7 ms·

Show HN: Superblocks AI – AI coding assistant for internal apps

114 points by frankgrecojr 3y ago

I’m Frank, the Head of AI Engineering at Superblocks. We’re a platform for enterprise developers to build and host mission-critical internal apps. Today we launched Superblocks AI and are excited to hear feedback from the HN community! Superblocks AI combines the power of the Superblocks drag-and-drop App Builder with robust AI code generation, code optimization, code explanation, mock data generation, and API call generation across SQL, Python, JavaScript, JSON and HTML. We built Superblocks AI with the intention to streamline some of the repetitive and often confusing aspects of building internal tools, here’s a brief overview: Generate Code: LLMs like ChatGPT have quickly become a critical part of developers' lives and we wanted to bring that experience natively into our product. The response is streamed for the best UX, similar to Chat-GPT, and can be modified before use. Explain Code: Understanding someone else’s code for large internal engineering teams is often a challenge. Highlight code and Superblocks AI offers an explanation that you then have the ability to add as a comment. Edit Code: You can make alterations to code by highlighting it and choosing prompts like optimize performance, enhance readability, or something custom. We've added an inline code diff view for easy verification of changes. Generate API Calls: You often want to make an API call but need to spend 30 minutes looking up the documentation and crafting the correct call in Postman. We provided a way for you to give a prompt, and Superblocks AI will generate REST and GraphQL queries for APIs like Stripe, Salesforce, your favorite SaaS provider, and more. Generate Mock Data: This enables faster UI development by generating mock data for components like tables, charts, grids etc., which can be especially handy during prototyping. I'd love to hear feedback from the HN community on how you think this feature should evolve over the next few months!

ttul 3y ago
Superblocks is cool, but... when I tried building a simple web hook receiver, it totally failed because the sender of the web hook had their own particular notion of how authentication should work. And Superblocks was rigid in its concept of "web hook". There is no way to write arbitrary request handling code to get around this limitation. As with all low-code / no-code solutions, you can't please all the people all the time. But I felt the design choice in this particular case was overly rigid and with little justification.
- frankgrecojr 3y ago
  Thanks for your comment! We're always open to product improvement around our Workflows product. I agree there's more features we need to add to service a robust set of web hook use cases. With that being said, there may be ways to accomplish what you're looking for with the current state of our Workflows feature so feel free to send me a DM on Twitter or Linkedin.
Topfi 3y ago
I honestly really like this, both conceptually and from an implementations point of view. Assisting in the creation of single purpose functions is, in my experience, by far the most reliable use case for LLMs in regard to code creation at this point in time, yet is something I haven't seen many companies really lean into. In fact, the only other example I know of is Cloudflares Workers Workshop [0], which I have been waiting for since May. What I especially like about the implementation showcased in your demo videos though was the visual component. Some subtle animations, effective use of diff, methods being editable before pasting, it all felt very cohesive and thought through, which is something I can't say about every company utilizing OpenAIs APIs. Seems more like something that can serve a real value add for users, rather than just jumping on LLMs because it's the hot thing this summer. Really hope more people are experimenting with the "visual implementation" of LLMs, using animations and graphs to communicate LLM outputs has a lot of unused potential currently. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cursor-the-ai-assistant-for-docs/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cursor-the-ai-assist...
- frankgrecojr 3y ago
  Thanks for the kind words! A lot of thought went into the user experience. You can expect the same level of thought with all of our future AI features.
Kiro 3y ago
I thought Superblocks was blockchain company. Is this a pivot?
- frankgrecojr 3y ago
  We have never been a blockchain company. However, I do believe there is one with a similar name.
  - Kiro 3y ago
    Not just similar name but the same URL as well: https://twitter.com/getsuperblocks https://twitter.com/getsuperblocks I presume you bought the domain name from them in that case.
    - frankgrecojr 3y ago
      Yea I believe we did.
mad_vill 3y ago
Looks really cool!
- frankgrecojr 3y ago
  Thanks!
anotherpaulg 3y ago
This looks cool. I like that you're showing diffs and integrating the AI code and suggestions back into the original source code. I've been focused on similar concepts with my open source AI coding tool. My tool is a command line GPT chat tool. You can ask it to write or edit code in any git repo. It displays live diffs as the AI edits stream in and automatically integrates them into your source files. I think this is similar to what your article is describing? Folks might want to check out `aider` if they want to do the style of AI coding you're showing, but on their own git repos. https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider
- frankgrecojr 3y ago
  Thanks! I took a look at your repo and love the concise gif!
iLoveOncall 3y ago
Wow, a new low code app generator! And it even managed to shoehorn ChatGPT in! How exciting!
- bitlad 3y ago
  A lowcode app generator that "used" appsmith's open source project to build on, gamed hacker news to be on the top page once, has a new low code app generator with shoehorned chatgpt. ZIRP Hustle is real.
  - ranma 3y ago
    The architecture has diverged significantly from the Appsmith project (Apache 2.0 licensed) since forking the frontend canvas and evaluation code more than 2 years ago. Most of Superblocks is built from the ground up to optimize for performance, scalability and extensibility. In terms of ChatGPT, Superblocks's goal is to develop a simple visual interface for creators to integrate AI into their workflow to build applications quickly. The platform makes it easy to verify, deploy, and monitor your changes, which would be difficult to do with just a chat interface.
light_hue_1 3y ago
This looks neat but the examples are terrible. The fact that it's even willing to write a function which removes PII from a string is nonsense. No such function is possible. And the comment for filterUsersTable is incredibly long, tedious, and unhelpful. How does the SQL thing work? How does it know what my schema is? That's nowhere on screen. The only believable example is the Salesforce one which anyone could do.
- frankgrecojr 3y ago
  > And the comment for filterUsersTable is incredibly long, tedious, and unhelpful. This is good feedback. I think having an ability to adjust verbosity is valuable. A comment version should maybe be more concise than the actual explanation. > How does the SQL thing work? How does it know what my schema is? That's nowhere on screen. When you configure integrations with Superblocks, we query your integrations metadata which we use to give the best answers here.
dvt 3y ago
This is neat, but, as with all projects in this vein, I fail to see the real value add. We've had ML-powered code generation for several years now (Copilot released publicly in late 2021), and apart from a cute novelty, there's no real use case I've found. (Maybe except for generating tests, but when dealing with a novel code base, the models really can't figure out dependency injection, mocks, weird edge cases I'd care about, etc.) This might be a bit contrarian, but I don't really think there's product market fit here, at least for engineers. And if given in the hands of non-engineers, you'll need to have an engineer at least look over the code anyway. I haven't seen or heard of anyone that seriously uses ChatGPT to generate code and uses it in prod (apart from engagement-farming Twitter posts). > Understanding someone else’s code for large internal engineering teams is often a challenge Without proper context, this will fail miserably. Have you ever seen a corporate codebase before? It can be the definition of "wtf?" even for a seasoned developer that's been working there for years. This AI-generated code trend reminds me of the "no-code" fad of the past decade.
- frankgrecojr 3y ago
  > I haven't seen or heard of anyone that seriously uses ChatGPT to generate code and uses it in prod I would agree with this in general. The main goal here is to optimize the "editor experience". When I personally code, I'll have ChatGPT pulled up on the side in case I need to reference it for speed. Some examples of how I might use it are: - add some tests for me to review - take an existing piece of code and modify it in some way - help me think of ways in which I can write some code if I'm lazy that day. This would generate code that after I iterate on it would need to be reviewed which speaks to your point, "you'll need to have an engineer at least look over the code anyway" which I agree with. The main goal is to have it there as a resource to pair program with rather than trusting it without review/input.
- H8crilA 3y ago
  You're telling me you've never once pressed "TAB" to auto-fill the line or even several lines with Copilot? Because about half of the letters in my source code is now Copilot generated. The value added is that you don't send your source code to OpenAI and/or their parent org Microsoft.
cududa 3y ago
At first was excited when I clicked the link. I think for some people, this is a fantastic solution. However, for me, what I was hoping it was/ one thing I'm still looking for: Feed in my whole repo to the GPT-4 API, train on it, and ask questions about the code base/ particular functions. Has anyone seen that?
- frankgrecojr 3y ago
  This will be awesome when it's possible! I often wish GitHub Copilot knew more about my repo than it does.
- detour 3y ago
  haven't used it yet but Tzap looks like it'd fit the bill - https://github.com/tzapio/tzap https://github.com/tzapio/tzap - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377918
- anotherpaulg 3y ago
  My tool aider lets you ask GPT questions about a git repo, as well as letting you ask gpt to edit the code. Here's an example of exploring and then modifying an open source js repo: https://aider.chat/examples/2048-game.html https://aider.chat/examples/2048-game.html Here's an article about how it does that: https://aider.chat/docs/ctags.html https://aider.chat/docs/ctags.html I think bloop is also good for searching and Q&A against code. I'm not sure if it will let you edit/modify the code though. https://bloop.ai https://bloop.ai
  - dr_kiszonka 3y ago
    Your tool looks very impressive. Have you ever tried how well it works with Android app repos?
    - anotherpaulg 3y ago
      Aider seems pretty comfortable working with android apps. Here's a conversation I just had with it: > what's a simple, popular open source android app? One simple and popular open source Android app is "Minimal ToDo". It's a simple task management app with a clean, minimalistic user interface. The source code is available on GitHub and it's a great project for beginners who want to understand the structure and functioning of an Android app. > clone command to clone minimal todo? To clone the Minimal ToDo app from GitHub, you can use the following command: ```bash git clone https://github.com/avjinder/Minimal-Todo.git ``` This will create a local copy of the Minimal ToDo repository on your machine. > tell me about the overall structure of this codebase This codebase appears to be for an Android application, specifically a to-do list app. The structure is typical of an Android project, with Java source files, XML layout files, and resource files. 1. Java Source Files: These are located in the `app/src/main/java/com/example/avjindersinghsekhon/minimaltodo` directory. The package structure suggests that the app is divided into several modules such as `About`, `AddToDo`, `Analytics`, `AppDefault`, `Main`, `Reminder`, `Settings`, and `Utility`. Each module contains classes related to its functionality. 2. XML Layout Files: These are located in the `app/src/main/res/layout` directory. They define the user interface for different activities and fragments in the app. 3. Resource Files: These include drawable resources (images, icons), values (strings, dimensions, colors), and menu definitions. They are located in the `app/src/main/res` directory. 4. Gradle Files: The `build.gradle` files specify the build configuration for the app. There are typically two such files in an Android project: one for the project and one for the app module. 5. Test Files: These are located in the `app/src/androidTest/java/com/example/avjindersinghsekhon/minimaltodo` directory. They contain tests for the application's functionality. 6. Manifest File: The `AndroidManifest.xml` file in the `app/src/main` directory declares the app's components to the Android system and specifies permissions and other app requirements. 7. Properties and Configuration Files: Files like `gradle.properties` and `.travis.yml` are used for configuration of the build system and continuous integration services. 8. Other Files: The `google-services.json` file is typically used for configuring services from Google Firebase. The `.idea` directory contains configuration files for the IntelliJ IDEA IDE.
bitlad 3y ago
Airplane too, does have a coding assistant similar to this [1]. [1] https://www.airplane.dev/autopilot https://www.airplane.dev/autopilot
foxbee 3y ago
If you're interested, there's a number of open source alternatives to Superblocks Budibase. https://github.com/Budibase/budibase https://github.com/Budibase/budibase Appsmith. https://github.com/appsmithorg https://github.com/appsmithorg Tooljet https://github.com/ToolJet/ToolJet https://github.com/ToolJet/ToolJet And more (I'm sure others will comment)
- slig 3y ago
  I've been using Windmill and it works like a charm.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
rubenfiszel 3y ago
This is cool, but otherwise you can just use windmill as an open-source internal app builder and use Github Copilot in vscode to get the best AI assistant out there: https://www.windmill.dev/docs/cli_local_dev/vscode-extension https://www.windmill.dev/docs/cli_local_dev/vscode-extension

114 points by frankgrecojr 3y ago

ttul 3y ago

Superblocks is cool, but... when I tried building a simple web hook receiver, it totally failed because the sender of the web hook had their own particular notion of how authentication should work. And Superblocks was rigid in its concept of "web hook". There is no way to write arbitrary request handling code to get around this limitation. As with all low-code / no-code solutions, you can't please all the people all the time. But I felt the design choice in this particular case was overly rigid and with little justification.

frankgrecojr 3y ago
Thanks for your comment! We're always open to product improvement around our Workflows product. I agree there's more features we need to add to service a robust set of web hook use cases. With that being said, there may be ways to accomplish what you're looking for with the current state of our Workflows feature so feel free to send me a DM on Twitter or Linkedin.

Topfi 3y ago

I honestly really like this, both conceptually and from an implementations point of view. Assisting in the creation of single purpose functions is, in my experience, by far the most reliable use case for LLMs in regard to code creation at this point in time, yet is something I haven't seen many companies really lean into. In fact, the only other example I know of is Cloudflares Workers Workshop [0], which I have been waiting for since May. What I especially like about the implementation showcased in your demo videos though was the visual component. Some subtle animations, effective use of diff, methods being editable before pasting, it all felt very cohesive and thought through, which is something I can't say about every company utilizing OpenAIs APIs. Seems more like something that can serve a real value add for users, rather than just jumping on LLMs because it's the hot thing this summer. Really hope more people are experimenting with the "visual implementation" of LLMs, using animations and graphs to communicate LLM outputs has a lot of unused potential currently. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cursor-the-ai-assistant-for-docs/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cursor-the-ai-assist...

frankgrecojr 3y ago
Thanks for the kind words! A lot of thought went into the user experience. You can expect the same level of thought with all of our future AI features.

Kiro 3y ago

I thought Superblocks was blockchain company. Is this a pivot?

frankgrecojr 3y ago
We have never been a blockchain company. However, I do believe there is one with a similar name.
- Kiro 3y ago
  Not just similar name but the same URL as well: https://twitter.com/getsuperblocks https://twitter.com/getsuperblocks I presume you bought the domain name from them in that case.
  - frankgrecojr 3y ago
    Yea I believe we did.

mad_vill 3y ago

Looks really cool!

frankgrecojr 3y ago
Thanks!

anotherpaulg 3y ago

This looks cool. I like that you're showing diffs and integrating the AI code and suggestions back into the original source code. I've been focused on similar concepts with my open source AI coding tool. My tool is a command line GPT chat tool. You can ask it to write or edit code in any git repo. It displays live diffs as the AI edits stream in and automatically integrates them into your source files. I think this is similar to what your article is describing? Folks might want to check out `aider` if they want to do the style of AI coding you're showing, but on their own git repos. https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider

frankgrecojr 3y ago
Thanks! I took a look at your repo and love the concise gif!

iLoveOncall 3y ago

Wow, a new low code app generator! And it even managed to shoehorn ChatGPT in! How exciting!

bitlad 3y ago
A lowcode app generator that "used" appsmith's open source project to build on, gamed hacker news to be on the top page once, has a new low code app generator with shoehorned chatgpt. ZIRP Hustle is real.
- ranma 3y ago
  The architecture has diverged significantly from the Appsmith project (Apache 2.0 licensed) since forking the frontend canvas and evaluation code more than 2 years ago. Most of Superblocks is built from the ground up to optimize for performance, scalability and extensibility. In terms of ChatGPT, Superblocks's goal is to develop a simple visual interface for creators to integrate AI into their workflow to build applications quickly. The platform makes it easy to verify, deploy, and monitor your changes, which would be difficult to do with just a chat interface.

light_hue_1 3y ago

This looks neat but the examples are terrible. The fact that it's even willing to write a function which removes PII from a string is nonsense. No such function is possible. And the comment for filterUsersTable is incredibly long, tedious, and unhelpful. How does the SQL thing work? How does it know what my schema is? That's nowhere on screen. The only believable example is the Salesforce one which anyone could do.

frankgrecojr 3y ago
> And the comment for filterUsersTable is incredibly long, tedious, and unhelpful. This is good feedback. I think having an ability to adjust verbosity is valuable. A comment version should maybe be more concise than the actual explanation. > How does the SQL thing work? How does it know what my schema is? That's nowhere on screen. When you configure integrations with Superblocks, we query your integrations metadata which we use to give the best answers here.

dvt 3y ago

This is neat, but, as with all projects in this vein, I fail to see the real value add. We've had ML-powered code generation for several years now (Copilot released publicly in late 2021), and apart from a cute novelty, there's no real use case I've found. (Maybe except for generating tests, but when dealing with a novel code base, the models really can't figure out dependency injection, mocks, weird edge cases I'd care about, etc.) This might be a bit contrarian, but I don't really think there's product market fit here, at least for engineers. And if given in the hands of non-engineers, you'll need to have an engineer at least look over the code anyway. I haven't seen or heard of anyone that seriously uses ChatGPT to generate code and uses it in prod (apart from engagement-farming Twitter posts). > Understanding someone else’s code for large internal engineering teams is often a challenge Without proper context, this will fail miserably. Have you ever seen a corporate codebase before? It can be the definition of "wtf?" even for a seasoned developer that's been working there for years. This AI-generated code trend reminds me of the "no-code" fad of the past decade.

frankgrecojr 3y ago
> I haven't seen or heard of anyone that seriously uses ChatGPT to generate code and uses it in prod I would agree with this in general. The main goal here is to optimize the "editor experience". When I personally code, I'll have ChatGPT pulled up on the side in case I need to reference it for speed. Some examples of how I might use it are: - add some tests for me to review - take an existing piece of code and modify it in some way - help me think of ways in which I can write some code if I'm lazy that day. This would generate code that after I iterate on it would need to be reviewed which speaks to your point, "you'll need to have an engineer at least look over the code anyway" which I agree with. The main goal is to have it there as a resource to pair program with rather than trusting it without review/input.
H8crilA 3y ago
You're telling me you've never once pressed "TAB" to auto-fill the line or even several lines with Copilot? Because about half of the letters in my source code is now Copilot generated. The value added is that you don't send your source code to OpenAI and/or their parent org Microsoft.

cududa 3y ago

At first was excited when I clicked the link. I think for some people, this is a fantastic solution. However, for me, what I was hoping it was/ one thing I'm still looking for: Feed in my whole repo to the GPT-4 API, train on it, and ask questions about the code base/ particular functions. Has anyone seen that?

frankgrecojr 3y ago
This will be awesome when it's possible! I often wish GitHub Copilot knew more about my repo than it does.
detour 3y ago
haven't used it yet but Tzap looks like it'd fit the bill - https://github.com/tzapio/tzap https://github.com/tzapio/tzap - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377918
anotherpaulg 3y ago
My tool aider lets you ask GPT questions about a git repo, as well as letting you ask gpt to edit the code. Here's an example of exploring and then modifying an open source js repo: https://aider.chat/examples/2048-game.html https://aider.chat/examples/2048-game.html Here's an article about how it does that: https://aider.chat/docs/ctags.html https://aider.chat/docs/ctags.html I think bloop is also good for searching and Q&A against code. I'm not sure if it will let you edit/modify the code though. https://bloop.ai https://bloop.ai
- dr_kiszonka 3y ago
  Your tool looks very impressive. Have you ever tried how well it works with Android app repos?
  - anotherpaulg 3y ago
    Aider seems pretty comfortable working with android apps. Here's a conversation I just had with it: > what's a simple, popular open source android app? One simple and popular open source Android app is "Minimal ToDo". It's a simple task management app with a clean, minimalistic user interface. The source code is available on GitHub and it's a great project for beginners who want to understand the structure and functioning of an Android app. > clone command to clone minimal todo? To clone the Minimal ToDo app from GitHub, you can use the following command: ```bash git clone https://github.com/avjinder/Minimal-Todo.git ``` This will create a local copy of the Minimal ToDo repository on your machine. > tell me about the overall structure of this codebase This codebase appears to be for an Android application, specifically a to-do list app. The structure is typical of an Android project, with Java source files, XML layout files, and resource files. 1. Java Source Files: These are located in the `app/src/main/java/com/example/avjindersinghsekhon/minimaltodo` directory. The package structure suggests that the app is divided into several modules such as `About`, `AddToDo`, `Analytics`, `AppDefault`, `Main`, `Reminder`, `Settings`, and `Utility`. Each module contains classes related to its functionality. 2. XML Layout Files: These are located in the `app/src/main/res/layout` directory. They define the user interface for different activities and fragments in the app. 3. Resource Files: These include drawable resources (images, icons), values (strings, dimensions, colors), and menu definitions. They are located in the `app/src/main/res` directory. 4. Gradle Files: The `build.gradle` files specify the build configuration for the app. There are typically two such files in an Android project: one for the project and one for the app module. 5. Test Files: These are located in the `app/src/androidTest/java/com/example/avjindersinghsekhon/minimaltodo` directory. They contain tests for the application's functionality. 6. Manifest File: The `AndroidManifest.xml` file in the `app/src/main` directory declares the app's components to the Android system and specifies permissions and other app requirements. 7. Properties and Configuration Files: Files like `gradle.properties` and `.travis.yml` are used for configuration of the build system and continuous integration services. 8. Other Files: The `google-services.json` file is typically used for configuring services from Google Firebase. The `.idea` directory contains configuration files for the IntelliJ IDEA IDE.

bitlad 3y ago

Airplane too, does have a coding assistant similar to this [1]. [1] https://www.airplane.dev/autopilot https://www.airplane.dev/autopilot

foxbee 3y ago

If you're interested, there's a number of open source alternatives to Superblocks Budibase. https://github.com/Budibase/budibase https://github.com/Budibase/budibase Appsmith. https://github.com/appsmithorg https://github.com/appsmithorg Tooljet https://github.com/ToolJet/ToolJet https://github.com/ToolJet/ToolJet And more (I'm sure others will comment)

slig 3y ago
I've been using Windmill and it works like a charm.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

rubenfiszel 3y ago

This is cool, but otherwise you can just use windmill as an open-source internal app builder and use Github Copilot in vscode to get the best AI assistant out there: https://www.windmill.dev/docs/cli_local_dev/vscode-extension https://www.windmill.dev/docs/cli_local_dev/vscode-extension