[HN Gopher] Show HN: Rowboat - Open-source IDE for multi-agent s...
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Show HN: Rowboat - Open-source IDE for multi-agent systems
Hi HN! We're Arjun, Ramnique, and Akhilesh, and we are building
Rowboat (https://www.rowboatlabs.com/), an AI-assisted IDE for
building and managing multi-agent systems. You start with a single
agent, then scale up to teams of agents that work together, use MCP
tools, and improve over time - all through a chat-based copilot.
Our repo is https://github.com/rowboatlabs/rowboat, docs are at
https://docs.rowboatlabs.com/, and there's a demo video here:
https://youtu.be/YRTCw9UHRbU It's becoming clear that real-world
agentic systems work best when multiple agents collaborate, rather
than having one agent attempt to do everything. This isn't too
surprising - it's a bit like how good code consists of multiple
functions that each do one thing, rather than cramming everything
into one function. For example, a travel assistant works best when
different agents handle specialized tasks: one agent finds the best
flights, another optimizes hotel selections, and a third organizes
the itinerary. This modular approach makes the system easier to
manage, debug, and improve over time. OpenAI's Agents SDK provides
a neat Python library to support this, but building reliable
agentic systems requires constant iterations and tweaking - e.g.
updating agent instructions (which can quickly get as complex as
actual code), connecting tools, and testing the system and
incorporating feedback. Rowboat is an AI IDE to do all this.
Rowboat is to AI agents what Cursor is to code. We've taken a
code-like approach to agent instructions (prompts). There are
special keywords to directly reference other agents, tools or
prompts - which are highlighted in the UI. The copilot is the best
way to create and edit these instructions - each change comes with
a code-style diff. You can give agents access to tools by
integrating any MCP server or connecting your own functions through
a webhook. You can instruct the agents on when to use specific
tools via '@mentions' in the agent instruction. To enable quick
testing, we added a way to mock tool responses using LLM calls.
Rowboat playground lets you test and debug the assistants as you
build them. You can see agent transfers, tool invocations and tool
responses in real-time. The copilot has the context of the chat,
and can improve the agent instructions based on feedback. For
example, you could say 'The agent shouldn't have done x here. Fix
this' and the copilot can go and make this fix. You can integrate
agentic systems built in Rowboat into your application via the HTTP
API or the Python SDK ('pip install rowboat'). For example, you can
build user-facing chatbots, enterprise workflows and employee
assistants using Rowboat. We've been working with LLMs since GPT-1
launched in 2018. Most recently, we built Coinbase's support
chatbot after our last AI startup was acquired by them. Rowboat is
Apache 2.0 licensed, giving you full freedom to self-host, modify,
or extend it however you like. We're excited to share Rowboat with
everyone here. We'd love to hear your thoughts!
Author : segmenta
Score : 71 points
Date : 2025-04-22 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| justanotheratom wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch. Suggest adding the demo video
| right in the landing page. That is the first thing I would be
| looking for. IMO.
| segmenta wrote:
| Thanks! We will put it out on our website.
| asnyder wrote:
| This sounds really really nice. Potentially exactly what I've
| been hoping would exist. Thank you for putting it out there!
|
| Will try it out over the weekend. Exciting stuff.
| segmenta wrote:
| Thanks, that's great to hear! We'd love to learn what worked
| and what didn't for you.
| sirjaz wrote:
| It would be awesome if this could be wrapped around a native app
| rather than another webapp. Otherwise, great job!
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Web is native
| segmenta wrote:
| TBH we weren't sure if people preferred a native app or a web
| app for this kind of tool. This is useful feedback! We are
| trying to figure out how to bundle the micro-services together
| into maybe an electron app.
| ramnique wrote:
| Just to add more details here - currently the dashboard is a
| Next.js app, but the agents runtime (and Copilot) are Python
| apps since they're using the OpenAI agents sdk. We're trying
| to figure out the best way to bundle these into a single
| native app.
| sirjaz wrote:
| You could use tauri and use the native webview of the
| particular os
| ramnique wrote:
| We'll check this out, thanks!
| gavinray wrote:
| Why do you want to shove a web app into a native window?
| flynumber wrote:
| Now this is what I'm talking about -- this checks all the boxes
| for me.
|
| I was looking at "Agent builders" for a while now and nothing
| really stood out. They all seemed to use a "node" type structure,
| while I was looking to tell something what I need using natural
| language.
|
| The only thing that came close was Vessium, but I never heard
| back after adding myself to the waiting list weeks ago. I also
| wasn't so hot about their questions either -- "Are you cool with
| paying for a product just to try it," or something to that
| effect. I'll admit though, I said yes. =)
|
| Either way, congrats on the launch and wishing you much success.
| segmenta wrote:
| Thanks! We wanted to have the copilot planning and building out
| agents be a core part of Rowboat (like how Cursor works with
| code).
| esafak wrote:
| 1. Are you going to support Google's A2A protocol?
|
| 2. Are you going to support stateless chat?
| akhisud wrote:
| 1. A2A is on our roadmap (still exploring), for agents built on
| Rowboat to communicate with external agents. I assume that's
| what you mean as well.
|
| 2. Rowboat agents are technically stateless in that they do not
| store any messages and state between turns. Our HTTP API [0]
| requires previous messages and state to be explicitly passed
| from the previous turn to the next turn. For now, the state is
| pretty simple - just the name of the last agent that responded
| to the user. This allows the system to start off directly from
| where the previous agent left off. The Python SDK [1] manages
| the state for you. Does that make sense?
|
| [0] API docs - https://docs.rowboatlabs.com/using_the_api/
|
| [1] SDK docs - https://docs.rowboatlabs.com/using_the_sdk/
| owebmaster wrote:
| I'm happy it is not another VSCode fork. But isn't this missing a
| text editor to be called a proper IDE?
| 85392_school wrote:
| IDE just stands for Integrated Development Environment, so
| something that doesn't edit text could still be an IDE
| segmenta wrote:
| Fair point. Increasingly the workflow for multi-agent systems
| involves structured agent instructions (almost resembling
| code), testing, connecting tools and improving agents. Given
| this we decided to call it an IDE.
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