Huntley proposes using Nix and agents to patch software
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At AI DevCon New York, Geoffrey Huntley argued that the answer to agents accelerating security incidents is engineering, not more AI. He demonstrated using a Nix overlay to patch git to disable force push, and having the same definition generate developer machines, CI/CD, agent sandboxes, and production Docker images, so that transitive dependencies such as OpenSSL are automatically rebuilt. This is the claim and demonstration Huntley presented in his talk; the report does not provide validation of the approach's effectiveness in actual deployment.
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- Hacker News AIThe answer to AI is engineering
In a talk at AI DevCon New York, Geoffrey Huntley argues that responding to the recent wave of security incidents calls for engineering rather than more AI, using Nix overlays to patch software such as git and OpenSSL from a single source of truth. He describes using devenv to generate developer laptops, CI/CD, agent sandboxes and production Docker images, and an AGENTS.md reminder trick to back out temporary patches. A bonus section covers running agent loops as root only in throwaway Nix sandboxes, back pressure through hooks and static analysis, and property-based testing with Bombadil and Hegel.
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