Ask HN: Are people using Agents to clone/port codebases

1 pointsstevehiehn3mo ago2 comments

TO BE CLEAR: I am not doing this! But, I keep thinking about it. What happens if I give a large codebase to Claude and say "Port the entire project to a different language. Do not use any existing code or class/method signatures. Maintain all functionality, but use alternative architecture where possible" Is this a thing? In theory can people now just rip entire platforms like NBD?

2 comments

wild_egg3mo ago

I've now done this multiple times with older Claude versions.

If the project is complex, a key thing is telling it to do a 1:1 migration with full equivalent test coverage, following TDD best practices. That gives it the right structure to reliably test its own work and the results are consistently solid.

ChrisArchitect3mo ago

Recently:

I ported JustHTML from Python to JavaScript with Codex CLI and GPT-5.2 in hours

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46295771

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