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Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows

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Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows

#41

Post by ishmaelsamuel »

rgbrgb wrote: post #24

Congrats on the launch, neat idea! You guys have thoughts on automated testing? My experience with visual programming in the wild (zapier, iterable, mailchimp) is that you end up with a lot of orphan and broken "scripts" deployed only to the production environment by well-meaning operators who can't really test or maintain them. It's interesting that this is geared towards devs, but I worry that you'd have a bunch of…

Heya! We have given some thought to implementing CI, reviews, and a sandbox environment.

We've built out some testing functionality that allows users to test their workflows and steps, and we're going to continue down this road to eventually provide our users version control and sandbox environments. It's currently seen as a "nice-to-have" for even our production users, so the timing of when it's implemented is still unclear.

Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows

#43

Post by curo »

Would this be something I could use to facilitate integration between my SaaS and 3rd party tools used by our end-users? I.e., they provide the key through an admin panel and then we can 2-way sync with SalesForce? Or does that require additional auth steps that require native integration?

Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows

#45

Post by fooly_wk »

transitivebs wrote: post #44

Congrats on the launch. RPA & low/no-code tools are a very crowded market right now and I don't believe that focusing on selling to developers will get you very far. Best of luck tho.

Luckily, many other people believe this too which is why we think there's a big opportunity no one has addressed here.

Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows

#46

Post by fooly_wk »

curo wrote: post #43

Would this be something I could use to facilitate integration between my SaaS and 3rd party tools used by our end-users? I.e., they provide the key through an admin panel and then we can 2-way sync with SalesForce? Or does that require additional auth steps that require native integration?

Great question! Not yet, but this is very much on our roadmap and something we're looking to support soon!

Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows

#47

Post by aeden »

fooly_wk wrote: post #4
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Congrats on the launch! What would you say differentiates you from competitors in the space, such as Integromat, Tray, n8n, and Zapier? Also, if I may offer you a piece of advice based on my experience at an org offering a similar product: make it frictionless to bring in/import snippets/templates for Cloud Functions (think code snippet search function you'd have on your workstation as a dev). Your users are likely t…

Thank you and great question! Zapier is great for simple tasks like sending data from one app to another, but isn't well designed for more complex operations like handling large arrays of data, or writing custom code. More broadly, Zapier and other tools like Tray and Integromat are more focused on RPA, which typically means automating internal business processes. Our focus is specifically on developers and product t…

> but isn't well designed for more complex operations like handling large arrays of data, or writing custom code.

Even though they support writing Python and/or Javascript code in zaps? How is Paragon better at supporting writing custom code?

Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows

#48

Post by amerf1 »

Firstly congrats on the launch! I am super excited about this I just signed up hoping to get my hands on it and experiment on different things

At $30/month I think its a steal the reason I say this is because for someone to do this with no-code they would probably have to hire a freelancer who would charge them way more than $30 for setting it up and probably no/little support. Love the idea I really think it fills a gap here.

There are several side projects I'm going to try with this

Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows

#49

Post by RocketSyntax »

ishmaelsamuel wrote: post #9
RocketSyntax wrote: post #6

Love it. I dream about this all the time. Hook them up w Kafka? How is Swagger/OpenAPI used? Airflow?

Hey! We're not exposing anything like Kafka to our end users. We think all of the underlying technical infrastructure should be abstracted so the users can focus on their core logic. We're also not currently exposing any external Swagger / OpenAPI docs for a similar reason, but it's simple to integrate and we've considered generating it for our more technical users. If you're interested in joining the team as an engi…

I am essentially asking if you are using Kafka and the codegen SDKs generated by Swagger behind the scenes.

Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows

#50

Post by ishmaelsamuel »

RocketSyntax wrote: post #49
ishmaelsamuel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! We're not exposing anything like Kafka to our end users. We think all of the underlying technical infrastructure should be abstracted so the users can focus on their core logic. We're also not currently exposing any external Swagger / OpenAPI docs for a similar reason, but it's simple to integrate and we've considered generating it for our more technical users. If you're interested in joining the team as an engi…

I am essentially asking if you are using Kafka and the codegen SDKs generated by Swagger behind the scenes.

Ahh, gotchya. We're not using Kafka or any tools for code gen / boilerplating code.
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