Ask HN: Are LLMs just expensive search and scripting tools? Is it that simple?
edwin2 Thursday, December 04, 2025Can all of LLMs be summarized as a (currently) really expensive search that allows you to express nuanced queries and script the output of the search? Why or why not?
Take code. In a sense, StackOverflow is about finding a code snippet for an already solved problem. Auto complete does the same kind of search in a sense.
Take generative text. In a sense that’s the equivalent of making a query and then aggregating the many results into one phrase. You could imagine the bot searching 1,000 websites and then taking the average of the answers to the query and then outputting the result.
Does every LLM use case fit the following pattern?…
query —-> LLM does its work —-> result —> script of result (optional)
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