Show HN: Project Chimera – AI Debates Itself for Better Code and Reasoning

I'm excited to share *Project Chimera*, an open-source AI reasoning engine that uses a novel *Socratic self-debate* methodology to tackle complex problems and generate higher-quality, more robust outputs, especially in code generation.

*The Challenge:* Standard AI models often fall short on nuanced tasks, producing code with logical gaps, security flaws, or poor maintainability. They can struggle with complex reasoning chains and self-correction.

*Our Approach: AI in Socratic Dialogue* Project Chimera simulates a panel of specialized AI personas (e.g., Code Architect, Security Auditor, Skeptical Critic, Visionary Generator) that engage in a structured debate. They critique, refine, and build upon each other's ideas, leading to significantly improved solutions. *For example, when tasked with refactoring a complex, legacy Python function with potential security flaws, Chimera's personas would debate optimal refactoring strategies, security hardening, and test case generation, ensuring a robust and secure final code output.* This multi-agent approach allows for deeper analysis, identification of edge cases, and more reliable code generation, powered by models like Gemini 2.5 Flash/Pro.

*Key Innovations:*

* *Socratic Self-Debate:* AI personas debate and refine solutions iteratively, enhancing reasoning depth, identifying edge cases, and improving output quality. * *Specialized Personas:* A rich set covering Software Engineering (Architect, Security, DevOps, Testing), Science, Business, and Creative domains. Users can also save custom frameworks. * *Rigorous Validation:* * Outputs adhere to strict JSON schemas (Pydantic). * Generated code is validated against PEP8, Bandit security scans, and AST analysis. * Handles and reports malformed LLM outputs automatically. * *Context-Aware Analysis:* Utilizes Sentence Transformers for semantic code analysis, dynamically weighting relevant files based on keywords and negation handling. * *Resilience & Production-Ready:* Features circuit breakers, rate limiting, and token budget management. * *Self-Analysis & Improvement:* Chimera can analyze its own codebase to identify and suggest specific code modifications, technical debt reports, and security enhancements. * *Detailed Reporting:* Generates comprehensive markdown reports of the entire debate process, including persona interactions, token usage, and validation results.

*Architecture:* Built with modularity and resilience, deployable via Docker.

*Live Demo & GitHub:* * *Live Demo:* https://project-chimera-406972693661.us-central1.run.app * *GitHub Repository:* https://github.com/tomwolfe/project_chimera

We're eager for your feedback on this multi-agent debate paradigm, its implementation, and how it compares to other AI reasoning techniques. We're especially interested in thoughts on the self-analysis capabilities.

Thanks for checking it out!