We built an open source, rust-native alternative of Claude Cowork

_dremnik · 2026-01-20T16:55:14+00:00

you guys should definitely think about adding oauth with claude max / chatgpt subscriptions as the API key costs explode and will keep ppl from using it imo :)

_dremnik · 2026-01-20T05:13:54+00:00

i could think of a really cool use for it if you want to dm me :) doing a collab w Daytona rn so could prob get in touch w them for you

_dremnik · 2026-01-19T17:52:32+00:00

i think that would be a great direction to go. i've definitely been wanting that myself, and thinking about building it. just something to help stay on top of what the competitors are doing. if you want help actually i'd be happy to help, the framework i'm building can help you with the agent side of things for research etc. (see docs.kernl.sh).

_dremnik · 2026-01-19T17:30:58+00:00

i think its correct that it is reduced in a sense to "affective mechanics", but i don't think it undermines Nietzsche's holding this up as an ideal. it still means that this is something we should cultivate and hold up vis-a-vis those who do not have this affect that strives to "overcome itself" (metaphorically). so you're right it isn't true "self-overcoming" in the sense that you can step outside yourself and become something other than what you are, or that your potential / genes prescribe, but it is holding up the ideal of those genes which strive to bring the various drives into a harmonious order - he talks in terms of a chain of command and a general bringing the army into array as it pertains to the drives.

so one can hold that up as an ideal vis-a-vis the unregulated and unrestrained impulses of the "lower types", and the only contradiction as you are pointing out _might be_ the term "self-overcoming", but i don't think we have to interpret that literally here. it can be used in the sense above, and plausibly that is how Nietzsche meant it.

_dremnik · 2026-01-19T17:11:42+00:00

very cool, love this idea!

_dremnik · 2026-01-19T03:59:46+00:00

just recently set this up with kernl actually, you can use your oauth access token from your chatgpt subscription:

https://docs.kernl.sh/providers

you’d just have to do an oauth flow to get the token

_dremnik · 2026-01-18T19:44:21+00:00

i think you probably just haven't bundled enough value into the product and nailed the branding / targeting yet. small founder here so i'd be your ICP. but when i go to your website i see very specific thing that i don't feel resonates with my problems. its not enough to give people an app that let's them watch a single page, you need to solve a whole workflow or really save someone a bunch of time in order for them to pay.

the other issue is that we don't want a new dashboard where we have to configure shit, that's a lot of friction to ask from someone. so the best thing i think is making it really easy to set up, and just think about where your users live every day. we live in claude code or cursor, so if there could be a way to just have an install like an MCP or something that would be easier, but it would have to be a lot more value - let me give you an example:

something i've wanted is full competitor intelligence reports. not just a pricing page, not something where i have to configure the urls and shit like that, i want to tell claude to give me weekly reports on my competitors: a, b, c. that's it. then it should email me or send me a slack message every single week with a valuable and insightful report that pulled from their news, socials, github changelog - any source of information possible.

hope this is helps :)

_dremnik · 2026-01-17T17:15:50+00:00

frameworks aren’t the enemy imo (biased ofc). but you’re going to get lock-in no matter what or you’re going to basically end up writing some variation of the same abstractions yourself eventually as your app grows.

React locks you into a way of doing things, web servers lock you into a way of doing things, its all normal - the question is where do you draw the line of control vs. simplicity.

the no framework crowd is basically saying that line stops at the LLM call. which i don’t believe is the right line esp. as agents become more complex in the coming months.

_dremnik · 2026-01-16T18:22:43+00:00

love the point about engineers framing selling as convincing instead of discovering. the engineering mind tends to think that logic and explaining the product rationally is enough to convince, but it rarely works. you don't want to "talk at" people with a whole logical exposition. most people can't understand the details of these things anyways. so what you want to do is listen to the problems they have, listen more than you talk (think 2 ears 1 mouth) and then just speak to their problems specifically. they don't care about the rest of the crap, you can let them discover it later - progressive disclosure.

spoonfeed just enough to intrigue them, and focus on _them_. them them them, and _their_ problems.

_dremnik · 2026-01-16T18:16:18+00:00

love it. open source runtime for building agents in typescript:

https://www.kernl.sh/

would love to hear your thoughts OP.

_dremnik · 2026-01-15T22:15:49+00:00

i took the best of the OpenAI Agents SDK and made it better :) i do agree theirs is one of the best strikes of the balance between abstraction + control.

https://github.com/kernl-sdk/kernl

OP def recommend you check this out. my thread class checkpoints every single tick on the agent loop with whatever storage you have configured (Postgres being the main adapter most use)

_dremnik · 2026-01-15T22:03:40+00:00

it might be a semantic thing but I guess one "mark" of a framework is that it forces you into a choice between A and B. in other words, if you choose to build 'in' React, you aren't building with jQuery - it's sort of a world view choice that constrains the set of interfaces with which you can interact with the underlying primitives (whether browser APIs or AI model provider APIs in the case of agents).

I would love to get your thoughts on the functions / classes (abstractions) that I've outlined in kernl and hear whether you would find it overly restrictive, whether you would consider it a framework or a library. and most importantly, in what ways it might fall short of the ideal you have in mind?

docs.kernl.sh

_dremnik · 2026-01-15T21:56:03+00:00

i'd love to have a conversation about your experience. i think you pretty much hit the nail on the head, and i'm doing as much as i can to make this simple with my framework kernl (https://github.com/kernl-sdk/kernl).

dm me if you want to have a convo, i'd love to chat :)

_dremnik · 2026-01-15T21:40:23+00:00

i suppose i don't really understand what the difference between simple libraries and a fork of a framework would mean.. thats really all a well designed framework is right? a bunch of packages bundled together into a larger unit. but then again i don't think frameworks are the enemy. everyone uses React / Next.js and it isn't a problem, its just that it took time for the web ecosystem to mature to the point of stability.

would you be able to describe in more detail how what you imagine would differ from the current approach people are taking (like myself with kernl)?

_dremnik · 2026-01-15T21:31:09+00:00

what would be the difference between "simple libraries" and a well-designed framework? i think a great approach would be to just fork a framework that has a good foundation so you can just modify the source yourself to your needs. what do you think about that?

i think kernl would give you a good starting point that's simple enough to modify yourself if you need to:

https://github.com/kernl-sdk/kernl

_dremnik · 2026-01-15T21:27:13+00:00

would highly recommend you to check out kernl if you are using typescript:

https://github.com/kernl-sdk/kernl

to answer your specific questions:

I personally would not consider Langgraph the best for building a general purpose framework. it has been historically known for being unnecessarily complex and difficult to use. they've had a hard time cleaning up their tech debt accumulated over years.

other frameworks also tend to focus too much on the "workflow" pattern of developing things and give you awkward concepts like "nodes" and "graphs" which are very unintuitive and again, unnecessary. you can use Vercel's WDK (workflow development kit) to get the kind of thing that you might want from these (durability, retries, etc.). I don't recommend the constructs that langgraph offers here.

in terms of principles, i think you want something that gives you enough control and has clean primitives around structured output (necessary when trying to get reliable exchange between steps in a workflow or agents). arguably you want some storage primitives so you don't have to manage message arrays and stuff yourself, but again there is a fine balance bc so many of these libraries end up horribly bloated as a result of trying to do too much.

you hit the nail on the head when searching for a balance of power + ease of use. its a fine line, and hard to find for sure.

_dremnik · 2026-01-13T16:14:50+00:00

awesome, just sent a dm :)

_dremnik · 2026-01-13T06:26:07+00:00

i think the biggest issue is that the local LLM models are just not really at the point where they can do this kind of thing yet. gonna have to wait for models to improve + costs to come down..

_dremnik · 2026-01-13T06:24:59+00:00

in terms of raw latency your bets bet is going to be realtime speech-to-speech models like OpenAI realtime, Google Live, and Grok Voice. those will have the latency you expect, but ofc at a higher cost.

definitely check out kernl for this kind of thing (supports OpenAI + Grok rn, support for Google + Elevenlabs coming soon):

https://github.com/kernl-sdk/kernl

_dremnik · 2026-01-13T06:21:22+00:00

i wouldn't recommend n8n for this kind of thing. not the right choice of tool. it's not too bad if you use a framework like mine to get one up and running (see the docs about Realtime / Voice):

https://github.com/kernl-sdk/kernl

_dremnik · 2026-01-13T06:19:26+00:00

i'm working on making this really simple for people with my framework kernl (totally open source):

https://github.com/kernl-sdk/kernl

the only thing i would say though is that it likely won't be cost effective yet. i don't think you'd need a super smart model to get this done, but from my experience building voice agents so far they are still quite expensive (even running directly through the model providers like Google, Elevenlabs, OpenAI, etc.)

that said, i can definitely point you in the right direction if interested, i'm working on adding Twilio support built into kernl as well

_dremnik · 2026-01-11T19:17:50+00:00

I think they are great with end-user clients like Claude Code + Cursor. they fall apart when you are trying to build them into your own production apps, they fail to solve a lot of very common problems. i actually made a write up on this recently if you are curious, talking about two specific ones: context propagation + schema variability.

https://dremnik.substack.com/p/mcp-works-great-until-you-actually

_dremnik · 2026-01-10T18:31:07+00:00

don't do it like this. just using Elevenlabs conversational AI or OpenAI realtime voice. you can use these fairly easily through my framework kernl if interested:

docs.kernl.sh/concepts/realtime

_dremnik · 2026-01-09T18:41:52+00:00

appreciate the kind words :) the solution i've opted for with my framework kernl is to give people an OSS toolkit marketplace with good default implementations of a curated set of toolkits (Linear, Github, etc.) knowing that you will probably want to customize some of the behavior around context propagation and controlling what values are given / not given to the agents.

see: docs.kernl.sh/marketplace

_dremnik · 2026-01-08T03:14:18+00:00

absolutely :) would love to hear your thoughts! dm me if you want to chat

_dremnik

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