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Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

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Re: Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

#61

Post by loh »

dominathan917 wrote: post #35
Sil_E_Goose wrote: post #27

>using Axiom is 10X faster than writing it in selenium/puppeteer + we handle all the annoying logic you need. We're investigating a node library for this - let us know if it would be useful. As someone who has recently started working with puppeteer, I definitely think a library to alleviate that pain would be immensely valuable.

As a developer about to go down the e2e testing pipeline for our new products and chosen puppeteer, I would also be very interested in this.

I always hated writing e2e tests (tools like Cypress just didn't cut it for me), so I put this together a while back (it's open source, MIT licensed): https://github.com/testfront-io/testfront-devtools

See also https://www.testfront.io/ for an actual description of how it works, but don't bother signing up. I'm really bad at marketing/getting the word out, and google took forever to approve the extension so I lost interest/ran out of money. Maybe if others show interest, I'll be motivated to resume the plans I had for it.

Here's a 4 minute video of it in action, covering every user join/login/update possibility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifkaptIYeL8

Re: Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

#62

Post by pimlottc »

yaseer wrote: post #19
ordinaryradical wrote: post #17

I used this product a while back to do some scraping of a very annoying (and slow!) to navigate website and it was a life-saver. Still using the google sheets it helped me generate. I saw the value of this tool straight away and the UI was pretty reasonable, just a few quirks. I would definitely use Axiom again if I ran into a similar need. Best of luck to your team. My one suggestion: Let people touch the UI and get…

Wow, that's awesome! What you've described is literally our cloud product - we give people a sandbox with a virtual browser to use and get started (like browserstack). We're working out a way to scale it cheaply, so anyone can get started. Right now, it's a paid feature. I'm very glad the feature we have planned is something customers would appreciate though, at least we won't have built something nobody wants. We ma…

The cloud feature sounds like a nice product, but I think ordinaryradial was suggesting something else (or if he wasn't, I am): a toy app on your own pages that also has the automation scripts "pre-injected". It would be limited to just running on that sample app but would let people try it out immediately in their own browser without needing to install an extension or use a full-blown virtual browser.

Re: Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

#63

Post by yaseer »

pimlottc wrote: post #62
yaseer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's awesome! What you've described is literally our cloud product - we give people a sandbox with a virtual browser to use and get started (like browserstack). We're working out a way to scale it cheaply, so anyone can get started. Right now, it's a paid feature. I'm very glad the feature we have planned is something customers would appreciate though, at least we won't have built something nobody wants. We ma…

The cloud feature sounds like a nice product, but I think ordinaryradial was suggesting something else (or if he wasn't, I am): a toy app on your own pages that also has the automation scripts "pre-injected". It would be limited to just running on that sample app but would let people try it out immediately in their own browser without needing to install an extension or use a full-blown virtual browser.

Ah yes, I get the gist - I didn't explain the rationale well!

Creating that toy environment on a single page would result in us engineering something totally new, just for demo purposes.

It's easier to just virtualise everything like browserstack. That way, we don't make anything new, we just virtualise what we've already built, and you can try it, instantly.

It's the same result, but in one case, we spend on engineering, but in the other, we spend on hosting.

Re: Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

#64

Post by yaseer »

jonbennett18 wrote: post #53

Have used axiom was very impressed with how easy it was to use and was capable of. I use as my own sort of zapier moving between some custom built stuff we have in work

Thanks!

no-coders familiar with Zapier like yourself, tend to find it easy.

Lots of people don't though, and we're working hard on that.

Re: Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

#65

Post by pimlottc »

yaseer wrote: post #63
pimlottc wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cloud feature sounds like a nice product, but I think ordinaryradial was suggesting something else (or if he wasn't, I am): a toy app on your own pages that also has the automation scripts "pre-injected". It would be limited to just running on that sample app but would let people try it out immediately in their own browser without needing to install an extension or use a full-blown virtual browser.

Ah yes, I get the gist - I didn't explain the rationale well! Creating that toy environment on a single page would result in us engineering something totally new, just for demo purposes. It's easier to just virtualise everything like browserstack. That way, we don't make anything new, we just virtualise what we've already built, and you can try it, instantly. It's the same result, but in one case, we spend on enginee…

That’s certainly fair - you’ve got to build out the cloud offering anyway. Makes sense, even if the toy idea is in some ways simpler from a technology point of view; dev resources aren’t free.

Re: Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

#66

Post by danr4 »

I remember your first post, and planned to tinker with it for a product idea. I was thinking of using Axiom to build sort of an "admin dashboard" from scraped data - kind of between library usage to white-labeling - where users can build their owns scrapers, as well as use built in ones I build.

Is that doable with your current product?

Also, this can actually be useful for my side-project, which uses scrapers on pages that often change their html ids and classes, which make the scrapers break quite often. Can axiom help there?

Re: Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

#67

Post by yaseer »

danr4 wrote: post #66

I remember your first post, and planned to tinker with it for a product idea. I was thinking of using Axiom to build sort of an "admin dashboard" from scraped data - kind of between library usage to white-labeling - where users can build their owns scrapers, as well as use built in ones I build. Is that doable with your current product? Also, this can actually be useful for my side-project, which uses scrapers on pag…

We probably couldn't help with white labelling, no.

But 'admin dashboards' are certainly very similar to our reporting use case. Basically, people scrape data from various websites into Google sheets. Either locally, or on a schedule in the cloud. That data is then used to generate dynamic reports- or perhaps a dashboard in your case.

Also, we should handle a lot of logic for shifting IDs.

Some of your requirements (like the white labelling), seem complex. Perhaps try making a small proof of concept and talk to support- we'll see if it's possible to scale up.

Re: Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

#69

Post by tnolet »

yaseer wrote: post #29
Sil_E_Goose wrote: post #27

>using Axiom is 10X faster than writing it in selenium/puppeteer + we handle all the annoying logic you need. We're investigating a node library for this - let us know if it would be useful. As someone who has recently started working with puppeteer, I definitely think a library to alleviate that pain would be immensely valuable.

Interesting! If any puppeteer developers would also find it useful, let us know - it's always good to know something is wanted before you make it.

Check out Headless Recorder. It records browser interactions and generates Puppeteer and Playwright scripts.

https://github.com/checkly/headless-recorder

Re: Launch HN: Axiom (YC W21) – No-code browser automation a.k.a. RPA for everyone

#70

Post by porker »

reubano wrote: post #18

Who are your top competitors and how do you differentiate yourselves? Esp re recent HN submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26239975

Add to that https://ui.vision/ (formerly Kantu). I used Kantu in 2019 to build data extractors and it worked very well.
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