Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#161

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:31 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #160

kentonv wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but Workers is the technology that makes this all possible. I don't think I could have built this without Workers as a foundation. (I tried once, with Sandstorm, and like I said, it didn't work well.) Sometimes you just can't advance the state of the art while also maintaining broad compatibility. It's all open source, though. You can run the whole stack on your own machine.

Workers is a product and you're paid to develop and sell it as an employee. I 100% understand the hustle. I do the same thing. I just don't trust a giant like Cloudflare that has done several things to weaken the open web and establish a position that is all too powerful. I don't want to give them an iota of support. Even using open source buys into their mindshare, distribution, ecosystem, and eventual supremacy and…

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#162

Post by kentonv » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

runtime_terror wrote: post #139

kentonv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet, but that's an obvious direction to take things. :) I'm really excited by the idea that this platform makes it safe to use blueprints that someone else vibe coded, without worrying about whether they checked it for security bugs, etc. Basically if the app works, it works. So yeah, there absolutely should be a marketplace so everyone can try everyone else's stuff. BTW there are three blueprints installed autom…

Couldn't the blueprint exfiltrate incoming data to an external location for example?

The blueprint is just code, it does not include data or capabilities.

It's, I suppose, possible that the agent added secrets to the code itself. Not, like, API keys -- the agent never sees those. But it could have extracted sensitive info and put it into code, perhaps?

We can implement restrictions on exporting blueprints from workspaces that have seen sensitive secrets, though this might be more annoying than useful. It's a tricky balance.

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#163

Post by nijave » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

rozenmd wrote: post #4

I liked Kenton's take on this: https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572?s=20 Text from tweet: Today we are releasing Cloudflare OS, a chatbot with connectors, just like every other tech company is doing. Except actually, it's different. This is a remake of Sandstorm[.]io, my startup from 10 years ago, except this time built on Cloudflare Workers (the platform I've spent the last 9 years building) and deep…

>This doesn't work in the cloud Software-as-a-Service model, because you are not running your own copy of the app.

Let me introduce you to scrapling+MCP--the closest I've come.

Stealthed, controllable browser gives you an API to arbitrary web things

You can't modify it, but you can extend it which imo is the next best thing

adb (Android) is close albeit a bit more tedious. It's fun watching an LLM take screenshots, read them, then send input events back to the phone.

If you have a rooted Android, you _can_ modify the apps. Xposed, ReVanced, et al subject to Play Integrity's ever growing pervasiveness

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#164

Post by nijave » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

tinco wrote: post #76

rozenmd wrote: post #4

I liked Kenton's take on this: https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572?s=20 Text from tweet: Today we are releasing Cloudflare OS, a chatbot with connectors, just like every other tech company is doing. Except actually, it's different. This is a remake of Sandstorm[.]io, my startup from 10 years ago, except this time built on Cloudflare Workers (the platform I've spent the last 9 years building) and deep…

This is really interesting. I built a similar product (not released yet), but it uses Kubernetes as the infrastructure layer instead of Cloudflare OS. I guess all these years later I am left with the same existential question that plagued Sandstorm. What is its relevance in the context of Linux containers? This is not a rhetorical question, is there a real benefit for a Sandstorm grain over a docker style Linux conta…

It has real business value. Letting non technical users run wild without the onerous layers of controls in traditional enterprise IT.

We're already contending with users wanting to hook up every SaaS MCP to every other SaaS platform and then slap AI on top. Having a controlled sandbox for that would hugely simplify things.

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#165

Post by overgard » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

I'm mostly going off the tweet, it could be I just don't understand, but how do you managed shared data if everyone has their own copy of the code and they can add whatever features they want? I mean, I'm assuming that any sort of significant feature requires some sort of change to the data model, and even with a schema-less database you could have conflicts if two things use the same field name, for instance? Also what happens with updates? Like, part of IT is keeping people up to date, but if everyone has their own bespoke customizations how do you not clobber those?

Also the security story doesn't completely add up to me. Like, if I'm a user and I can just add features that I want, what's to stop me from placing data in there that's maybe covered under HIPPA or some other sensitive data (protected class, or even just stuff like authentication information)? Right now a small number of people need to think about data security, but this seems like it'd extend it to anyone? That kind of data, it's not just about "keeping it internal by default", there are a lot of rules around storing it at all.

I dunno, it kind of makes me think of when people suggest forking an open source project if the maintainers won't accept a suggestion. Sure, you can do that, and it does happen, but you're also basically signing up to maintain it for decades. I'm not sure if anyone wants to maintain Alice in accounting's very weird spreadsheet app 10 years after she's left the company?

(Again I'm not throwing shade, just trying to understand better)

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#166

Post by vavos » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:43 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #46

yomismoaqui wrote: post #16

Everytime I read about new things from Cloudflare they look really cool but I cannot shake the feeling of not wanting to use them for fear of lock-in, am I too paranoid?

This is 100% open source and self-hostable. https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflare-os It runs on top of our open source runtime. https://github.com/cloudflare/workerd

It's cool that it's open-source, but how much effort and scale would it take to run it on non cloud flare infra?

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#167

Post by rcarmo » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

I have a feeling we're all working towards the same thing, but with different frameworks and infra. The Cloudflare OS experience looks, to me, very much like what I created for myself with https://rcarmo.github.io/projects/piclaw (except that I rely on focusing different instances on different sets of skills and tooling, so only two have "Office" skills, for instance).

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#168

Post by eigencoder » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

I think this is trying to do something similar to exe.dev, but not doing it as well

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#169

Post by mannanj » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

Does this beat self-stewarding my data, and placing relevant protections around my data instead.

Then the UI's, the "Apps", are just ephemeral instances over my live data whose permission I am consistently setting or reviewing.

I feel like that more accurately represents a "person" behind the data: when I am producing, creating and expressing in real life, I do not ask some intermediary 3rd-party for permission to access my voice and my output. I just produce and let whatever gets created be made there in the physical environment or in someone's head. Today's apps (edit: & cloudflare's direction here) feel more like "The moment I express or generate something, I lease it's output from someone else and ask for their permission to access my output".

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#170

Post by spencerflem » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

q8zd3 wrote: post #63

Why do people add "OS" to their product/project name when it is not an OS at all?

In some sense, it is. Sandstorm called itself an OS too. Arcan calls itself an Overlay-OS.

I think for any platform for general purpose computing that provides an application model that programs are written to target, it's close enough I don't mind. Ie: it makes sense for some end-user software to have a target for Windows, Linux, Sandstorm, etc.

& from the other side- what does Debian add that lets it call itself an OS? A set environment and package manager that software is specifically packaged for.