LLM Transparency
Project by project. Where the robot helped, and where it tapped out.
Where LLMs were used across my public projects, project by project. As of June 2026.
Anything not listed here was hand-written. Only projects I actually used an LLM on appear below.
LLMs get legacy and undocumented languages wrong. Across the mainframe and legacy work the assistant is close to useless, so that code is all hand-written. The tool taps out, so I do it.
Compilers & language tooling
| Project | Where the LLM was used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Booth | Test-kernel generation, C++ doc questions, design-constraint chats, getting CI working | Once "helpfully" rewrote my register allocator and turned a nuclear sim explosive |
| Karearea | A sanity pass, some early tests | Dropped the LLM tests once I had SLATEC, which was better |
| Skyhawk | Bouncing ideas for the COMPOOL design | The serious JOVIAL compiler |
| jovial-compiler | Heavy, early. Let ChatGPT make the design calls | My first compiler. It kept pushing me toward LLVM, which I found painful |
| BEAC | Almost none, reused a lot from other projects | Asked about ALGOL, it hallucinated features and I watched it speed-read Wikipedia. Not how you build a compiler |
| ernest | Questions about IBM Quantum frameworks and setup | Used 30 seconds of IBM quantum time this month, so they worked first time |
| Conway | One documentation pass (had spare credits) | An LLM, for assembly? No. One missing comment once cost me a week on an assembler bug |
| abap-parser | Some comments, a sanity pass | Wasn't going to subject an LLM to reading SAP |
| Halmat | Sanity passes | Reconstructed language, the real help came from the Apollo Guidance Computer project |
| Coral-66-Compiler | Almost nothing | ChatGPT didn't know what CORAL was, Claude had a vague idea |
| Chill-compiler | C semantics questions | Helpful on C, useless on the actual CHILL |
| plankalkul-compiler | German-word translation, some parser bug-fixing, comments | A 1945 German language, the translation help was genuinely useful (covers Plankalkuel + plankalkul-ide too) |
| Wasabi | Not really | |
| ttas | None | Wish there were an LLM that could help with Tensix |
| Olint | Intellisense on comments | Couldn't find much else in my logs |
| minuteman (assembler + emulator) | None | Wish it could've helped, the memory's a literal rotating disc your program tracks its position on |
LSPs
| Project | Where the LLM was used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Python LSPs (Jovial, hals, Chill, Coral66, racf, IBM-system360, mumps) | Research, asking about LSPs, explaining the LSP docs, some devops | |
| CMS-2-LSP | First parser AI-generated then binned, second off my own RAG pipeline, hand-edited | Undocumented language, the most LLM-involved thing here |
| tal-lsp | Some testing, a sanity pass |
Emulators & silicon
| Project | Where the LLM was used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| setun70-emulator | README, the HTML page, PyPI packaging | Lost an afternoon to PyPI. Read the 1959 Soviet docs in Cyrillic and wrote the emulator by hand |
| voyager-fds-emulator | Sanity check, comments where applicable | Paid $80 for the documents, wasn't letting a robot near them first |
| The Chips (voyager-fds, qsim, ruru, dozenal-alu) | None | First "I get to design chips!" wave, learned by messing up the basics |
| takahe | General Verilog questions, research and paper-finding | It parses ABEL, no LLM's deciding that. Still had to read the papers, an ESPRESSO summary won't cut it |
| Flow-matic | A bit of the peripheral stuff (less than setun70), plus ideas from Claude 3.x for the language's verbs | Flow-Matic has English verbs and it's wonderful, and the verb-handling ideas actually worked |
Numerical & scientific
| Project | Where the LLM was used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| SLATEC | Python scripts for bulk GOTO removal, test summarising, drafting most of the docs | Useful on scaffolding, weak on design, shaky on F77 |
| dcuhre | Same as SLATEC, much smaller scale | |
| Moa | C-to-CUDA-kernel conversion under review, an agentic loop fuzzing compiler flags | Edited the numerical-precision bits myself, LLMs don't do precision well |
| SLATEC.jl | None | Tried Julia, prefer Fortran, may revisit |
Systems, libraries & tools
| Project | Where the LLM was used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Wu | Sanity checks, design back-and-forth, fixed a couple Python bugs, hotpath comment flags | Genuinely helpful here |
| Kea | Tests | Tiny RTOS, not much else |
| kauri | None to speak of | It's a single header file |
| PPM | None | A Plankalkül port of the Fortran package manager (fpm), took inspiration from it, not a full implementation |
| Freiberg | None | Genuinely fun to make |
Mainframe / legacy libraries
| Project | Where the LLM was used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MPB + the COBOL / HLASM / RPG / ALGOL libraries | Comments, a sanity pass | LLMs are shaky on legacy languages, even the sanity pass came with a pinch of salt |
| cobol-bitcoin-miner | Asked ChatGPT | It set off the security warning (jokes) |
Upstream contributions
| Project | Where the LLM was used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ocaml | Questions, the odd sanity check | Throwing an LLM at an established compiler is how you get CI red and OCaml enthusiasts upset |
| FFmpeg | None | I choose life |
| lfortran | Used the repo's Agents.md for a guided codebase tour | PRs mostly legacy Fortran |
| z390 | NIST test-suite and error-output organising, double-checking where I add code in the giant single Java file | Like an assistant while defusing a Java-based bomb. Real questions go to the human maintainers |
| tinygrad | Editing some Python, debugging | Ad-hoc but interesting way to build an emulator |
Tooling misery (cross-cutting)
| Tool | Where the LLM was used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| CI / YAML | Some initial devops and CI setup | I can wrangle YAML fine, I just don't enjoy it |
| vim | Asked ChatGPT how to get out of vim | It couldn't hear me in the vim prison |
This website
It's all HTML. Words, design and pictures are mine, the markup I'm less precious about, when I'm tired I'll vibecode a chunk of it. This page too, repo list off gh, notes shoved into a table by Claude.
Chur Claude.