commit	e6c294dc139cf229ba790abc87a524016f98627f	[log] [tgz]
author	Philip Zeyliger <philip@bold.dev>	Wed Jun 04 16:55:21 2025 +0000
committer	Philip Zeyliger <philip@bold.dev>	Wed Jun 04 09:57:17 2025 -0700
tree	1a181005f78a908112288e814bd60205b060a436
parent	2f0eb6995fc1041d23b8224a099013e89bb03f67 [diff]

budget: remove num-iterations and wall clock time limits

Remove iteration count and time-based budget limits from the agent budget system
while preserving the budget concept for dollar-based limits only.

Problem Analysis:
The budget system previously supported three types of limits:
1. MaxResponses (iteration count limit)
2. MaxWallTime (wall clock time limit)
3. MaxDollars (cost limit)

This created complexity in both implementation and user experience, with
multiple overlapping budget mechanisms that could trigger independently.
The iteration and time limits added limited value compared to the more
practical dollar-based budget control.

Implementation Changes:

1. Budget Structure Simplification:
   - Remove MaxResponses and MaxWallTime fields from Budget struct
   - Keep only MaxDollars field for cost-based budget control
   - Simplify Budget to single-field struct with clear purpose

2. CLI Flag Removal:
   - Remove -max-iterations flag from command line interface
   - Remove -max-wall-time flag from command line interface
   - Keep -max-dollars flag with same functionality
   - Remove unused time import from cmd/sketch/main.go

3. Budget Logic Streamlining:
   - Simplify ResetBudget() to only adjust MaxDollars based on usage
   - Simplify overBudget() to only check dollar limits
   - Remove iteration and time checking logic throughout

4. Container Configuration Updates:
   - Remove MaxIterations and MaxWallTime from ContainerConfig struct
   - Remove corresponding docker command arguments
   - Maintain MaxDollars configuration and passing

5. UI Cleanup:
   - Remove budget display of max responses and max wall time from termui
   - Keep dollar-based budget information display

6. Test Updates:
   - Update test Budget initialization to use only MaxDollars
   - Verify all existing tests continue to pass

Technical Details:
- Budget struct now contains only MaxDollars float64 field
- ResetBudget adjusts budget by adding current TotalCostUSD to MaxDollars
- overBudget checks only dollar spending against MaxDollars limit
- CLI help shows only -max-dollars option, no iteration/time options
- Docker container launch passes only max-dollars parameter

Benefits:
- Simplified budget system with single, clear cost control mechanism
- Reduced complexity in budget logic and error handling
- Cleaner CLI interface with fewer confusing options
- More predictable budget behavior focused on practical cost limits
- Easier to understand and configure for users

Testing:
- All existing tests pass with updated budget structure
- CLI help verification shows only max-dollars option
- Build verification confirms no compilation errors
- Budget functionality preserved for dollar-based limits

This change streamlines the budget system to focus on practical cost control
while maintaining all existing dollar-based budget functionality and removing
complexity around iteration and time-based limits.

Co-Authored-By: sketch <hello@sketch.dev>
Change-ID: sa7be127e12d43ee7k

5 files changed

tree: 1a181005f78a908112288e814bd60205b060a436

README.md

Sketch

Sketch is an agentic coding tool. It draws the 🦉

🚀 Overview

Sketch runs in your terminal, has a web UI, understands your code, and helps you get work done. To keep your environment pristine, sketch starts a docker container and outputs its work onto a branch in your host git repository.

Sketch helps with most programming environments, but Sketch has extra goodies for Go.

📋 Quick Start

go install sketch.dev/cmd/sketch@latest
sketch

🔧 Requirements

Currently, Sketch runs on macOS and Linux. It uses Docker for containers.

Platform	Installation
macOS	`brew install colima` (or Docker Desktop/Orbstack)
Linux	`apt install docker.io` (or equivalent for your distro)
WSL2	Install Docker Desktop for Windows (docker entirely inside WSL2 is tricky)

The sketch.dev service is used to provide access to an LLM service and give you a way to access the web UI from anywhere.

🤝 Community & Feedback

Discord: Join our community at https://discord.gg/6w9qNRUDzS
GitHub Issues: Submit feedback at https://github.com/boldsoftware/sketch/issues

📖 User Guide

Getting Started

Start Sketch by running sketch in a Git repository. It will open your browser to the Sketch chat interface, but you can also use the CLI interface. Use -open=false if you want to use just the CLI interface.

Ask Sketch about your codebase or ask it to implement a feature. It may take a little while for Sketch to do its work, so hit the bell (🔔) icon to enable browser notifications. We won't spam you or anything; it will notify you when the Sketch agent's turn is done, and there's something to look at.

How Sketch Works

When you start Sketch, it:

Creates a Dockerfile
Builds it
Copies your repository into it
Starts a Docker container with the "inside" Sketch running

This design lets you run multiple sketches in parallel since they each have their own sandbox. It also lets Sketch work without worry: it can trash its own container, but it can't trash your machine.

Sketch's agentic loop uses tool calls (mostly shell commands, but also a handful of other important tools) to allow the LLM to interact with your codebase.

Getting Your Git Changes Out

Sketch is trained to make Git commits. When those happen, they are automatically pushed to the git repository where you started sketch with branch names sketch/*.

Finding Sketch branches:

git branch -a --sort=creatordate | grep sketch/ | tail

The UI keeps track of the latest branch it pushed and displays it prominently. You can use standard Git workflows to pull those branches into your workspace:

git cherry-pick $(git merge-base origin/main sketch/foo)

or merge the branch

git merge sketch/foo

or reset to the branch

git reset --hard sketch/foo

Ie use the same workflows you would if you were pulling in a friend's Pull Request.

Advanced: You can ask Sketch to git fetch sketch-host and rebase onto another commit. This will also fetch where you started Sketch, and we do a bit of "git fetch refspec configuration" to make origin/main work as a git reference.

Don't be afraid of asking Sketch to help you rebase, merge/squash commits, rewrite commit messages, and so forth; it's good at it!

Reviewing Diffs

The diff view shows you changes since Sketch started. Leaving comments on lines adds them to the chat box, and, when you hit Send (at the bottom of the page), Sketch goes to work addressing your comments.

Connecting to Sketch's Container

You can interact directly with the container in three ways:

Web UI Terminal: Use the "Terminal" tab in the UI
SSH: Look at the startup logs or click the information icon to see a command like ssh sketch-ilik-eske-tcha-lott. We have automatically configured your SSH configuration to make these special hostnames work.
Visual Studio Code: Look for a command line or magic link behind the information icon, or when Sketch starts up. This starts a new VSCode session "remoted into" the container. You can edit the code, use the terminal, review diffs, and so forth.

Using SSH (and/or VSCode) allows you to forward ports from the container to your machine. For example, if you want to start your development webserver, you can do something like this:

# Forward container port 8888 to local port 8000
ssh -L8000:localhost:8888 sketch-ilik-epor-tfor-ward go run ./cmd/server

This makes http://localhost:8000/ on your machine point to localhost:8888 inside the container.

Using Browser Tools

You can ask Sketch to browse a web page and take screenshots. There are tools both for taking screenshots and "reading images", the latter of which sends the image to the LLM. This functionality is handy if you're working on a web page and want to see what the in-progress change looks like.

❓ FAQ

"No space left on device"

Docker images, containers, and so forth tend to pile up. Ask Docker to prune unused images and containers:

docker system prune -a

🛠️ Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development guidelines.

📄 Open Source

Sketch is open source. It is right here in this repository! Have a look around and mod away.

If you want to run Sketch entirely without the sketch.dev service, you can set the flag -skaband-addr="" and then provide an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable. (More LLM services coming soon!)