Show HN: Ballet – Workflow automation that writes integrations against any API
danielkimber · 36 points · 13 comments · gestern · Open original
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BDbdcravensgestern
"Built by the team behind Brainfish"
Perhaps I'm the wrong market for this project (despite much of my bread and butter being types of workflows) because I have no idea what Brainfish is.
HAhalamadridvor 23 Stunden
The focus on tools like these is always on how you create. Which IMO is the trivial part. Folks will say you can use Claude to write the code. Claude can also write the definitions needed for tools like this. The big difference is always in how/where you’ll run it and how to monitor things and maintain it long term.
The runtime being the biggest value add from tools like this.
Like Airflow or Temporal or Unmeshed.
The value for me is the runtime not the ability to create stuff. Drag n drop is definitely dead. But so is coding by hand. Pick the right runtime for getting the value from tools like these.
ARArtTimeInvestorgestern
I don't get what this is about.
The examples they show are someone typing something into a prompt and then some agent starts coding.
But the hard part in automation these days is not writing software. It is "how does the software get the credentials to access data and services? What APIs does it use?". So before being able to type a prompt and then use the software created, there must be the hard part: Setting up all those interconnectivity pieces. Making sure the software can access and change data, trigger actions, but only within a certain scope.
KRkrmmalikgestern
As a non-coder I was obsessed with automation tools like Zapier when they first came out. After that, I tried very hard with n8n but just found it impossible to work with until I read some post by some developer that said "just do it in Python". Took me a while to really take that in given I can't code but then I got Claude to write some Python scripts automate some work spreadsheet and API work and I haven't looked back since.
I think something like this could have worked several years ago but now it's overkill.
HAhalfcatgestern
> We’ll model it in Ballet on your real systems in a 30-minute working session
You drastically underestimate how bad most systems are. All of the vendors in your examples have good APIs. Those vendors already did the hard part.
All of the systems we need solutions for are moving targets that are breaking constantly. You can’t model those in 30 minutes because the ways in which they break don’t show up until months later.
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5 preview comments · loading full threadLog in to h4cker, then connect Hacker News to publish comments.
"Built by the team behind Brainfish" Perhaps I'm the wrong market for this project (despite much of my bread and butter being types of workflows) because I have no idea what Brainfish is.
The focus on tools like these is always on how you create. Which IMO is the trivial part. Folks will say you can use Claude to write the code. Claude can also write the definitions needed for tools like this. The big difference is always in how/where you’ll run it and how to monitor things and maintain it long term. The runtime being the biggest value add from tools like this. Like Airflow or Temporal or Unmeshed. The value for me is the runtime not the ability to create stuff. Drag n drop is definitely dead. But so is coding by hand. Pick the right runtime for getting the value from tools like these.
I don't get what this is about. The examples they show are someone typing something into a prompt and then some agent starts coding. But the hard part in automation these days is not writing software. It is "how does the software get the credentials to access data and services? What APIs does it use?". So before being able to type a prompt and then use the software created, there must be the hard part: Setting up all those interconnectivity pieces. Making sure the software can access and change data, trigger actions, but only within a certain scope.
As a non-coder I was obsessed with automation tools like Zapier when they first came out. After that, I tried very hard with n8n but just found it impossible to work with until I read some post by some developer that said "just do it in Python". Took me a while to really take that in given I can't code but then I got Claude to write some Python scripts automate some work spreadsheet and API work and I haven't looked back since. I think something like this could have worked several years ago but now it's overkill.
> We’ll model it in Ballet on your real systems in a 30-minute working session You drastically underestimate how bad most systems are. All of the vendors in your examples have good APIs. Those vendors already did the hard part. All of the systems we need solutions for are moving targets that are breaking constantly. You can’t model those in 30 minutes because the ways in which they break don’t show up until months later.