Awesome, keen to see where this goes. Can we have light mode for the whiteboard and dark mode for the code?
bbor
Oh WOW, cool to see a technique that'll be everywhere in 12 months (the fake pen drawing animations + streaming diagrams as they're produced) first be announced. Do we still do "First!" comments, y'all?
~~[EDIT: you need to put "only for macOS" in way more prominent places, all over -- that offends my soul greatly and may Linus frown upon you all]~~ [EDIT2: I was mistaken!]
This all looks really solid. That said, two remarks:
1. The integration with OS LSPs is quite fun and commendable. Is it possible that the diagrams might get their own LSP, someday? Or is better just staying as direct TS callsites?
2. The choice of the word "IDE" seems like it might get you in trouble, given the small "cannot edit files" detail. Any comments on the decision there, as opposed to, say... "brainstorming tool"? Or hell, "[architectonic] harness"?
3. The psuedocode "semantic diff" thing is an incredible idea, wow. Props there.
4. This language kinda concerns me: "how the requirements that you set were implemented". In my highly-arbitrary development flow, it ideally goes `idea -> spec/reqs -> plan -> test -> impl -> eval -> land -> review`, and this kind of tool seems explicitly targeted towards just the second and third with some partial coverage of their neighbors on either side. More concretely: by adding implementation, don't you lose a powerful specificity selling point and now have to compete with all full harnesses?
5. Suggesting "GPT-6 Luna and Claude Opus 5.5" is presumably a typo? Cause the equivelant of Opus 5.5 is Astra, and even then not really.
show comments
icar
You cannot currently edit files in Whiteboard. If this is something that you find yourself wanting to do, please file an issue!
Do you still consider this an IDE? Curious
show comments
purple-leafy
If you’re interested in IDEs and want to see a completely different take, look no further
To me these show HN posts all build things that are a bit too obvious
tnspacetime
The point about semantic diff viewer sounds very interesting. I think many coding harnesses are not doing this well enough.
8organicbits
One concern about accuracy of the diagrams. In the example, there is a transition back to the session service labelled "wait for release" after the "no" decision. I'm not seeing that in the shown diff.
Looking at the code the "no" seems to relate to the context expiring, so you wouldn't want to wait more if the context already expired, you'd want to stop. Is there a reason that label exists?
I'm pretty wary of LLM development tools hallucinating and wasting my time, is that whats happening in the lease broker example?
show comments
2001zhaozhao
This is definitely getting at least some things right about how we work with agents today, specifically that we often work at the architecture level, and we need a better alternative to the current Plan Mode offered by coding agents to efficiently architect software at a high level, which is more visual and offers better back-and-forth incrementation with the agent than simply "reject final plan with X message".
From the website demos i definitely think this is a clean interface, although I don't know how much better this is compared to some simple custom Mermaid format, which the agent can write as artifact files and present to users. Zooming out, this app seems like 1 feature (a MCP with a GUI attached to it) rather than an entire product.
Also, I don't know if asking the agent to write specific code changes into the plan is a good idea. I think maybe that a "plan -> approve -> write code" would let the agent write higher quality code than "plan which contains code -> approve". But maybe you can make it work when combined with some specific prompting marking the code as clearly work-in-progress and subject to change, and that the agent should surface any parts implemented differently relative to the plan to the user, etc.
show comments
itissid
very cool. Congrats on the launch. first half of 2026 was the year when every one made such internal tools one way or another. I am happy you guys could build a product out of it.
The cool thing is even though this tool addresses a few, use case for reducing cognitive load, they happen so frequently that they add up.
I think they key with cognitive load is that the agents often produce a lot of trace/docs etc, in the end only a small % of the traces really are important to the final changes, because concise changes are typically very small and self contained.
One thing i see this becoming important with is maintaining internal tooling built using this. I maintain an internal docs system that helps me do designing before i build code, that docs system is completely vibe coded and i can add features to it very fast, but now its all grown up. A challenge then is can i understand just enough about a new proposed change to approve it? That is key to the doc system not becoming a burden in of itself, while maintaining a tight core feature set.
show comments
syl5x
Okay great timing because I was having the exact same idea, but mine was just a skill that was building a website with the flow mapped out and the relevant code, which seems that you are doing as well, definitely going to follow this, good luck guys!
show comments
physicallyIllfr
Cool open-source project. Vut why are we trying to build so many no code tools?
show comments
pftburger
Ha, nervous enthusiasm seeing this, as I’m building something similar. Guess I should put a demo somewhere public. Very cool space.
doc_ick
If only this tool came out before I discovered the ballerina programming language (https://ballerina.io/). Otherwise I am inline with the language <-> uml like definition ballerina statically provides without llm usage.
metanonsense
Yeah.. that's something that I thought about for a few years now. I think making sense of code bases and software design will soon be a completely new industry. I had expected that companies like Jetbrains would be in a prime position to offer solutions for that, but it takes longer than I expected.
nmekala35
Interesting idea for sure. But as a software engineer, I’m struggling to map out what this would replace today. I use Cursor pretty heavily, but it’s not entirely clear what would make me jump to a new IDE based on what you’ve built so far.
Maybe I’m missing something.
show comments
eecks
As an architect, how do you envision me using this?
show comments
lfdo0870
For that there's Python: with30 lines you can automate this task. If you want I can send you the script I use. DM me if interested.
writtenone
We need LESS of AI and more HUMAN thinking. The process of thought and the increased difficulty with increased complexity is a feature not a bug.
AI note taking is a scourge on society and needs to go.
show comments
shouryamaanjain
this is really cool, claude artifacts often fails to visualize/explain system's layout and flows
igorkraw
Looks cool :-)Linux wen plz so I can play with it?
show comments
woggy
Plans for Windows version?
asdev
I think the issue with this type of product is it creates an N+1 source of truth for teams alongside their other tools. Inherently, this will get out of date as a project progresses. You could have an agent update based on changes, but that would likely degrade the design doc/artifact into unintelligible slop which wouldn't be useful in the future. This is a behavioral/structural problem of software design in general, which I don't think can be solved by software. Perhaps if this is mainly focused on collaboration at design time, but then that begs the question if teams will really want this tool versus using Notion, Linear, Google Docs.
show comments
shaundano
Very happy to see a product like this. UML-style diagramming is still a part of my workflow when designing any architecture. Excited to try it out.
theaniketmaurya
looks great! personally for me, system design is quite imporatn and cognitive debt is shooting up
artur_makly
Congrats! Looks tight.
souvlakee
Loved that zed-inspired landing pages.
show comments
eliburnes
Excited to try this out!
komposit
Cool idea will give this a try!
saadn92
What does pricing look like?
show comments
verdverm
I was confused for a moment by the name "Sid" in new coding tools.
Sid of GitLab raised for Kilo, and GitLab is also of YC
Awesome, keen to see where this goes. Can we have light mode for the whiteboard and dark mode for the code?
Oh WOW, cool to see a technique that'll be everywhere in 12 months (the fake pen drawing animations + streaming diagrams as they're produced) first be announced. Do we still do "First!" comments, y'all?
~~[EDIT: you need to put "only for macOS" in way more prominent places, all over -- that offends my soul greatly and may Linus frown upon you all]~~ [EDIT2: I was mistaken!]
This all looks really solid. That said, two remarks:
1. The integration with OS LSPs is quite fun and commendable. Is it possible that the diagrams might get their own LSP, someday? Or is better just staying as direct TS callsites?
2. The choice of the word "IDE" seems like it might get you in trouble, given the small "cannot edit files" detail. Any comments on the decision there, as opposed to, say... "brainstorming tool"? Or hell, "[architectonic] harness"?
3. The psuedocode "semantic diff" thing is an incredible idea, wow. Props there.
4. This language kinda concerns me: "how the requirements that you set were implemented". In my highly-arbitrary development flow, it ideally goes `idea -> spec/reqs -> plan -> test -> impl -> eval -> land -> review`, and this kind of tool seems explicitly targeted towards just the second and third with some partial coverage of their neighbors on either side. More concretely: by adding implementation, don't you lose a powerful specificity selling point and now have to compete with all full harnesses?
5. Suggesting "GPT-6 Luna and Claude Opus 5.5" is presumably a typo? Cause the equivelant of Opus 5.5 is Astra, and even then not really.
If you’re interested in IDEs and want to see a completely different take, look no further
[0] - https://github.com/con-dog/slices-demo#slice-ide---an-experi...
To me these show HN posts all build things that are a bit too obvious
The point about semantic diff viewer sounds very interesting. I think many coding harnesses are not doing this well enough.
One concern about accuracy of the diagrams. In the example, there is a transition back to the session service labelled "wait for release" after the "no" decision. I'm not seeing that in the shown diff.
Looking at the code the "no" seems to relate to the context expiring, so you wouldn't want to wait more if the context already expired, you'd want to stop. Is there a reason that label exists?
I'm pretty wary of LLM development tools hallucinating and wasting my time, is that whats happening in the lease broker example?
This is definitely getting at least some things right about how we work with agents today, specifically that we often work at the architecture level, and we need a better alternative to the current Plan Mode offered by coding agents to efficiently architect software at a high level, which is more visual and offers better back-and-forth incrementation with the agent than simply "reject final plan with X message".
From the website demos i definitely think this is a clean interface, although I don't know how much better this is compared to some simple custom Mermaid format, which the agent can write as artifact files and present to users. Zooming out, this app seems like 1 feature (a MCP with a GUI attached to it) rather than an entire product.
Also, I don't know if asking the agent to write specific code changes into the plan is a good idea. I think maybe that a "plan -> approve -> write code" would let the agent write higher quality code than "plan which contains code -> approve". But maybe you can make it work when combined with some specific prompting marking the code as clearly work-in-progress and subject to change, and that the agent should surface any parts implemented differently relative to the plan to the user, etc.
very cool. Congrats on the launch. first half of 2026 was the year when every one made such internal tools one way or another. I am happy you guys could build a product out of it.
The cool thing is even though this tool addresses a few, use case for reducing cognitive load, they happen so frequently that they add up.
I think they key with cognitive load is that the agents often produce a lot of trace/docs etc, in the end only a small % of the traces really are important to the final changes, because concise changes are typically very small and self contained.
One thing i see this becoming important with is maintaining internal tooling built using this. I maintain an internal docs system that helps me do designing before i build code, that docs system is completely vibe coded and i can add features to it very fast, but now its all grown up. A challenge then is can i understand just enough about a new proposed change to approve it? That is key to the doc system not becoming a burden in of itself, while maintaining a tight core feature set.
Okay great timing because I was having the exact same idea, but mine was just a skill that was building a website with the flow mapped out and the relevant code, which seems that you are doing as well, definitely going to follow this, good luck guys!
Cool open-source project. Vut why are we trying to build so many no code tools?
Ha, nervous enthusiasm seeing this, as I’m building something similar. Guess I should put a demo somewhere public. Very cool space.
If only this tool came out before I discovered the ballerina programming language (https://ballerina.io/). Otherwise I am inline with the language <-> uml like definition ballerina statically provides without llm usage.
Yeah.. that's something that I thought about for a few years now. I think making sense of code bases and software design will soon be a completely new industry. I had expected that companies like Jetbrains would be in a prime position to offer solutions for that, but it takes longer than I expected.
Interesting idea for sure. But as a software engineer, I’m struggling to map out what this would replace today. I use Cursor pretty heavily, but it’s not entirely clear what would make me jump to a new IDE based on what you’ve built so far.
Maybe I’m missing something.
As an architect, how do you envision me using this?
For that there's Python: with30 lines you can automate this task. If you want I can send you the script I use. DM me if interested.
We need LESS of AI and more HUMAN thinking. The process of thought and the increased difficulty with increased complexity is a feature not a bug.
AI note taking is a scourge on society and needs to go.
this is really cool, claude artifacts often fails to visualize/explain system's layout and flows
Looks cool :-)Linux wen plz so I can play with it?
Plans for Windows version?
I think the issue with this type of product is it creates an N+1 source of truth for teams alongside their other tools. Inherently, this will get out of date as a project progresses. You could have an agent update based on changes, but that would likely degrade the design doc/artifact into unintelligible slop which wouldn't be useful in the future. This is a behavioral/structural problem of software design in general, which I don't think can be solved by software. Perhaps if this is mainly focused on collaboration at design time, but then that begs the question if teams will really want this tool versus using Notion, Linear, Google Docs.
Very happy to see a product like this. UML-style diagramming is still a part of my workflow when designing any architecture. Excited to try it out.
looks great! personally for me, system design is quite imporatn and cognitive debt is shooting up
Congrats! Looks tight.
Loved that zed-inspired landing pages.
Excited to try this out!
Cool idea will give this a try!
What does pricing look like?
I was confused for a moment by the name "Sid" in new coding tools.
Sid of GitLab raised for Kilo, and GitLab is also of YC
https://capwolf.com/former-gitlab-ceo-launches-kilo-in-ai-co...
Does it have a terminal and panes? These are things I do not ever see giving up
736mb on macOS
/facepalm
Vibe-coded landing pages are an instant “no thanks” for me.