[HN Gopher] Show HN: RowboatX - open-source Claude Code for ever...
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Show HN: RowboatX - open-source Claude Code for everyday
automations
Claude Code is great, but it's focused on coding. The missing piece
is a native way to build and run custom background agents for non-
code tasks. We built RowboatX as a CLI tool modeled after Claude
Code that lets you do that. It uses the file system and unix tools
to create and monitor background agents for everyday tasks, connect
them to any MCP server for tools, and reason over their outputs.
Because RowboatX runs locally with shell access, the agents can
install tools, execute code, and automate anything you could do in
a terminal with your explicit permission. It works with any
compatible LLM, including open-source ones. Our repo is
https://github.com/rowboatlabs/rowboat, and there's a demo video
here: https://youtu.be/cyPBinQzicY For example, you can connect
RowboatX to the ElevenLabs MCP server and create a background
workflow that produces a NotebookLM-style podcast every day from
recent AI-agent papers on arXiv. Or you can connect it to Google
Calendar and Exa Search to research meeting attendees and generate
briefs before each event. You can try these with: `npx
@rowboatlabs/rowboatx` We combined three simple ideas: 1. File
system as state: Each agent's instruction, memory, logs, and data
are just files on disk, grepable, diffable, and local. For
instance, you can just run: grep -rl '"agent":"<agent-name>"'
~/.rowboat/runs to list every run for a particular workflow. 2.
The supervisor agent: A Claude Code style agent that can create and
run background agents. It predominantly uses Unix commands to
monitor, update, and schedule agents. LLMs handle Unix tools better
than backend APIs [1][2], so we leaned into that. It can also probe
any MCP server and attach the tools to the agents. 3. Human-in-
the-loop: Each background agent can emit a human_request message
when needed (e.g. drafting a tricky email or installing a tool)
that pauses execution and waits for input before continuing. The
supervisor coordinates this. I started my career over a decade ago
building spam detection models at Twitter, spending a lot of my
time in the terminal with Unix commands for data analysis [0] and
Vowpal Wabbit for modeling. When Claude Code came along, it felt
familiar and amazing to work with. But trying to use it beyond code
always felt a bit forced. We built RowboatX to bring that same
workflow to everyday tasks. It is Apache-2.0 licensed and easily
extendable. While there are many agent builders, running on the
user's terminal enables unique use cases like computer and browser
automation that cloud-based tools can't match. This power requires
careful safety design. We implemented command-level allow/deny
lists, with containerization coming next. We've tried to design for
safety from day one, but we'd love to hear the community's
perspective on what additional safeguards or approaches you'd
consider important here. We're excited to share RowboatX with
everyone here. We'd love to hear your thoughts and welcome
contributions! -- [0] https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs124/kwc-
unix-for-poets.pdf [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.06807 [2]
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.10132
Author : segmenta
Score : 38 points
Date : 2025-11-18 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| jckahn wrote:
| Can this use local LLMs?
| segmenta wrote:
| Yes - you can use local LLMs through LiteLLM and Ollama. Would
| you like us to support anything else?
| thedangler wrote:
| LM Studio?
| ramnique wrote:
| Yes, because LM Studio is openai-compatible. When you run
| rowboatx the first time, it creates a
| ~/.rowboat/config/models.json. You can then configure LM
| Studio there. Here is an example: https://gist.github.com/r
| amnique/9e4b783f41cecf0fcc8d92b277d...
| divan wrote:
| One of the main reasons for me for sticking with Claude Code
| (also for non-coding tasks, I think the name is a misnomer) is
| the fixed price plan. Pretty much any other open-source
| alternative requires API key, which means that as soon as I start
| using it _for real_, I'll start overpaying and/or hitting limits
| too fast. At least that was my initial experience with API from
| OpenAI/Claude/Gemini.
|
| Am I biased/wrong here?
| segmenta wrote:
| Yep, this is a fair take. Token usage shoots up fast when you
| do agentic stuff for coding. I too end up doing the same thing.
|
| But for most background automations your might actually run,
| the token usage is way lower and probably an order of magnitude
| cheaper than agentic coding. And a lot of these tasks run well
| on cheaper models or even open-source ones.
|
| So I don't think you are wrong at all. It is just that I
| believe the expensive token pattern mostly comes from coding-
| style workloads.
| nl wrote:
| I'm increasingly seeing code-adjacent people who are using coding
| agents for non-coding things because the tooling support it
| better, and the agents work really well.
|
| It's an interesting area, and glad to see someone working on
| this.
|
| The other program in the space that I'm aware of is Block's
| Goose.
| segmenta wrote:
| Yep, totally agree. We actually had an earlier web version, and
| the big learning was that without access to code-related tools
| the agent feels pretty limited. That pushed us toward a CLI
| where it can use the full shell and behave more like a real
| worker.
|
| Really appreciate the support and the Goose pointer. Would love
| to hear what you think of RowboatX once you try it.
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