Google open-sources experimental agent orchestration testbed Scion (infoq.com)

91 points by timbilt 6 hours ago

hackerman70000 3 hours ago

Six months from now half of these abstractions will have been renamed or removed once real users push back on the cognitive overhead. Google has a pattern of releasing infrastructure that's perfectly shaped for Googles problems and awkward for everyone else's

repelsteeltje 2 hours ago

Like Kubernetes?

jjmarr an hour ago

I think most of the legacy companies that can benefit from Kubernetes don't use it, while most of the companies that are using it are startups doing it for the résumé.

dvfjsdhgfv 9 minutes ago

manojlds an hour ago

otabdeveloper4 2 hours ago

Yes, and unironically.

conception 2 hours ago

And angular.

sieabahlpark an hour ago

hhh 2 hours ago

kubernetes isnt difficult

hujun 28 minutes ago

Mond_ 2 hours ago

popalchemist 3 hours ago

100%. Great assessment.

sowbug 2 hours ago

I'm looking forward to trying this. I've had a positive but high-variance experience with Gastown[1], which is in the same genre. I hope that Scion does better.

My main complaints with Gastown are that (1) it's expensive, partly because (2) it refuses to use anything but Claude models, in spite of my configuration attempts, (3) I can't figure out how to back up or add a remote to its beads/dolt bug database, which makes me afraid to touch the installation, and (4) upgrading it often causes yak shaving and lost context. These might all be my own skill issues, but I do RTFM.

But wow, Gastown gets results. There's something magic about the dialogue and coordination between the mayor and the polecats that leads to an even better experience than Claude Code alone.

1. https://github.com/gastownhall/gastown/

infiniteregrets 30 minutes ago

this is very cool! i recently hacked on something similar https://github.com/s2-streamstore/parallax

and also wrote about it https://s2.dev/blog/distributed-ai-agents

simple10 3 hours ago

They kinda buried the code deep in their docs:

https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/scion

kvanbeek 2 hours ago

This seems to be in the direction of Gas Town but missing some of the core features. Having formulas has been game changing.

armanj 2 hours ago

> This project is early and experimental. Core concepts are settled, but expect rough edges. Local mode: relatively stable - Hub-based workflows: ~80% verified - Kubernetes runtime: early with known rough edges

i guess gastown is a better choice for now? idk i don't feel good about "relatively stable"

aleph_minus_one 2 hours ago

Reading this headline, I rather thought of a different SCION:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCION_(Internet_architecture)

tornikeo 2 hours ago

I swore to not be burned by google ever again after TensorFlow. This looks cool, and I will give this to my Codex to chew on and explain if it fits (or could fit what I am building right now -- the msx.dev) and then move on. I don't trust Google with maintaining the tools I rely on.

forsalebypwner 2 hours ago

nice plug

cedws 2 hours ago

I want to experiment more with agents but my employer only pays for Claude Code, and TOS disallows using the subscription API for other purposes. Anyone else in the same boat? Token based pricing also gets expensive fast.

undefined an hour ago

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minutesmith 22 minutes ago

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kumardeepanshu 2 hours ago

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Sattyamjjain 2 hours ago

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verdverm 3 hours ago

Their agent tooling is shaping up to be the well known issue of product cancellation. They have how many different takes on this now? (gemini-cli, antigravity, AI studio, this, Gemini app)

I've not been impressed with any of them. I do use their ADK in my custom agent stack for the core runtime. That one I think is good and has legs for longevity.

The main enterprise problem here is getting the various agent frameworks to play nice. How should one have shared runtimes, session clones, sandboxes, memory, etc between the tooling and/or employees?

otabdeveloper4 2 hours ago

It's all just system prompts under the hood and nothing more.

verdverm 2 hours ago

Not if you go custom, you have unlimited latitude, examples...

I modified file_read/write/edit to put the contents in the system prompt. This saves context space, i.e. when it rereads a file after failed edit, even though it has the most recent contents. It also does not need to infer modified content from read+edits. It still sees the edits as messages, but the current actual contents are always there.

My AGENTS.md loader. The agent does not decide, it's deterministic based on what other files/dirs it has interacted with. It can still ask to read them, but it rarely does this now.

I've also backed the agents environment or sandbox with Dagger, which brings a number of capabilities like being able to drop into a shell in the same environment, make changes, and have those propagate back to the session. Time travel, clone/fork, and a VS Code virtual FS are some others. I can go into a shell at any point in the session history.

I can also interact with the same session, at the same time, from VS Code, the TUI, or the API. Different modalities are ideal for different tasks (e.g. VS Code multi-diff for code review / edits; TUI for session management / cleanup)

IncreasePosts 2 hours ago

Don't forget a while loop and a TODO.md