Weaver

@weaver.sh

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Stop using natural language interfaces
hikikomorphism@hikikomorphism.bsky.social
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Natural language is a wonderful interface, but just because we suddenly can doesn't mean we always should. LLM inference is slow and expensive, often taking tens of seconds to complete. Natural language interfaces have orders of magnitude more latency than normal graphic user interfaces. This doesn't mean we shouldn't use LLMs, it just means we need to be smart about how we build interfaces around them.

The Latency Problem

There's a classic CS diagram visualizing latency numbers for various compute operations: nanoseconds to lock a mutex, microseconds to reference memory, milliseconds to read 1 MB from disk. LLM inference usually takes 10s of seconds to complete. Streaming responses help compensate, but it's slow.

Compare interacting with an LLM over multiple turns to filling in a checklist, selecting items from a pulldown menu, setting a value on a slider bar, stepping through a series of such interactions as you fill out a multi-field dialogue. Graphic user interfaces are fast, with responses taking milliseconds, not seconds. But. But: they're not smart, they're not responsive, they don't shape themselves to the conversation with the full benefits of semantic understanding.

site.standard.publication record linked in the post. shows a colour scheme in rgb format, the name of the publication, "Weaver", and the url "https://weaver.weaver.sh" where the notebook/publication can be accessed

Portia the cat, curled in her bed, looking out cutely over the edge at the camera.

grafana dashboard showing 500 errors and error logs from the weaver index

Stylized line art weaver bird and nest on graph paper-like background

$Math examples in the weaver editor: This sentence uses `$` delimiters to show math inline: $\sqrt{3x-1}+(1+x)^2$ $\sum_{k=1}^n a_k b_k$: Mathematical expression at head of line `\` may follow just after the first `$`: $\{1, 2, 3\} **The Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality** $$\left( \sum_{k=1}^n a_k b_k \right)^2 \leq \left( \sum_{k=1}^n a_k^2 \right) \left( \sum_{k=1}^n b_k^2 \right)$$ $a<b>c</b>$ $${a*b*c} _c_ d$$ $not `code`$ $![not an](/image)$ $<https://not.a.link/>$ $α$$