[HN Gopher] Show HN: Stagewise (YC S25) - Front end coding agent...
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Show HN: Stagewise (YC S25) - Front end coding agent for existing
codebases
Hey HN, we're Julian and Glenn, and we're building stagewise
(https://stagewise.io), a frontend coding agent that lives inside
your browser on localhost and operates on local codebases. You can
spawn the agent into locally running web apps in dev mode with `npx
stagewise` from the project root. The agent lets you then click on
HTML Elements in your app, enter prompts like 'increase the height
here' and will implement the changes in your source code. Before
stagewise, we were building a vertical SaaS for logistics from
scratch and loved using prototyping tools like v0 or lovable to get
to the first version. But when switching from v0/ lovable to Cursor
for local development, we felt like the frontend magic was gone.
So, we decided to build stagewise to bring that same magic to local
development. The first version of stagewise just forwarded a
prompt with browser context to existing IDEs and agents (Cursor,
Cline, ..) and went viral on X after we open sourced it. However,
the APIs of existing coding agents were very limiting, so we
figured that building our own agent would unlock the full potential
of stagewise. Here's how it works: When you run `npx stagewise`,
our cli proxies your running web application in dev mode and
injects a toolbar containing the coding agent on top of it. Each
prompt you send will be enriched with browser context and sent to
our cli, which will call our backend and modify the source code of
your local codebase accordingly. Here's a demo of our agent
changing the login UI of Cal.com, a popular open-source meeting
scheduling app: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkDcAozK9L4. So
far, we've seen great adoption from non-technical users who wanted
to continue building their lovable prototype locally. We personally
use the agent almost daily to make changes to our landing page and
to build the UI of new features on our console
(https://console.stagewise.io). If you have an app running in dev
mode, simply `cd` into the app directory and run `npx stagewise` -
the agent should appear, ready to play with. We're very excited to
hear your feedback!
Author : juliangoetze
Score : 25 points
Date : 2025-08-05 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| How do I make an account? There is only an option to Sign In. I
| entered my email, it said that you sent an email, but there's
| nothing.
| juliangoetze wrote:
| The Sign In option also serves as Sign Up.. I'm having a look
| at the email issue now!
| glenntws wrote:
| Are you using one-time mail providers? Otherwise, please check
| the spam folder of course. If nothing helps, feel free to join
| Discord (https://discord.gg/DjMqMnUVCh) and we'll debug this
| together.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Hey, I received it, it just took like 10 minutes, I use
| fastmail
| glenntws wrote:
| awesome. hope you enjoy
| juliangoetze wrote:
| Did the agent work well after the mail came through?
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| I think it ran out of credits before it could finish one
| task.
|
| Available plugins: @stagewise-plugins/angular
|
| Agent server initialized successfully
|
| Stagewise is running on http://localhost:4200
|
| Proxying app from port 3100
|
| Opening browser...
|
| Credits: [ ------------------------------ ] 1.99/2EUR
|
| Credits: [ ------------------------------ ] 1.97/2EUR
|
| Credits: [ ------------------------------ ] 1.95/2EUR
|
| Credits: [ ------------------------------ ] 1.92/2EUR
|
| Credits: [ ------------------------------ ] 1.89/2EUR
|
| [multiEditTool] Editing file public/i18n/en.json (30679
| bytes)
|
| [multiEditTool] Edit 0: Replaced 1 occurrence
|
| [multiEditTool] Edit 1: Replaced 1 occurrence
|
| [multiEditTool] Edit 2: Replaced 1 occurrence
|
| [multiEditTool] Edit 3: Replaced 1 occurrence
|
| Credits: [ ------------------------------ ] 1.86/2EUR
| juliangoetze wrote:
| Hmm, the initial credits are usually enough to do 4-5 major
| tasks and a few more smaller ones. Was the log with 1.86/2
| credits the latest?
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Oh maybe it's not that. It showed me "task failed" in the
| UI, and I saw 1.99/2 in the console, so that's what I
| assumed.
|
| I'm gonna give it another try a bit later.
| juliangoetze wrote:
| Oh okay, seems like there was another issue then, I'll
| debug. Happy to see a run without issues later
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Good luck!
| artahian wrote:
| v0 and lovable have way too much hype, I think what you're doing
| with stagewise (i.e. being dev-first instead of optimizing for
| non-developer users) is the real long term use of AI.
| glenntws wrote:
| thanks for the kind words! If you have ideas or wishes for next
| steps, feel free to share.
| zote wrote:
| This is what I've been looking for! Tried self hosting the
| bolt.new editor to achieve something like this and it was
| terrible. Also interested in hearing about the SaaS you were
| building, I recently built something in that niche coincidentally
| drafted at first by v0.
| juliangoetze wrote:
| Haha, cool to hear!
|
| We were tinkering with a transport management system because
| the industry was full of legacy software.
|
| But before we were able to battle-test something, stagewise
| took off.
|
| Still think that it's an industry worth going for (at least in
| Germany)
| zote wrote:
| Ha, this project has had me thinking about that sector more,
| I'll try and make an effort and go for it in the future, and
| congrats you have built something truly useful here.
| juliangoetze wrote:
| What were you building? And did it evolve/ has been used by
| someone?
| zote wrote:
| I was building something for a single logistics company;
| they'd handle clearing and forwarding for their clients as
| well as transportation if it was required, covered everything
| from invoicing to fleet management, outsourcing jobs, It's
| evolved quite a bit considering the initial premise was
| simply creating quotes and invoicing, maybe It'll end up
| being a bigger deal in the future
| juliangoetze wrote:
| Sounds like the experiences we've had in the industry -
| even though they're all 'logistics companies', their
| workflows and requirements differ greatly, even within a
| niche of a niche. This gave us a hard time building a
| scalable software that would be useful for as many
| companies in the industry as possible
| aagha wrote:
| Cool!
|
| How does this work for non-UI code?
| juliangoetze wrote:
| Do you mean for UI-related changes that also include modifying
| the backend, or do you mean pure backend changes that don't
| involve UI at all?
| wodow wrote:
| Does it work with Node/JS/TS front ends only, or can it work with
| other languages and web frameworks?
| juliangoetze wrote:
| It will work as long as the project is a web project and runs
| in the browser. The agent is a pure js snippet and can be
| injected into any web app
| alienbaby wrote:
| existing codebases... so long as they are web applications?
| juliangoetze wrote:
| Yep, that's correct. stagewise only works with web
| applications.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Ugh, looking for something like this for Front-end Mobile Dev
| (React-Native, Swift etc.). The closest thing I've found is
| https://www.magicpatterns.com, but that doesn't work on existing
| repos. Keep that in mind!
| juliangoetze wrote:
| Will do so!
| juliangoetze wrote:
| The whole 'vibe-coding' space seems a bit underserved for
| mobile or am I wrong?
| hsundnes wrote:
| If anyone is looking for a similarly great-sounding name for
| their startup or corporate project, I'm currently selling the
| domain pagewise.com
| glenntws wrote:
| domain squatting boohoo
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(page generated 2025-08-05 23:01 UTC)