Show HN: Biggles, a coding assistant you can talk to

3 points by jpallen 2 years ago · 1 comment · 2 min read

Hi HN,

I created Biggles last weekend to let me speak out loud to VS Code and have ChatGPT translate my instructions into code changes.

For a lot of code I write I am fluent enough that translating my high-level intention into code doesn't break my out of the flow. But if I hit something I'm not immediately sure how to do, I can just open Biggles and start thinking out loud about. With the OpenAI Whisper and GPT4 APIs, it's surprisingly good at inserting the bit of code I want. This lets me stay in the flow at of thinking about what I want to implement, not how I want to implement it.

I find that it's easier for me to just start talking, and I don't have to think too much about what I want to say. If I need to translate my instruction into text first, that requires more thought. Maybe that's just me though, and there's a text mode option available. Might be useful in open plan offices!

I've not been using Biggles long for any real work, so I'm still iterating on it, but I'd love to know what you think and if you find it useful!

The extension is MIT licensed (https://github.com/jpallen/biggles), but you need to provide your own OpenAI API key at the moment. Keep an eye on costs, because GPT4 is quite expensive! You can switch to GPT3.5 for a cheaper but less good option.