LayerFS: The filesystem for AI coding agents

(layerfs.ai)

47 points | by l2dy 3 hours ago

18 comments

  • compsciphd 2 hours ago
    • russfink 1 hour ago
      Would you mind ELI5’ing the similarities? I’m seeing only high level concepts that sound the same.
      • compsciphd 49 minutes ago
        so you're right its not exactly the same (and it might not even be a very similar implementation ala how docker is), but the bullet points are the same.

        ephemeral, instant boot strap, append only (I'm pretty sure I was the first person to use ephemeral computing this way, at the time I couldn't find anything that touched it. People used containers, ala ZFS/Zones, but they were generally meant for long term computing and not for bringing up an environment for a very small period of time and then tearing it down.)

        This paper with bellovin applied it to system administration - https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa09/tech/full_papers/...

        though we also approached recording and forking your computation at will - https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1323293.1294289 (I'm proud of coining the name), though it strongly relates to Microsoft's recall so it would probably be viewed less positively today (in fact, this might be closer in implementation to what they are doing than the above).

        with that said, it was a bit more tongue in cheek than anything.

        as an aside, I sort of wonder in the age of AI and the ability to reproduce anything easily, we might have to expand patents (related to comment below that got downvoted), but dont have strong thoughts on this yet.

    • bewareofscams 1 hour ago
      [dead]
  • nico 2 hours ago
    Here’s an alternative that runs on your browser: https://nicobrenner.github.io/lossy-git/demo.html

    PS: it’s just a fun play on memory/storage and AI. Hope you enjoy :)

    • trollbridge 2 hours ago
      This was more interesting/amusing than the OP!
  • evandena 2 hours ago
    Dumb javascript is preventing me from seeing the footer, by scrolling back up to some content it thinks I shiould see.
  • toddmorey 58 minutes ago
    How is it v1 with an architecture page coming soon? I'm really having a hard time gauging the maturity of software & services these days.
  • mtford 44 minutes ago
    This website behaves very strangely... scroll hijack. Also everything is suuuuuper stretched out.
    • gcr 14 minutes ago
      If you scroll down enough, you can't scroll up anymore!

      EDIT: If you scroll down to the commit graph and have your mouse inside the big commit graph rectangle, you can't scroll up anymore!

  • Rapzid 32 minutes ago
    UnionFS and overlay2, and the concept of layer filesystems existing makes this naming unfortunate and confusing.
  • pizzafeelsright 49 minutes ago
    We went from copy/paste this | sudo bash --> Copy this large prompt that installs stuff | AI Agent
  • shayonj 1 hour ago
    Kudos. We did/built something internally to solve similar-ish problems https://www.shayon.dev/post/2026/283/versioned-filesystem-fo...
  • avadodin 1 hour ago
    ShowHN: WoolJ.ai the virtual wool jersey tailor-made for your most special coding agents
  • mpalmer 25 minutes ago
    The evergreen observation; The most self-promote-y among us are mostly using AI to reinvent solutions and disguise them as new designs. These address solved problems, which are themselves disguised as new agentic problems.

    Celebrating and promoting this stuff does not help us get better at discovering and building actually new things; change my mind.

  • Sathwickp 1 hour ago
    Nice website, but that's about it
    • robofanatic 1 hour ago
      > Nice website

      I disagree. Its full of AI slop. Too much animation (cute but distracting) I literally tried for 20 minutes and couldn't focus on reading. I just couldnt comprehend anything.

      • jiaosdjf 1 hour ago
        I'm so glad someone else couldn't focus I thought I was losing my mind here.
  • weddpros 1 hour ago
    ho yes please hack my browser scroll so I can't read your site (MacOS Safari)
  • trollbridge 2 hours ago
    How is this any different than something like btrfs?
    • rvz 2 hours ago
      The difference is this one (layerfs) was vibe coded™ and the other (btrfs) is battle tested in mission critical systems for years in the Linux kernel and used by many companies in the SNP 500.

      Do not be fooled by the "vibes" of the website design which many here are. If it is too good to be true, it most likely is.

      • trollbridge 2 hours ago
        That's what I was concerned about. An unstable filesystem is worse than no filesystem at all; I'd really like to switch to bcachefs but it simply needs to have a few more years under its belt before I'll be comfortable with it (particularly for some of its best use cases, where it becomes responsible for backups).
      • ryan-c 2 hours ago
        I would not trust btrfs with anything mission critical.
        • ikidd 32 minutes ago
          It's fine if you stay away from it's raid5/6. And realize it isn't going to let you know when you have a mirror fail until you try to boot it and it won't come up.
      • otabdeveloper4 2 hours ago
        > is battle tested in mission critical systems for years

        And still crashes and corrupts filesystems all the time.

        (I have one server platform where just doing `insmod btrfs` immediately locks up the server, hard, without even any kernel panic or log message.)

        • teiferer 1 hour ago
          How recent is that code?
    • totetsu 2 hours ago
  • arbor-group 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • macrofriendly 2 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • EngineeringStuf 2 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • tcper 2 hours ago
    [dead]