[HN Gopher] Show HN: OpenWork - an open-source alternative to Cl...
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Show HN: OpenWork - an open-source alternative to Claude Cowork
hi hn, i built openwork, an open-source, local-first system
inspired by claude cowork. it's a native desktop app that runs on
top of opencode (opencode.ai). it's basically an alternative gui
for opencode, which (at least until now) has been more focused on
technical folks. the original seed for openwork was simple: i have
a home server, and i wanted my wife and i to be able to run
privileged workflows. things like controlling home assistant, or
deploying custom web apps (e.g. our customs recipe app
recipes.benjaminshafii.com), legal torrents, without living in a
terminal. our initial setup was running the opencode web server
directly and sharing credentials to it. that worked, but i found
the web ui unreliable and very unfriendly for non-technical users.
the goal with openwork is to bring the kind of workflows i'm used
to running in the cli into a gui, while keeping a very deep
extensibility mindset. ideally this grows into something closer to
an obsidian-style ecosystem, but for agentic work. some core
principles i had in mind: - open by design: no black boxes, no
hosted lock-in. everything runs locally or on your own servers.
(models don't run locally yet, but both opencode and openwork are
built with that future in mind.) - hyper extensible: skills are
installable modules via a skill/package manager, using the native
opencode plugin ecosystem. - non-technical by default: plans,
progress, permissions, and artifacts are surfaced in the ui, not
buried in logs. you can already try it: - there's an unsigned dmg
- or you can clone the repo, install deps, and if you already have
opencode running it should work right away it's very alpha, lots
of rough edges. i'd love feedback on what feels the roughest or
most confusing. happy to answer questions.
Author : ben_talent
Score : 94 points
Date : 2026-01-14 04:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| pojntfx wrote:
| This doesn't seem to be open source, it's currently "all rights
| reserved" and not under an OSI or FSF license:
| https://github.com/different-ai/openwork?tab=readme-ov-file#...
| ben_talent wrote:
| Updated ! Thanks for flagging
| observationist wrote:
| Awesome! Very cool project, and kudos for making it MIT
| licensed.
| ktallett wrote:
| What is the license?
| ben_talent wrote:
| MIT
| torstenvl wrote:
| This isn't open source.
| ben_talent wrote:
| Oh damn thanks for flagging. I just added an MIT license.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Beware that the readme.md still says "TBD" at the bottom.
| ben_talent wrote:
| Fixed as well. Thanks again!
| McAdam wrote:
| Still feels a bit technical. The Claude approach is designed for
| "Susan in Accounting" - what thoughts do you have to reduce the
| technical barriers?
| ben_talent wrote:
| Yeah it is still too technical.
|
| First obvious stuff like getting the dmg notarized having
| easier install.
|
| Then after it will be about optimizing onboarding. One of the
| core goals is to help Susan do 1 small task in under 5 min.
|
| To do that we will need to: - have some prepackaged configs for
| folks like starter template - ship opencode within the app
| itself so users don't need to manually install it - and get rid
| of the technical jargon that is cluttered in the app.
| louis030195 wrote:
| Looks great. I don't use opencode myself but like a lot Claude
| skills, agents, I have like 50 different ones for personal life,
| work, dating, whatever Is there integration with Claude skills?
|
| Have you considered using or integrating with ACP?
| https://zed.dev/acp
|
| We use it in our desktop app IDE (mediar.ai) and it's pretty good
| ben_talent wrote:
| Yes it's fully integrated with Claude Skills.
|
| There's first-class integration of
| https://github.com/enulus/OpenPackage and we provide a ui to
| install from a list of skills easily as well as add your own.
| imiric wrote:
| The word "open" in software names has completely lost its
| meaning.
| ben_talent wrote:
| I used "open" because: - it's open source - built on top of
| open source (opencode) - it's built-around extensibility via
| plain-text files (skills) and open-source plugins
| kevinoconnell wrote:
| yo this is so sick, could def incorporate this into my workflow
| ben_talent wrote:
| let me know if you need help, still a bit rough around the
| edges
| rose8 wrote:
| sounds cool! I'm non technical, I get the workflow with
| controling home assistant. How could I use this at work? Like how
| could the workflow be between marketing and devs, for example,
| for website work, can I change content without dealing with
| GitHub?
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Great stuff and very timely. I just started getting into using
| opencode and while I'm hugely optimistic about its capabilities
| and can use it personally without too much sweat, I was left
| hoping for something a bit more batteries included to give to my
| non technical colleagues so we can collaborate together. This
| looks to be exactly what we were looking for so I am looking
| forward to giving it a spin!
| ben_talent wrote:
| Yeah ! I feel like until we figure out the correct UX for non-
| technical people the right way would be a sort of hybrid. Where
| you'd set it up on a remote server (if you know opencode you
| know openwork) and you just then have non-tech people do a one
| time setup to connect to the remote and from then on you can
| easily extend capabilities.
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(page generated 2026-01-15 23:00 UTC)