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
