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Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

workflows.diagrid.io

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Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#21

Post by rco8786 »

smallnix wrote: post #20
bwfan123 wrote: post #19

Intead of "Step 1: Upload Your Diagram", if you could say "describe your diagram", that would take it to the next level. So you would generate a workflow from the description using an llm which the user could then edit. This takes out the painful part of diagram creation and makes it fun for the user. For example, for infra automation a description could be: "first download this from this url. then, run this command,…

To make it less ambiguous, you could let the user describe the diagram with what the software is supposed to do in some sort of more rigid unambiguous reduced English /s

This would have the added benefit of being able to describe to the computer exactly what you want to happen and how.

Feels like we're onto something here.

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#22

Post by nivertech »

genewitch wrote: post #14
mentalgear wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it weren't for the ambiguity of prompts and nondeterministic nature of the model.

Set the seed. Reply to post: "any"? [0] I accept large checks for allowing setting seeds on-prem.

not setting a seed is a feature - not a bug, otherwise lots of people with similar prompts will generate an exactly the same source code

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#23

Post by dtagames »

raydenvm wrote: post #8

This reminds me of the UML/RUP era from the early 2000s.... Is that an attempt to revive or even resurrect UML diagrams and Rational Unified Process blending it with AI? I would bet it's all dead forever. I'm skeptical about diagram-driven development making a comeback. In my experience, developers today prefer more agile, code-first approaches because requirements change rapidly and maintaining diagram-code synchron…

Yes. It's CASE[0] all over again.

I've found you can already paste an architecture diagram into Cursor and use that to guide code[1]. I make mine in Xmind because there's no need for special, rigid formatting.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_software_engi...

[1] Diagram as code example from my dev blog: https://davidbethune.com/blog/watsonDevBlog28

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#25

Post by yaronsc »

potamic wrote: post #3

This is really cool as far as the application goes, but I do have a question on how you plan to compete/differentiate, if at all. I fed the same image to one of the flagship LLMs and was able to generate, more or less, the same dapr scaffold. You might probably be able to fine tune towards dapr use case better, but if one of the flagship models that people already use is going to come close, then it becomes a hard se…

Hi thanks for your question. You wrote "more or less" and that's very accurate - the generated code by just feeding it to any LLM provider usually doesn't work out of the box, includes many hallucinations and also doesn't provide a solution that can be immediately downloaded and run in your IDE

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#26

Post by yaronsc »

bwfan123 wrote: post #19

Intead of "Step 1: Upload Your Diagram", if you could say "describe your diagram", that would take it to the next level. So you would generate a workflow from the description using an llm which the user could then edit. This takes out the painful part of diagram creation and makes it fun for the user. For example, for infra automation a description could be: "first download this from this url. then, run this command,…

Great idea and a work in progress :)

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#27

Post by yaronsc »

sky2224 wrote: post #7

This is cool. I remember not too long ago I had a professor telling me that this was essentially the future of software engineering and that soon we won't be writing code as we know it today. I believed him, I just didn't think we'd be seeing it here so soon. Any plans to create systems that allow this to be embedded in existing code bases? It'd be neat to be able to sketch out new systems that your tool could genera…

Thanks for the response! What you're saying about embedding and enriching existing code based is definitely next level and I'll bring it back to the team to explore

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#28

Post by yaronsc »

Rexxar wrote: post #24

What is the difference with tools like Camunda (for BPMN) for example ?

Dapr is a code-first workflow engine that doesn't require a DSL language and includes many other integration points like pub/sub, service discovery and more. It also runs and deploys natively on K8s

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#29

Post by yaronsc »

baumschubser wrote: post #13

I’m all in for diagrams in discussing software! When there is no whiteboard, I literally draw in the air to explain my point. However, doing real, orthodox UML/BPMN requires everyone to understand the official notation, the difference e.g. between an „association“ and a „message flow“ (and then the differences between UML 1.4 and 2.0) etc. Do people really work in environments where all stakeholders have that kind of…

Great point. Our tool does UML/BPMN as well as regular drawn diagrams without a specific notation, and will soon expand into regular prompts

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#30

Post by yaronsc »

swyx wrote: post #2

1. yeah this is nice, making it easier to generate workflows is always good. i think the challenge is always versioning and proper error handling - if the diagram the user sends in doesnt properly model the work done, then you're SOL. 2. (sorry to bring it up but have to ask) how does Diagrid/Dapr compare to Temporal? i browsed your docs but there wasn't much that came up. is Dapr strictly dag based?

1. A user can always go into the generated code and make changes to it. The code generated includes explanations for what each step in the workflow does

2. Dapr has 9 APIs, one of which is Workflows which indeed competes with Temporal. Dapr Workflows isn't DAG based, it's code-first. This tool allows you to start with an external representation

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