Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 128 posts

Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE

#1

Post by julesrms »

Hello HN, I don't post on here much, but wanted to get some eyes on a new project I'm just launching. I think we definitely need one more AI code agent..

I'm a long-term C++ dev, and over 30+ years I've created some successful audio dev tools (JUCE, the Tracktion DAW, the Cmajor DSP language). All of these came from me getting annoyed with something I had to use, and deciding to have a go at my own take on whatever it was.

So Juggler is my attempt at an AI code agent, after spending too many hours loving what the models could do, but hating the CLI experience, and having some opinions of what a better UX might be for this stuff.

Lots more blurb on the website and github, but a quick tech dump which might grab your attention if you're into these things:

A session is a document, not a log file. Each conversation is a Yjs CRDT tree. It can branch into sub-threads (recursively), and you can drill down, backtrack, edit, undo/redo, and inspect everything: tool calls, approvals, and the raw context JSON going to the model, etc. The UI is based around Finder-style Miller columns rather than a big doom-scroll, and is quick to navigate.

Because it's a CRDT behind a local web server, multiple clients can attach P2P to a live session: the native desktop app, a browser tab, or your phone. Run the headless server on the box where the code lives, view it from wherever.

Almost everything is a JavaScript plugin: every item in the context (read/write/bash/etc.), the LLM loop strategies, slash commands, and their UIs. You can inspect, fork, or replace any of them. I don't do much agent customisation myself, but lots of people do, and I'd love to see what they think of with this plugin API.

Go backend, Wails for windowing (no Electron), plain type-checked JS (strict JSDoc), Yjs for the documents. Usual BYOK provider support: Claude (CLI or API), OpenAI/Codex, Gemini, Ollama, OpenRouter, DeepSeek, etc.

The app's AGPLv3; the extension SDK and bundled extensions are Apache-2.0, so extensions have no copyleft strings attached. No signup, no telemetry, trying to make it frictionless for people to try it out..

It's very much a beta, and is a one-man side project. It hasn't yet had a proper kicking from the real world, but I'm confident some people with similar preferences to my own will like it!

https://juggler.studio

Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE
github.com

Re: Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE

#2

Post by julesrms »

Just wanted to add a follow-up to what I posted above..

In terms of who might be interested in this: I've watched amazing communities spring up around open agents like Opencode and Pi. People are getting into those because of their extensibility and being model-independant. They're great projects, but like many people I know, I really hate being stuck in the terminal for this kind of tool. I also had some ideas around what an agent's UX could be like if every item in the context was a plugin (with its own custom UI).

So I guess if you're a claude/codex user but want to escape the terminal (and let's face it, their GUI apps are also basically the same UX as a terminal but with nicer fonts), I'm trying to do something different here, would be really keen to hear what the enthusiasts think of it!

Re: Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE

#4

Post by prabhanjana_c »

UI is clean. could install in Mac. Adding context files at the top is clean. It worked. Currently I use zed, vscode (for UI). along with claude, codex, Hermes. Not sure If I will continue to use. But I see it is a clean and good UI, and integrating to my exiting cli's. All the best.

Re: Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE

#5

Post by julesrms »

prabhanjana_c wrote: post #4

UI is clean. could install in Mac. Adding context files at the top is clean. It worked. Currently I use zed, vscode (for UI). along with claude, codex, Hermes. Not sure If I will continue to use. But I see it is a clean and good UI, and integrating to my exiting cli's. All the best.

Thanks! I think hearing "the UI is clean" is exactly the reaction I've been hoping for :)

While I've put huge effort into things like its architecture and extension API, it's really trying to just build a lovely UI/UX that has been my motivation on this.

Re: Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE

#6

Post by Semkas »

This looks cool! I'll check it out. Out of curiosity: I assume you've also used agents to help build this, and on the site you mention working on this for ~6 months. Most one-man projects I see that use ai seem to focus on creating and presenting a concept as soon as possible (to a lot of people I think the main benefit of stuff like vibing is that you really quickly get something that you can have others test out).

On the site you also mention being pretty opinionated about the tools you use / build, which I imagine is part of the reason why you spend more time on this before releasing it. What was your experience using ai to build a larger project with a very specific idea / taste in mind?

Re: Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE

#7

Post by blackberrysoda »

I thought "Wails" was gonna be short for "Wuby on Wails" lmao

Cool project actually, but I noticed the author said "No Electron" as if Electron is synonymous with JavaScript.

My biggest concern about it actually is using Go to render web front-ends in HTML/CSS hahah so I'm not sure "No electron" is selling me.

Re: Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE

#8

Post by julesrms »

Semkas wrote: post #6

This looks cool! I'll check it out. Out of curiosity: I assume you've also used agents to help build this, and on the site you mention working on this for ~6 months. Most one-man projects I see that use ai seem to focus on creating and presenting a concept as soon as possible (to a lot of people I think the main benefit of stuff like vibing is that you really quickly get something that you can have others test out).…

I must have authored literally a million lines of C++ over my career, and done many talks about clean coding, etc.. But in this one I quite appropriately wrong almost zero lines by hand!

Surprisingly, I've really enjoyed the experience. I have friends who lament that they probably won't be hand-writing code much more, but although I've always loved the craft of coding, I discovered that a lot of the fun I get is just in the end result, not how I got there.

Re: Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE

#9

Post by julesrms »

blackberrysoda wrote: post #7

I thought "Wails" was gonna be short for "Wuby on Wails" lmao Cool project actually, but I noticed the author said "No Electron" as if Electron is synonymous with JavaScript. My biggest concern about it actually is using Go to render web front-ends in HTML/CSS hahah so I'm not sure "No electron" is selling me.

"No electron" is more about avoiding bloat and dependencies.

I come from a hardcore, real-time C++ background and the idea of a product not being a single self-contained binary is just too far for me to go!

(But I don't think the choice of JS back-end should make the slightest difference to anyone using this. I could swap electron in there in the future and probably no-one would notice)

Post reply on HN