Tom Loosemore

I’m beaten. Me and my LLMs have been beaten by the bins.

I’ve spent a bunch of time and tokens failing to create a web app that lets anyone in the UK share their address and find out when to put their bins out.

There is simply too much variation in the coding and UX practices of the 365 local councils for this to be something I can manage, even with the support of Claude et al.

It was the City of Westminster council asking users to navigate by their road name or number that tipped me over the edge. I found all manner of nasty ways to handle other councils’ broken APIs, bot-blocking and Javascript infected iFrames, but not this…

Oh well. You gotta find the limit to know your limits!