Show HN: Flyde 1.0 – Like n8n, but in your codebase
github.comHi HN!
I'm excited to share Flyde 1.0. A big update to the open-source visual programming tool I launched here in March of last year (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39628285).
Since Flyde’s launch, there's been a huge rise in demand for visual builders, especially for AI-heavy workflows. Visual-programming shines with async and concurrency-heavy logic, which describes most LLM chains perfectly.
A few months ago, I tried to capitalize on this trend by launching a commercial version of Flyde called Flowcode (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43830193). It didn't go well. I learned the hard way that Flyde’s strength wasn't just about flexibility or performance compared to tools like n8n. The real value was always how Flyde fits inside your existing codebase. The launch also helped me understand that there's still a big gap: no tool really covers the full lifecycle, from rapid prototyping to deep integration, evaluation, and iteration inside your own projects.
So, over the last few months, I worked hard to polish Flyde: - Cleaned up and simplified the nodes API - Made it possible to fork any node for maximum flexibility - Launched a new online playground for quick experimenting and sharing (https://www.flyde.dev/playground) - Created a new CLI tool to speed up development and setup - Fixed a ton of bugs - Simplified the UI/UX to make it smoother and less confusing
There’s still a lot of missing stuff. Better templates, docs, and nodes, but I think it’s finally stable and useful enough to give it another shot.
My plan is to first make sure that Flyde is usable and valuable as an OS project, and then try to provide additional value via “Flyde Studio” - a SaaS that will help non-engineers iterate on Flyde flows from a web-app. Changes become a PR in the host repo.
I'd really love some honest feedback and hear whether Flyde resonates with an existing pain/problem.
Check it out here: Playground: https://www.flyde.dev/playground
GitHub: https://github.com/flydelabs/flyde
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! - Gabriel
I have tried all sorts of UI based workflow and orchestration tools over the last 20 years.
As someone technical, I start, I build something simple quickly but then start thinking edge cases, exception handling, alternate flows etc and suddenly all that is easier to handle in code directly.
Much of the power of these solutions is the pre made integrations into other systems, and not the flow control to someone technical. Once you realize that, you start looking for integration platforms and not workflow.
My common problem with all these visual builders is that they get too complex to maintain, all my workflows built with them are sitting there for years, I fear to touch them again. On the contrary the benefit these visual builders offer is the speed to get started, but with Cursor and Code Claude, it has become way easier to write a new workflow, comparable to visual builders for easy use cases, and even faster for complex use cases.
> it has become way easier to write a new workflow, comparable to visual builders for easy use cases
It didn't become easier to read one. And the trust to write one correctly is still limited.
This is cool. Playground looks nice. Do you use yourself in your own flows? I am very interested to know your own use cases for it. I have found out that personal use cases of people who build tools like this are often the strongest.
It runs in vscode and feels pretty good.
How different it is from node-red?