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Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

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Re: Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

#11
post #8

I’ll say it: this sounds like it would be absolute hell for customer support. “Special” clients are already tough to manage with weird little workarounds and random business requirements. If you let them start making changes themselves, they will inevitably break it and then come to support freaking out because some “business critical” feature they made isn’t working how they want it to, or isn’t working at all. And…

Great points, and this is a problem we have spent a lot of time thinking about as well. Our current hypothesis, is that the models will reach (and have already arguably come very close) a level where problems like these can be resolved without any human intervention needed. That doesn't mean that problems won't arise, they for sure will (nothing will ever get to 100%), but the increasing strength of the agents will a…

> Our current hypothesis, is that the models will reach (and have already arguably come very close) a level where problems like these can be resolved without any human intervention needed.

Frankly I don’t think this is that relevant. When software breaks, most people don’t want to get support from another piece of software. They want human support. As the models get better, I’d wager the problems that fall through will get increasingly messy by nature of a) being hard enough to stump the model or b) the model running in circles making changes that obscure or worsen the problem. Especially if you have non-technical users who can’t accurately describe what they want or the problem with the current state.

Benchmarks and guardrails are nice and all, but as you said problems will never be 100% self correctable. Models are good enough until they aren’t. I like to take a “what’s the worst that could happen” approach to planning support. Murphy’s law and all that.

> And as a last point, most of our users are not creating business-critical features with Vendo right now.

Just give it some time… you’d be surprised what becomes business critical in the eyes of a customer. Sooner or later a report will become part of an accounting workflow etc, and it’ll break on the wrong day and suddenly payroll is late. You know how many Excel sheets are “business critical”? Same thing.

An alternative model you might consider is selling direct to the end user companies and taking a partnership approach to the apps you work with. End users come straight to you for help, you have a list of integrated apps you already support with the required plan/license from that vendor plus custom MCP support and features that don’t need an API, then sell professional services engagements if an end user client wants you to work with one of their vendors to set up a new integrated app. That way you reduce support friction, and your end users are aligned with your buyers.

Re: Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

#12
Not sure if this is productizable as-is, but I think it's absolutely the right direction. A lot of software has to become WAY more malleable directly in the hands of users.

Software vendors should be providing the platform, including any hard-to-build widgets, and "stock" look-and-feel so that the software is usable out of the box, but then the customers should be able to send their product feature requests directly to a chatbot, whether it is embedded into the platform (i.e. same vendor) or rides on top (i.e. different vendor).

This is the new form of UGC. The vendor can turn it into a marketplace within that platform, promote popular 3rd party features in that marketplace, etc.

Re: Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

#13

Not sure if this is productizable as-is, but I think it's absolutely the right direction. A lot of software has to become WAY more malleable directly in the hands of users. Software vendors should be providing the platform, including any hard-to-build widgets, and "stock" look-and-feel so that the software is usable out of the box, but then the customers should be able to send their product feature requests directly…

Great points!

Re: Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

#14
Interesting - but how do you ensure the generated UI's are high enough quality that I as a company would be happy showing them to my users. A lot of users are pretty tech-literate and would definitely critique anything that is wrong in the UI

Re: Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

#15

Interesting - but how do you ensure the generated UI's are high enough quality that I as a company would be happy showing them to my users. A lot of users are pretty tech-literate and would definitely critique anything that is wrong in the UI

Great question! We have a couple things: (1) We have strict gaurdrails that makes sure that all data displayed in the generated comoponents is accurate and sourced from a real API call (2) We learn your design system and brand, so that everything Vendo generates looks and feels native (3) We have our library of pre-built components purpose-built for Vendo and how it works, which helps us increase the quality even more

Re: Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

#16
Consider tightening up the pricing page. Paying $49/month for "$49 of usage a month" doesn't tell me what I'm getting. How many is "a few hundred", 200?

  Pro $49/month
  - Includes $49 of usage a month
  - ≈ a few hundred active end-user sessions
An LLM safety judge concerns me.

  "You are Vendo Auto, a safety judge for tool calls.",
  "Choose run only when the call is appropriate for the user and context.",
  "Choose ask when user confirmation is warranted, and block when the call must not proceed.",
  "Return a concise rationale grounded in the supplied call, context, directions, and recent activity.",
https://github.com/runvendo/vendo/blob/9e9782f653366793a769c...

Re: Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

#18
post #16

Consider tightening up the pricing page. Paying $49/month for "$49 of usage a month" doesn't tell me what I'm getting. How many is "a few hundred", 200? Pro $49/month - Includes $49 of usage a month - ≈ a few hundred active end-user sessions An LLM safety judge concerns me. "You are Vendo Auto, a safety judge for tool calls.", "Choose run only when the call is appropriate for the user and context.", "Choose ask when…

Thanks for the feedback! The $49 of usage is used across AI inference, sandbox minutes, and so on. We mention it later on in the pricing page, but will make sure it is more clear fromt he onset.

And yes, the LLM safety judge is not in general access right now. Still experimenting, and it is not being used by any customers currently.

Re: Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

#19
I like the idea. This is where software is going.

The future of this is having a API (with CLI, MCP) and then a SKILL.md file for other system to integrate with it.

Basically like yourapp.com/api/openapi.json and yourapp.com/api/skill.md.

This is the universal integration interface. Any app that wants to expose itself to be used by others to build things on top can do this. AI is the integration layer, avoids the integration hell.

I have tried similar things before. It works.

Re: Launch HN: Vendo (YC S26) – Let users build features on top of your product

#20
How does your VM handle local state and performance, when the user attempts to fetch, join and render data from multiple endpoints?

We use Dart and Go (front/backend) to allow users to render widgets/mini-apps on Maxint (Finsight). And hence, the speed (virtually instant) and overall quality of the output mostly depends on the LLM/inference endpoint that they choose.

In general, most users are happy with the existing features, however more advanced users have a playground to ship enhancements on-the-fly.

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