Comment by ATechGuy
1 day ago
> They fail because the environment is flaky: missing deps, slow setup, weird state, unclear feedback loops.
Why can't agents install missing deps based on the error message?
1 day ago
> They fail because the environment is flaky: missing deps, slow setup, weird state, unclear feedback loops.
Why can't agents install missing deps based on the error message?
They often try, but two things bite in practice:
- Permissions and sandbox limits. Many agents don’t run on a dev’s laptop with admin access They run in the cloud or in locked down sandboxes: no sudo, restricted filesystem, restricted network egress. So “just install it” is sometimes not allowed or not even possible.
- It is a token and time sink and easy to go down the wrong path. Dependency errors are noisy: missing system libs, wrong versions, build toolchain issues, platform quirks. Agents can spend a lot of iterations trying fixes that don’t apply, or that create new mismatches.
Repo ready environments don’t replace agents installing deps. They just reduce how often they have to guess.