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

Flowise is shutting down

flowiseai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: Flowise is shutting down

#41

Post by _pdp_ »

ashu1461 wrote: post #6

There is something about agent workflow builders not gaining as much traction as they could have. Open AI also launched something in house and they are also shutting it down https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/agent-builder OpenAI is deprecating Agent Builder. Existing users can continue using it during the transition window, and the product is scheduled to shut down on November 30, 2026. ChatKit remains av…

Because it is a workflow builder. It is the wrong mental model. Agents and workflows are completely different things.

Re: Flowise is shutting down

#42

Post by _pdp_ »

Full disclosure I'm a founder of cbk.ai and chatbotkit.com, where we've built reusable agent components. I have never really saw flowise, n8n the now defunct OpenAI agent builder and other similar products as competitors and I wanted to describe why.

I think workflow builders are mostly the wrong mental model for AI. A graph of predefined nodes and edges is useful when you already know the exact sequence of work.... but the point of an AI agent is that it can decide what to do next from the current context.

IMHO reusable building blocks still matter enormously. You should not have to recreate an integration, a capability, or a piece of reliable deterministic logic every time. It is wasteful and you cannot oneshot it. Even with coding agents which we use all the time system to system connectivity is more complex than writing the code. But those should be available to the agent as tools, mechanics, and features that are not wired together as a visual workflow of sorts.

A product can look graph-like at a glance though, while avoiding making a workflow builder. I think this still matters in order to put a mental model around it. But the mechanism should not be graph / workflow like in practice.

Re: Flowise is shutting down

#43

Post by nijave »

_pdp_ wrote: post #42

Full disclosure I'm a founder of cbk.ai and chatbotkit.com, where we've built reusable agent components. I have never really saw flowise, n8n the now defunct OpenAI agent builder and other similar products as competitors and I wanted to describe why. I think workflow builders are mostly the wrong mental model for AI. A graph of predefined nodes and edges is useful when you already know the exact sequence of work....…

I think you tend to need both. There's certain deterministic data and steps that surround the agent as well as certain agentic steps where the LLM is controlling the execution flow.

n8n had an LLM step, not sure if they had an "agent" step. For instance, your workflow could pull down Google Docs using their connectors and deterministic steps then run something agentic with the contents, then upload the contents to Google Drive or send an email.

Re: Flowise is shutting down

#44

Post by nijave »

avilay wrote: post #33
ashu1461 wrote: post #6

There is something about agent workflow builders not gaining as much traction as they could have. Open AI also launched something in house and they are also shutting it down https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/agent-builder OpenAI is deprecating Agent Builder. Existing users can continue using it during the transition window, and the product is scheduled to shut down on November 30, 2026. ChatKit remains av…

There does seem to be a need for a semi-deterministic workflow where nodes in the workflow are agentic, i.e., powered by LLMs, but the workflow itself remains deterministic. Lets say my daily workflow is to download a PDF from some website, extract some information from it, and email that information. I cannot just ask an agent to script this workflow, because the website will keep changing, the PDF layout will keep…

n8n will do that

Re: Flowise is shutting down

#45

Post by delegate »

There's this magnetic appeal to use a visual graph editor as the UI paradigm for your app.. it seems to fit so many problems well.

Yet if you complicate the problem just a notch, the graph becomes big fast and that renders like complex spaghetti you're afraid to touch in the UI.

The other problem is that the UI paradigm becomes the driver - you try to think of the problem in terms of fitting it into the UI graph editor, which is often not a natural way of thinking about said problem.

All of this to say is that I've always thought that graph/flow editors looked cool, except I've never found good use for them in practice except for very simple and predictable graphs.

Just writing the flow as a data structure in text is often a lot simpler and practical..

Re: Flowise is shutting down

#46

Post by felixding »

Deterministic workflows still have plenty of use cases. AI agents can help build them, but can’t replace them when predictable and auditable execution matters, because agents are inherently nondeterministic.

That said, Relay.app announced its shutdown a few weeks ago, and now Flowise is winding down too. I wonder whether coding agents are really the cause, or whether these products simply struggled to find a sustainable market.

Disclosure: I’m building Aqua Blue (aquablue.app) around a related idea: AI builds the workflow, but fixed rules run it.

Re: Flowise is shutting down

#47

Post by zahlekhan »

vaishnavsm wrote: post #25
fsuts wrote: post #24

>Over the last few months, we've noticed a significant shift in how people build. As AI models become more capable at reasoning, we've noticed that developers are increasingly relying on new coding agents such as Claude Code/OpenClaw to handle complex tasks. The typical rigid workflow low code approach quickly hits the limit when it comes to complexity. Their front page says ‘design agents visually’ so their target m…

I feel like there's a fundamental shift in the user interface that's causing this. People are starting to expect an "agentic interface" - that they are able to give kinda vague inputs and nudge things to work in a way they like, over the traditional experience of having increased clarity at the cost of increased setup (drag and drop, many UI first interfaces, etc). I was editing a google doc yesterday and found it an…

Yep, most modern workflow and agent builders now support editing via natural language. Mastra even has an agent that helps you build other agents. An agent-builder agent, if you will.

Also small world ;)

Re: Flowise is shutting down

#48

Post by ashu1461 »

avilay wrote: post #33
ashu1461 wrote: post #6

There is something about agent workflow builders not gaining as much traction as they could have. Open AI also launched something in house and they are also shutting it down https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/agent-builder OpenAI is deprecating Agent Builder. Existing users can continue using it during the transition window, and the product is scheduled to shut down on November 30, 2026. ChatKit remains av…

There does seem to be a need for a semi-deterministic workflow where nodes in the workflow are agentic, i.e., powered by LLMs, but the workflow itself remains deterministic. Lets say my daily workflow is to download a PDF from some website, extract some information from it, and email that information. I cannot just ask an agent to script this workflow, because the website will keep changing, the PDF layout will keep…

I guess the tradeoff is doing it in a workflow builder vs just dumping all your requirements in a single agent, With LLMs getting smarter, they can create sub agents automatically if required and take the abstraction away from the user.

Re: Flowise is shutting down

#49

Post by juancn »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #38
ashu1461 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct and I think for non technical folks just creating pure ai agents is much easier than creating these workflows which can be harder to test as well.

This will come with higher risks, no transparency, and higher costs, of course. That seems like a recipe for even higher frustration than normal software incurs.

My guess is that except for simple one-offs or low risk situations, any recurrent use of AI will require some sort of expert to handle it, at least for a while.

Liability plays a big role here, in the end a person needs to be made responsible for the output of stuff and face consequences.

Post reply on HN