Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work
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Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
rozenmd · · focus · HN ↗
Text from tweet:
Today we are releasing Cloudflare OS, a chatbot with connectors, just like every other tech company is doing.
Except actually, it's different. This is a remake of Sandstorm[.]io, my startup from 10 years ago, except this time built on Cloudflare Workers (the platform I've spent the last 9 years building) and deeply leveraging AI. This is more or less the culmination of my secret 10-year master plan.
This is a full-on personal app vibe coding platform, in which the sandbox is so secure that you can pretty much go wild -- the AI cannot introduce a significant security bug. We believe a company's security team can feel comfortable giving non-technical users permission to vibe code and then sleep soundly at night.
How is that possible? It's the Sandstorm security model, revisited. A "Gadget" is the same thing as a Sandstorm "Grain": a fine-grained app instance. For example, if you have a document editor app, each document runs as a separate instance of the app, in a separate sandbox (one "Gadget").
This means two things, both of which I think are Big Deals: 1. The platform can manage all access control, by controlling who can access the Gadget at all. There is no way the Gadget can accidentally leak itself to an attacker -- even an attacker who has access to other Gadgets based on the same app. 2. Since everyone is running their own copy of the code, everyone can freely modify their copy of the code.
Think about #2 a bit more.
What if, when you wanted a new feature in the software you are using, you could just prompt your agent to add it?
This doesn't work in the cloud Software-as-a-Service model, because you are not running your own copy of the app.
Sandstorm tried to change that 10 years ago, but the world wasn't ready, because not enough people had the skills or patience to actually modify their software. AI has changed that. Now you just ask the agent -- the same agent that you are using to help you interact with the Gadget can also modify the code of the Gadget.
And it is so fun.
mosura · · focus · HN ↗
Buzz looks like a more reasonable direction than this does.
benatkin · · focus · HN ↗
I guess the lock-in is to Cloudflare Workers, which is limited to JavaScript. I would in fact look into projects that are built around MicroVMs and WebAssembly. It seems Buzz would be happy to use smolmachines, or whatever. You'd have to roll your own permission system, but smolmachines would at least take care of being able to use stuff within an app, by offering persistent, portable containers.
Actually I think now I can finally say why this sandstorm.io with Cloudflare OS has lock-in. The promise is "you can pretty much go wild" and that you can hand it off to non-technical people to do that. Much as you squint, there is not a sophisticated access control system available to self-hosted users. There's a framework for building a sophisticated access control system, but that isn't the same as having something open source that you can self-host and let non technical users go wild.
However, this is cool. I just agree with you that Buzz sounds more interesting to me as someone who was into Sandstorm.
runtime_terror · · focus · HN ↗
benatkin · · focus · HN ↗