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Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

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Re: Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

#21

Post by solarkraft »

This looks really cool for DIYing workflows, especially since you seem to have a very useful selection of tools!

Did you build your own agent engine? Why not LangGraph?

Say I was building a general agentic chat app with LangGraph in the backend (as it seems to provide a lot of infrastructure for highly reliable and interactive agents, all the way up to a protocol usable by UIs, plus a decent ecosystem, making it very easily extensible). Could I integrate with this for DIY workflows in a high quality fashion (high-precision updates and control)?

Is there a case for switching out LangGraph‘s backend with Sim (can you build agents of the same quality and complexity - I’m thinking coding agent)? Could it interact with LangGraph agents in a high quality way so you can tap that ecosystem?

Can I use Sim workflows with my current agent, say, via MCP?

Re: Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

#22

Post by smarx007 »

nine_k wrote: post #19
smarx007 wrote: post #18

So here is a case that I wanted to implement in n8n a few years ago and it required quite heavy JS blocks: - I want to check some input - pick one of your 138 blocks - I want to extract a list of items from that input - I want to check which items did I encounter before - Do something for the items that have not been encountered before; bonus point for detecting updated and deleted items - Rinse and repeat It could b…

But does that require AI agents? Well, maybe the extraction step, if it's not CSV but a general-case web page.

Maybe in the middle, processing the items - classifying, summarizing.

But the post bills the tool as an n8n alternative. Therefore, I am evaluating it as such. Solid basics before the AI whizbang.

Re: Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

#23

Post by waleedlatif1 »

smarx007 wrote: post #18

So here is a case that I wanted to implement in n8n a few years ago and it required quite heavy JS blocks: - I want to check some input - pick one of your 138 blocks - I want to extract a list of items from that input - I want to check which items did I encounter before - Do something for the items that have not been encountered before; bonus point for detecting updated and deleted items - Rinse and repeat It could b…

this is actually a perfect use case, mostly deterministic workflows that need LLMs to fill in the gaps or do the knowledge work. As you mentioned, you can either add it as a row in a CSV file (sheets), use the baked-in memory block and treat it as simple storage, store the row in supabase, or use the knowledgebase. Basically, there are a ton of ways that this can be done that don't require you to maintain the memory solution yourself. you can even detect the updated and deleted items by keeping some sort of version-controlled snapshot of each row in the csv and updating it as you go.

I can't tell you whether it got better in n8n, but I can definitively say that this sounds like a great candidate workflow to build in sim :)

Re: Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

#24

Post by waleedlatif1 »

nine_k wrote: post #19
smarx007 wrote: post #18

So here is a case that I wanted to implement in n8n a few years ago and it required quite heavy JS blocks: - I want to check some input - pick one of your 138 blocks - I want to extract a list of items from that input - I want to check which items did I encounter before - Do something for the items that have not been encountered before; bonus point for detecting updated and deleted items - Rinse and repeat It could b…

But does that require AI agents? Well, maybe the extraction step, if it's not CSV but a general-case web page.

the agents would be great in the instructions where we need to `do something`, but asides from that is sounds like a pure orchestration task.

now, handling an integration to something like google sheets myself for a task this small is a nightmare, not to mention the separate table I'd need to keep to store the access token & refresh token and the permissions I'd need to get from google. on top of that, hosting it somewhere and then monitoring it.

Re: Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

#25

Post by threecheese »

solarkraft wrote: post #21

This looks really cool for DIYing workflows, especially since you seem to have a very useful selection of tools! Did you build your own agent engine? Why not LangGraph? Say I was building a general agentic chat app with LangGraph in the backend (as it seems to provide a lot of infrastructure for highly reliable and interactive agents, all the way up to a protocol usable by UIs, plus a decent ecosystem, making it very…

Their deployment stuff has been turning me off lately; everyone is rushing to monetize - which I understand and support - but I feel like Langsmith is creeping further and further into Langchain|graph and it makes me hesitant to invest. It’s giving AWS-like gentle but firm lock-in vibes, I wonder if they have any PMs from there.

I do like the way they’ve been able to leverage Langgraph workflows to build agents - it seems like the right abstraction to me - and I also feel their middleware approach is very Django-y which I also like. Are you enjoying their stack?

Re: Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

#26

Post by waleedlatif1 »

solarkraft wrote: post #21

This looks really cool for DIYing workflows, especially since you seem to have a very useful selection of tools! Did you build your own agent engine? Why not LangGraph? Say I was building a general agentic chat app with LangGraph in the backend (as it seems to provide a lot of infrastructure for highly reliable and interactive agents, all the way up to a protocol usable by UIs, plus a decent ecosystem, making it very…

1. we wanted to have full control over the agent orchestration and the execution since we didn't like the abstractions that many of the existing frameworks had built, and didn't want to have dependencies in places we didn't need them. so, we built the orchestration and execution engine from scratch, allowing us to do neat things like human in the loop, settings that run the same block 10 times concurrently, etc.

2. this would kind of serve as a drop-in replacement for langgraph. you could build a workflow with an agent and some tools, perhaps some form of memory. then, just deploy that as an API, call it from your frontend, and consume the streamed response on your chat client and without the need to maintain any infra at all.

3. we have a generic code block and an api block used to call APIs for integrations that we may not have, and you can use those to plug (langgraph) agents into the Sim ecosystem.

4. we are adding in the ability to deploy your workflow as an MCP server in the next week, stay tuned :) in the meantime, you can deploy the workflow as an API and have the agent call it as a tool. moreover, you can use the workflow block in sim to call other agents/worklows as well, so its easy to encapsulate a lot of complexity in a `parent` workflow that you call that dynamically routes and uses different tools based on the task at hand

Re: Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

#27

Post by threecheese »

waleedlatif1 wrote: post #16
hbarka wrote: post #14

I wonder how the free open-source in this stacks up to the free open-source in n8n.

n8n uses a "Sustainable Use License"—source available, but not OSI-approved open source. This means you can only use it for internal business purposes or non-commercial use. Sim is Apache 2.0.

Edit: I checked out your materials, I see. Copilot; smart - one could probably do this themselves with the self hosted, and those that would do this aren’t good customers for you. Those that don’t want to bother will use the free tier and possibly convert, and maybe you’ll get some enterprise out of the bargain. Good luck!

What is your business strategy, if someone like AWS could treat you like Elastic or Redis? Premium addons? As a consumer I have no problem with n8ns license, it’s their technology that I think could be done better by a fresh competitor.

Re: Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

#28

Post by vulture916 »

smarx007 wrote: post #18

So here is a case that I wanted to implement in n8n a few years ago and it required quite heavy JS blocks: - I want to check some input - pick one of your 138 blocks - I want to extract a list of items from that input - I want to check which items did I encounter before - Do something for the items that have not been encountered before; bonus point for detecting updated and deleted items - Rinse and repeat It could b…

N8n can definitely do this.

They recently added native tables, albeit still just a few data types, you can store stuff in and use in workflows.

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