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Barnes and Noble: you had one job. This is why Amazon eats your lunch

1•antonvs•2m ago•0 comments

Brian Eno denounces Microsoft for its ties to Israeli government

https://www.theverge.com/news/671864/brian-eno-windows-95-chime-microsoft-israel-palestine-statement
5•ericzawo•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ninja.ai – Create and Install MCP Servers with One Click

https://ninja.ai/
1•schappim•9m ago•0 comments

Modular, LLM-Flexible AI Agent Builder for Omnichannel Telecom

https://www.cloud-net.ai/case-studies/introducing-veris-lite-ai-agent-builder
1•y2so•9m ago•0 comments

Bitcoin hits new all time high near $110K

https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/markets/bitcoin-hits-new-all-time-high
2•ur-whale•10m ago•0 comments

Apple Filing Protocol will soon disappear from macOS

https://appleinsider.com/inside/macos-sequoia/tips/apple-filling-protocol-will-soon-disappear-completely-from-macos
2•miles•10m ago•0 comments

Why did medieval readers kiss, smudge and deface their books?

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/05/13/why-did-medieval-readers-kiss-smudge-and-deface-their-books/
3•gnabgib•15m ago•0 comments

Temperature-controlled switch activates sperm, is key to fertility

https://medicine.washu.edu/news/temperature-controlled-switch-activates-sperm-is-key-to-fertility/
1•gmays•15m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Engineering Statics and Dynamics book recommendation

2•areoform•17m ago•0 comments

Chris Maple, creator of the iconic Pokémon logo, reveals his early design drafts

https://www.ign.com/articles/meet-the-man-who-designed-pokemons-iconic-logo
2•frigidwalnut•19m ago•0 comments

Should I Block ICMP?

http://shouldiblockicmp.com/
7•rascul•20m ago•0 comments

Microsoft AI Exec Accidentally Spills Walmart's AI Plans

https://autogpt.net/microsoft-ai-exec-accidentally-spills-walmarts-ai-plans-during-protest-rattled-talk/
2•zhengiszen•20m ago•0 comments

Microsoft employee shouts over Satya Nadella's keynote to protest

https://fortune.com/article/microsoft-employee-protest-satya-nadella-keynote-israel-contracts-gaza-azure/
1•zhengiszen•21m ago•0 comments

Abraham Lincoln artifacts that were once in a museum are going up for auction

https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2025/05/20/abraham-lincoln-artifacts-that-were-once-in-a-museum-are-going-up-for-auction
2•donsupreme•22m ago•0 comments

Politeness to ChatGPT raises OpenAI's operational costs

https://www.perplexity.ai/page/politeness-to-chatgpt-raises-o-qu9DjX3DRp6v5fwHtNVYQA
1•iio7•24m ago•1 comments

CRDTs: Pros and Cons (Lattices and Lettuces?)

https://jhellerstein.github.io/blog/crdt-intro/
3•KraftyOne•24m ago•0 comments

Open Source Can't Coordinate

https://matklad.github.io/2025/05/20/open-source-cant-coordinate.html
3•goranmoomin•29m ago•3 comments

Putting rigid bodies to rest [pdf]

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Projects/RestingBodies/PuttingRigidBodiesToRest.pdf
1•robinhouston•31m ago•0 comments

Are groovy brains more efficient?

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/05/21/are-groovy-brains-more-efficient/
2•amichail•32m ago•0 comments

Rosettacode.org Is Down

2•abetusk•34m ago•0 comments

GeoGuessr Most Popular Maps Unplayable Protest of Saudi-Backed Esports World Cup

https://aftermath.site/geoguessr-blackout-esports-world-cup-saudi-arabia
1•healsdata•38m ago•1 comments

Running WebAssembly (WASM) Components from the Command Line

https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/invoking-component-functions-in-wasmtime-cli
2•tpmccallum•41m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Dora

https://dorafiles.com
2•ata_aman•42m ago•0 comments

Why Good Programmers Use Bad AI

https://nmn.gl/blog/ai-and-programmers
1•namanyayg•42m ago•0 comments

Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

https://www.investopedia.com/treasury-yields-soar-as-ballooning-us-deficit-worries-wall-street-11739473
8•inverted_flag•45m ago•1 comments

I have tinnitus. I don't recommend it

https://blog.greg.technology/2025/05/20/tinnitus.html
5•gregsadetsky•47m ago•2 comments

AI agents will do the grunt work of coding

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/20/ai-agents-software-programming-coding
1•ripe•50m ago•0 comments

Forensic crime scene reconstruction expert statement on MH370 footage

https://twitter.com/ScottRoderCSTM/status/1924202901850698131
2•jjoe•50m ago•0 comments

The Global Startup Ecosystem Index Report 2025

https://lp.startupblink.com/report-download/
1•myth_drannon•54m ago•0 comments

Unknown strain of bacteria found on China's Tiangong Space Station

https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/unknown-strain-of-bacteria-found-on-chinas-tiangong-space-station
3•geox•55m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Launch HN: SIM Studio (YC X25) – Figma-Like Canvas for Agent Workflows

46•waleedlatif1•7h ago
Hey HN! We're Emir and Waleed from Sim Studio (https://simstudio.ai). We did a Show HN a few weeks ago about our open-source project (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43823096). Today, we’re launching our hosted platform—a collaborative interface to build and deploy agent workflows. We just removed the waitlist (with 5,000+ people) and you can sign up and access it at: https://simstudio.ai

Sim Studio lets you build agents with different models, tools, and custom functions. In minutes, you can deploy a research agent. Demo here - https://youtu.be/F6MqNvnfxbI

We started working on Sim Studio because we were frustrated with agent frameworks that required excessive boilerplate code and unhelpful abstractions (like agent roles and backstories). We also tried other visual interfaces, but found them difficult to set up and too limited for production use cases. Specifically, we wanted the ability to write custom functions, force tool calls, and run parallel execution.

We’re taking a different approach. Our visual canvas lets you explicitly define how agents interact, use external tools, and handle complex logic like branching, loops, and conditional execution. You can seamlessly integrate with popular tools like Supabase, Pinecone, Mem0, and Exa without obscure abstractions.

You can simulate workflow runs, deploy workflows as APIs or standalone chat interfaces, and trigger them via webhooks. We offer built-in observability, detailed trace spans, and logs that make debugging straightforward. Try searching yourself below:

Example message for https://hn.simstudio.ai:

- Search [person] from [company] - "Search Emir Karabeg from Sim Studio"

Check out our Apache 2.0 licensed repo at https://github.com/simstudioai/sim, explore our docs at https://docs.simstudio.ai, or try out our deployed chat from the demo video here: https://hn.simstudio.ai.

We’d love to hear your feedback! Do you think our visual solution is a good approach to building agents?

Comments

jasongill•7h ago
It would be great to see how this compares (why it's better, or what it does differently) to the myriad of competitors in this space - from established players like n8n adding 'AI' features, to AI-specific workflow tools like Rivet, to AI libraries adding visual designers like Langflow.

Site looks great!

waleedlatif1•7h ago
thank you! We believe Sim Studio is different because we built it from the ground up to be ai-native - not an automation tool that bolted on ai features as an afterthought

A few points on this:

- Super intuitive & highly configurable visual canvas where there are no abstractions over the model providers' parameters

- Seamlessly works with the dev tools everyone uses (supabase, pinecone, mem0, exa)

- Handles complexities like branching, loops, and concurrency by default

- Built-in debugging that actually makes sense (with trace spans and logs)

- Actually open source (apache 2.0)

matt3D•6h ago
The one thing I find a bit odd about a lot of these orchestration tools is that they aren't AI first on their own UX.

Surely the first thing I should be presented with is a prompt window that can help be scaffold out the orchestration.

ekarabeg•6h ago
Thanks for the suggestion! We're adding in a prompt to workflow this week.
Geep5•6h ago
I love this space, been really enjoying Rivet which is open source and free. It's made coding a joy.
diamondfist25•6h ago
Can you share this project you are referring to?
Maxious•6h ago
https://github.com/Ironclad/rivet
waleedlatif1•6h ago
i think it significantly lowers the bar for entry to building agentic workflows, but also has the potential to augment the development process for engineers since its such a tight feedback loop. for instance, we were working on a sales & marketing ai tool before this and iterating was so hard because the agent frameworks are finicky, and rolling our own multi-agent orchestration means we are locked into a single provider. on sim studio, you can switch providers and tools instantly without any switching cost
worldsayshi•6h ago
I think that "Figma/Excalidraw-like" canvas for <insert interesting problem domain here> is an underrated solution space. At least in terms of variation on the problem domain.
swyx•6h ago
(should add TLdraw which is specifically built for extensibility)

no, it is overrated. there are many many canvas workflow builders like this one. they're all beautiful, intuitive and easy to use. they all also dont get traction. go ahead, name one that everyone else here will know. its weird but theres a huge gulf here between what people think they want and what people really use outside the figma/excalidraw/tldraw/miro/canva space

waleedlatif1•5h ago
we bet that its just because they pre-dated LLMs and don't really allow for granular control. the goal is to make it easier to develop automations/workflows, not harder. we think the future of development is 90% transformations/routing/fallbacks (boring) and the only part that actually impacts the end result is the call to the LLM (fun), the tools you give it, and a memory component. if we abstract away all the boring stuff, and only leave the stuff that impacts the results then it makes iterating and building with AI much faster and easier.
jerejacobson•6h ago
I agree, I especially find it useful when prototyping. I recently built a canvas node-based tool that connects LLM prompts and passes the model's response into the next node as context. It was fun to create and great for testing/comparing outputs from different models. https://littleworkflow.com/
ekarabeg•6h ago
That's awesome! I like the visual rendering on the canvas.
jerejacobson•5h ago
Thanks! I will definitely try out Sim Studio later today. It looks great, nice work!
ekarabeg•6h ago
We believe a visual solution is the best way for developers — and LLMs — to build applications in the future.
barbazoo•6h ago
It would be nice to see the examples populated with real life examples.
waleedlatif1•5h ago
thanks for the feedback, we are launching a ton of templates on the platform this week that you can add to your workspace with a single click. also, we'll add some examples to the home page
ekarabeg•5h ago
Try out https://hn.simstudio.ai for a live example, but we're also releasing templates this week to see community workflows.
tsumnia•5h ago
I think OP is more referring to examples on how to set a workflow, like what would the equivalent "Hello World" / "FizzBuzz" / "Send an alert notification to [location] if [condition]". We're still trying to identify when and where using an agent is beneficial, so some use cases that I can review and fiddle with to match my workflow will help.

Really cool platform, so I'm interested in using it!

waleedlatif1•5h ago
adding some examples and templates this week, and in our discord we are gonna maintain a showcase where ppl can post the cool workflows they've built.
srameshc•6h ago
I like the product. But I have a feedback: Your homepage doesn't exactly help understand your product. Your github has a GIF that describes your product better, so you should consider having something like that describes your product better on your website.
waleedlatif1•6h ago
thanks for the feedback, will add the demo directly to the website!
efitz•5h ago
Looks like IFTTT for LLM agents :-)
waleedlatif1•5h ago
i like to think of us as the version of these automation platforms that doesn't make you hardcode in all the non-determinism & edge cases, because now we can just use llms :)
flaviuspopan•5h ago
Lovely! I’ll give this a shot soon. Two questions: 1. Pricing - I presume y’all will eventually charge for hosting like n8n? I’m feeling a bit sheepish trying a new service without any mention of price. Even mentioning a free tier would be nice to see.

2. Any plans for integrating MCP servers? I’m looking to build a WhatsApp based Text to SQL service and this seems like a solid fit, but I’d like to use an MCP server that groks the business domain to query supabase. Any suggestions on how to pull this off?

waleedlatif1•5h ago
appreciate it!

1) we are completely open source and you can self-host it if you so please. for the hosted platform, we have a free tier to let you tinker and get some free inference credits, and then we have a pro plan with is $20 worth of inference, team plan with $40. we only charge for inference, not to use the platform

2) we are planning on integrating with MCP servers, although hesitatn because its a newer protocol and may not be here to stay (might be a hot take). in the meantime, we have pre-built integrations for whatsapp & supabase, so you can definitely build this out today

primitivesuave•4h ago
Congratulations on the public launch!

I had the honor of meeting these founders in person, and was pretty inspired by how fast these guys ship features and iterate on the product with their customers. Definitely the best React Flow work I've ever seen!

waleedlatif1•4h ago
thank you! appreciate the kind words