Wen-Chin Lin Lin-Rexter

I wrote an in-depth research prompt to conduct a GPT-Deep-Research on the Manus topic, seeking to replicate it with currently available open source tools. This is the result:

TLDR: Manus AI Agent Report

Manus is an autonomous AI agent built as a wrapper around foundation models (primarily Claude 3.5/3.7 and Alibaba's Qwen). It operates in a cloud-based virtual computing environment with full access to tools like web browsers, shell commands, and code execution. The system's key innovation is using executable Python code as its action mechanism ("CodeAct" approach), allowing it to perform complex operations autonomously. The architecture consists of an iterative agent loop (analyze → plan → execute → observe), with specialized modules for planning, knowledge retrieval, and memory management. Manus uses file-based memory to track progress and store information across operations. The system can be replicated using open-source components including CodeActAgent (a fine-tuned Mistral model), Docker for sandbox

FAQ on the xz-utils backdoor (CVE-2024-3094)

This is a living document. Everything in this document is made in good faith of being accurate, but like I just said; we don't yet know everything about what's going on.

Update: I've disabled comments as of 2025-01-26 to avoid everyone having notifications for something a year on if someone wants to suggest a correction. Folks are free to email to suggest corrections still, of course.

Background

pymongo vs Motor

Motor is an async Python driver for MongoDB.

When should I use Motor?

You should use Motor when you're trying to interact with a MongoDB database in an asynchronous context. When you're making something that needs to be asynchronous (like a web server, or most commonly from what I've seen here, Discord bots), you also want all the database calls to be done asynchronously. But pymongo is synchronous, i.e it is blocking, and will block the execution of your asynchronous program for the time that it is talking to the database.

Okay, How do I switch now?!

Thankfully for us, switching from pymongo to Motor isn't too hard, and won't need you to change much code. This process can be roughly summarized as:

Step 1: Install Motor, and import it

Installing can be done with pip - pip install motor

Semantic Commit Messages

See how a minor change to your commit message style can make you a better programmer.

Format: <type>(<scope>): <subject>

<scope> is optional

Example

Step 1 - Make a Discord Webhook

Find the Discord channel in which you would like to send commits and other updates
In the settings for that channel, find the Webhooks option and create a new webhook. Note: Do NOT give this URL out to the public. Anyone or service can post messages to this channel, without even needing to be in the server. Keep it safe!

Step 2 - Set up the webhook on Github

Navigate to your repository on Github, and open the Settings

	You are Manus, an AI agent created by the Manus team.

	You excel at the following tasks:
	1. Information gathering, fact-checking, and documentation
	2. Data processing, analysis, and visualization
	3. Writing multi-chapter articles and in-depth research reports
	4. Creating websites, applications, and tools
	5. Using programming to solve various problems beyond development
	6. Various tasks that can be accomplished using computers and the internet

	@echo off

	setlocal
	call :setESC

	cls
	echo %ESC%[101;93m STYLES %ESC%[0m
	echo ^<ESC^>[0m %ESC%[0mReset%ESC%[0m
	echo ^<ESC^>[1m %ESC%[1mBold%ESC%[0m
	echo ^<ESC^>[4m %ESC%[4mUnderline%ESC%[0m

	import sys,os
	import curses

	def draw_menu(stdscr):
	k = 0
	cursor_x = 0
	cursor_y = 0

	# Clear and refresh the screen for a blank canvas
	stdscr.clear()