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Comment by asveikau

4 days ago

> Set up Clop to optimise any PNG that I drop in my website assets folder and convert to a webp with the same name near it

This seems like exactly the sort of thing I've done with shell scripts or even makefiles.

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asveikau

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alin23  4 days ago

Nothing in there is innovative or unattainable, Clop uses open source tools behind the scenes anyway so obviously you can replicate it with scripts.

But this is for people that already use the app, researchers, writers, students, people that aren't necessarily comfortable with a terminal. And given Clop already implements the basics: an efficient file events watcher, tuned encoders for the Mac silicon, fail safe backups and UI for seeing the result and interacting with it in real time, it has advantages over trying to do it yourself.

  • asveikau  4 days ago

    I'm not intending to denigrate your tool. I'm just commenting on the "look at how we go full circle" aspect.

    I will point out that the shell script way uses less resources than an LLM making a tool call. But I understand that these scenarios are not necessarily meant for the same user.

    • alin23  4 days ago

      No offense taken, I can see the irony myself :)

      Oh for sure, I would prefer to have the automations as invisible things running at the system level, doing exactly what I want and nothing else, not wasting resources on UIs and event watchers I might not need. I would get rid of my own apps if that was easy to do.

      But it seems we need to waste some resources to get some usability in return.

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kccqzy  4 days ago

I used to do that using the macOS builtin Folder Actions. People forget these exist. Pure GUI.