[HN Gopher] Expanding access to Opal, our no-code AI mini-app bu...
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       Expanding access to Opal, our no-code AI mini-app builder
        
       Author : simonpure
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2025-10-08 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
        
       | DataDaemon wrote:
       | living in the EU feels like living in the Stone Age
        
         | sjbr wrote:
         | At least you are getting chat control.
        
         | dmitrygr wrote:
         | Nobody in the stone age voted to live in the stone age,
         | ignoring all warnings that their vote would produce a stone
         | age.
        
         | simonjgreen wrote:
         | Or like there is an expectation companies will treat your
         | information with respect and act with integrity. It is
         | unfortunate that that causes companies to have to think for
         | longer about how they will act before they do.
        
           | nicce wrote:
           | OpenAI tried without real regulation and we see how that
           | turned out.
        
           | dmitrygr wrote:
           | > It is unfortunate that that causes companies to have to
           | think for longer
           | 
           | It is basic market dynamics that the harder you make it to
           | enter a market, the more reluctant entrants will be. Whether
           | the regulation that makes market entry more difficult is
           | "good" or "bad" is simply irrelevant.
        
       | gundmc wrote:
       | Seems like cool framework, but I'm bothered by the example image
       | around having AI research and generate a blog post. This is
       | exactly the sort of thing I don't want.
        
       | barbazoo wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Most of us probably agree, but can you please not post
         | unsubstantive comments to HN? We want _curious_ conversation
         | here.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
       | ngruhn wrote:
       | Name one successful no-code solution. Not snark. I'm serious.
       | Give me examples. In my experience, these no-code tools either
       | die being too simple or live long enough to be patched into fully
       | fledged visual programming languages. At which point the promised
       | simplicity is gone. Idk, maybe with AI it's different.
        
         | mjr00 wrote:
         | Really depends on the scope of the solution; a lot of web
         | development has gone no-code through the use of frameworks and
         | platforms like Wix, Unbounce, Squarespace, Shopify, Gumroad,
         | etc. Like it's crazy to think, but 15 years ago if you were a
         | person with a single widget you wanted to sell over the
         | internet (even a digital widget with no shipping logistics!) it
         | was a big hassle that involved a lot of programming and hooking
         | up various APIs. Now you can get a full e-commerce site with
         | analytics and payments integrated fairly easily with basically
         | no technical knowledge.
         | 
         | The counter-argument is that these tools are too narrowly
         | scoped, but I think that's exactly what made them successful;
         | their "no-code" tools provided a solution for a common problem.
         | 
         | Ultimately I agree with what you're getting at. There's never
         | been a successful no-code, or even low-code, replacement for
         | general purpose programming, and there never will be.
        
           | ngruhn wrote:
           | Fair enough. Those website builders have their place. I'm
           | rather thinking of something like NodeRed where you specify
           | control flow. But with boxes and arrows instead of code.
           | Which is also what this Google product seems to do.
        
         | blast wrote:
         | Replit
        
         | holografix wrote:
         | Unreal Engine's Blueprints
        
         | shmoogy wrote:
         | Node Red, N8N, and Zapier I think are the biggest ones. I think
         | the cool idea of AI implemented no code is, in theory, you can
         | add a new node - tell the AI what to do, and it can build
         | custom logic to do whatever it is that you want with the input.
         | 
         | Thats probably verging on too high of a complexity for end
         | users, but if you can obfuscate the black box and have it work
         | well enough, it can definitely be big.
        
       | Onavo wrote:
       | What happened to Microsoft's low code AI builder?
       | 
       | https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/13/microsoft-acquires-lobe-a-...
        
       | holografix wrote:
       | What about jules.google.com ? Are these competing products?
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-08 23:00 UTC)