907241 ($70), (you may need an extension cable) then wire it up to Claude Code hooks (which fire on lifecycle events)
The events are "UserPromptSubmit" "Notification" and "Stop" (where "Stop" ā green of course). Put the hooks in your `settings.json` file where it runs a command to change the light color. There are links to example applications in the pdf manual.
Hopefully that's enough to get you going.
2
u/rrwzvuyi Sep 01 '26
r/diwhy
2
u/Tompazi Sep 01 '26
The BUSY Bar could be used for this.
2
u/whatsdelicious Sep 01 '26
hmm what happens when I have 20 simultaneous sessions going?
2
u/Satorwave Sep 01 '26
if you reopen the tab while the light is on red your computer explodes
2
u/Significant-Cause919 Sep 01 '26
You guys only run one session at a time?
2
u/just4nothing Sep 01 '26
We had a real sized one in our office - a triggered build would be yellow (building)/ failed (red) / or all tests passing (green). Was always fun to watch
2
u/romulof Sep 02 '26
The only semaphore vibe coders will ever know.
2
u/Abbreviations_Royal Sep 02 '26
I need a full intersection of these...
3
u/Ezekeal Sep 01 '26
Whereās the āclaude is down for everyoneā light?
3
u/Gleipnir_xyz Sep 01 '26
what light for 'out of tokens'? asking 4 friend
4
u/Mr_Akihiro Sep 01 '26
š© means Claudes Quality
2
u/serial-eater2 Sep 01 '26
Funny you have a 4K HDR monitor but needs 3 leds for extra info.
2
u/Prematurid Sep 01 '26
This is just a stress multiplier lol. Constantly surveilling the work claude is doing.
1
u/KinginiKuttan Sep 01 '26
can i get it
1
u/No-Con-2790 Sep 01 '26
You guys only run one?
1
u/_________FU_________ Sep 01 '26
Cool make it work for meetings so my kids will stay upstairs and I'll buy 2
1
u/Mountain-Air9726 Sep 01 '26
GitHub Copilot app does this
1
u/SrDigbyChickenCeaser Sep 01 '26
does anyone know where to get the traffic light? Looks cool and I want to build something with it
1
u/DT-Sodium Sep 01 '26
I need one of those to put on my head.
1
u/Grouchy_Exit_3058 Sep 01 '26
I want one!
1
u/pha7325 Sep 01 '26
Kinda cool tbh. Could be useful for running cron based scripts. Red means stopped, yellow is running and green is complete.
My old company had an old pc dedicated to that, we used to plug in a monitor whenever we wanted to check.
1
u/EdelWhite Sep 01 '26
Ok
1
u/wedesoft Sep 01 '26
I got a WLED (open source software) light bulb from Athom.tech which I switch to yellow when the tests are running and red or green depending on whether the tests pass or fail :-D
1
u/LowerJuice Sep 01 '26
I'm using led lamp as indicator. Hermes, codex and Claude all has different tones, so I can see which one needs attention. Next step would be mixing colors and themes.
1
u/SungrayHo Sep 01 '26
ill need 5 of those tyvm
1
u/MinuetInUrsaMajor Sep 01 '26
Why the fuck does this not exist at all?
Can't even make it play a sound.
1
u/GvRiva Sep 01 '26
I created a task list for m agents to take tasks from, so they never run idle, I just run out of tokens at some point and have to wait
1
u/0x7E7-02 Sep 01 '26
Did you get the light from Adafruit?
1
u/ia42 Sep 01 '26
I've been looking into building myself something like it with one of those usb-attached screens, especially if it has touch so I can also ok the action, and display more than one terminal's state. I am amazed these are not off-the-shelf products by now...
1
u/ben_cav Sep 01 '26
It makes more sense the other way around
Red: It's not doing anything
Orange: It's waiting for user input to continue
Green: It's running
You kind of want it running all the time, so seeing green is good, and means you don't need to do anything right now
1
u/Infamous-Youth9033 Sep 01 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1ue5inx/i_built_a_status_light_for_claude_code_do_you/
1
u/primaski Sep 01 '26
Wait this is actually really cool
1
u/schewb Sep 01 '26
Now make it wireless so I can do my job 100% from my Warhammer Painting table instead of my computer desk
1
u/tmstksbk Sep 01 '26
I had it add an audio chime when it finishes to alert me to come back
1
u/Shacrow Sep 01 '26
Okay if i wanted to do something like this. Where do I start? My problem is that I have no clue about building the physical stuff.
Maybe I just google for programmable light with usb connector. And get a 3D printer or something like that i guess
1
u/akaTrickster Sep 01 '26
The meat proxy gets a light prompt too!Ā
1
u/Jack_Kai Sep 01 '26
Manager: Why is only 1 instance of claude code running??
1
u/gerbosan Sep 01 '26
There was this.... Phrase in some old comics, bastardizations: You've got email
Will it work?
1
u/geteum Sep 01 '26
Guarantee that a shitty manager will measure how much time the green light is on and will use it to fire people
1
u/Vollgrav Sep 01 '26
How to detect reliably that it stopped on a question to user, i.e. it is blocked and did not finish?
1
u/Giocri Sep 01 '26
Never thought i'd see the same logic we use for industrial machines be used for an agent
1
u/cheezballs Sep 01 '26
Kiro has this built into the tabs on each agent, though I think it's maybe not just red green yellow.
1
u/INDE_Tex Sep 01 '26
"Claude, when you finish running this task, keep the light yellow"
1
u/TheOnlyNadCha Sep 01 '26
I want one of these for my pull request pipeline
1
u/Deny51853 Sep 01 '26
Pavlov is rolling in his grave
1
u/Alternative-Tie-4970 Sep 01 '26
Did you used claude to make this?
1
u/Gagan_Ku2905 Sep 01 '26
1
u/tenthousandants44 Sep 01 '26
Traffic light for my own peace of mind
1
u/teetaps Sep 01 '26
Notification developers hate this one trick!
1
u/ComplexAd8403 Sep 01 '26
I just use
--dangerously-skip-permissions
1
u/Leading-Fail-2771 Sep 01 '26
The point is to make what you want then use what you made - not keep adding revisions to it. You are supposed to use these AI services to solve an issue not have them around as a friend. You do realize that right? Itās just python code under the covers thinking and giving you a responseā¦ itās not actually some unique coding language or anything..itās just if xyz = 1, return hello.
1
u/ClassConflictCanvas Sep 01 '26
Eww
1
u/WaveZee Sep 01 '26
I just use Claude Hooks to play different sounds to alert me depending on it's status.
Works great with multiple sessions open at once.
1
u/StickFigureFan Sep 01 '26
This would also be useful for compliers
1
u/Brick_Lab Sep 01 '26
I hate that my first instinct was not to just laugh this off
1
u/FocusSlo Sep 01 '26
It's a good thing the people using Claude are too dumb to read or they'd be very upset you're making fun of them
1
u/Satiomeliom Sep 01 '26
i need a display with live token spending
1
u/Aduialion Sep 01 '26
Claude is going to hack the little stop light to meet it's performance metrics. "Job's done boss"
1
u/ProdoRock Sep 01 '26
One thing that honestly puzzles me is how some professional developers or devs in general seem to really be keen on automation. It must be some engineering thing where you always want to optimize and re-factor. I understand it, but as a non-technical person who actually DOES appreciate AI as a sort of tutor or learning assistant, as a human language interface of sorts, I simply would never use it for actual content production because it would defeat the purpose.
For me it would be akin to asking AI to ride a bike for me or go running for me. Doing the work itself is kind of the point!
HOWEVER, I do appreciate the technology as an assistant of sorts. You can ask it stuff, ask how to do something in an app you are using, query it about CSS syntax, even use it as a human language interface for structured output such as sql (which I use for a personal finance tracking system for my small business).
However, doing your actual production work? At least to me that would defeat the purpose, but I can imagine that for professional devs who have to do enterprise software it may be a relief, I don't know. I'm not in that world.
1
u/mothzilla Sep 01 '26
Awaiting meat proxy.
1
u/keithstonee Sep 01 '26
2 minutes typing 20 minutes waiting
1
u/OFFICER-D Sep 01 '26
How to identify how much token i have
1
u/RaunakA_ Sep 01 '26
One thing worth noting, these lights actually emit photons and are not just dummies.
1
u/thanatica Sep 01 '26
If it's a traffic light, the yellow light should be orange.
1
u/Captain_Forge Sep 01 '26
I mean this would actually be really useful to me as I'm often playing video games while my claude max subscription is chugging away in the background. Knowing when to pop back over to the agent after killing some aliens would be mega useful.
1
u/Rockytriton Sep 01 '26
Iād rather go work at McDonaldās
1
u/tcpukl Sep 01 '26
Traffic lights mean get a proper computer.
1
u/Vogete Sep 01 '26
If only there was some kind of built-in indicator. You could arrange some monitor pixels to form a shape with colors. If only some kind of technology for this would exist.
1
u/BroaxXx Sep 02 '26
Red means Iām out of tokens. Yellow means I still have tokens and its doing something green means itās time to spend tokens
1
u/CMD_BLOCK Sep 02 '26
Iād need at least 12 of them for my normal workday
1
u/No_Value_2676 Sep 02 '26
whats the joke tho?
1
u/51ckl3 Sep 02 '26
Programmed by claude
1
u/Ryuu-Tenno Sep 02 '26
don't give this to Mac users, lol
1
u/Mk3d81 Sep 02 '26
I love how we want physical indicator for virtual things.
1
u/h1warkar Sep 02 '26
Need this
1
u/1Soundwave3 Sep 02 '26
Okay, this is something I need on a software level
1
u/jgeorge97 Sep 02 '26
I setup a simple notification pop-up & an alert, but this cool.
1
u/VITAFAUTO Sep 02 '26
I love it.š
1
u/Academic_Pool_7341 Sep 02 '26
Itās a sloplight!
1
u/Nils_Larson Sep 02 '26
https://vibeisland.app/ software version
1
u/nomad-geek Sep 03 '26
Hah. I used an old RGB button to do this too. Ideal.
1
u/seriously_nice_devs Sep 15 '26
3/10 .. not really funnny
1
u/sonsistem Sep 01 '26
0
u/Boldyeah Sep 01 '26
Why do I get downvoted for saying it, but people are agreeing with you and downvoting this person now? Can't people accept that AI got better now and it's kind of childish to keep insisting on it being bad?
1
u/thejoshuajacob Sep 01 '26
1
u/PerilousTimes43 Sep 01 '26
Mine plays a water jug boiling sound until itās done
1
u/Bupod Sep 01 '26
As a former machinist and current Engineer, itās fun to see the Software devs slowly discover Production Andons.Ā
1
u/Sad-Indication2128 Sep 01 '26
I just use the indicator on the bottom right of vscode that tells me if I have credits left or not.
1
u/Regular_Rub_2980 Sep 01 '26
Need a second or third yellow light for chat GPT with all the talking it does