A constrained approach to coding agents

by brainless • 3 months ago

5 1 3 months ago

brainless• 3 months ago

Hello folks, I have been iterating with nocodo for over a decade. My original idea, pre LLM era, was around a Spreadsheet to create an anchor for user's workflow ideas. User would interact with the sheets UX and it would generate relational model.

Since LLMs became good at generating code, I tried a full blown coding agent, similar to opencode, Claude Code, etc. But I keep coming back to one simple point: many people relate to the sheets UX very well. Accountants, freelancers, business owners/managers, etc.

I am building nocodo using the spreadsheets UX. If anyone remembers (or even uses?) MS Access - this is a good reference for me. The high level workflow is saved as a JSON schema by a schema designer agent. Then backend and UI flows are generated as YAML with separate set of agents. And finally actual Actix Web/Rust and Solid/Typescript code will be generated with API types upon an existing template: https://github.com/brainless/rustysolid

This technique should use very few tokens, compared to a regular coding agent and still deliver fantastic results for business/personal productivity apps. The entire setup can run on desktop (Tauri) and on the web (I make money) with hosting of generated apps as my selling point.

Pre-MVP is here: https://app1.nocodo.com/admin/ (there is no auth, but that will be added. But no tracking - all projects visible to everyone)

Would love to know your thoughts.

A constrained approach to coding agents

Related Stories