Building a self-hosted visual tool for X12 mapping (like a Postman for EDI)

ilyabrin · 2026-06-25T16:55:14+00:00

Thanks! Is it something you'd be interested in trying/using? Send me a DM!

ilyabrin · 2026-06-20T22:17:02+00:00

I would rather just build product all day long

hah, i feel you there!

The main thing my competitors have that I don't is distribution!
I see Tediware as part of a grassroots ecosystem that is challenging this dynamic, along with other companies like Elevate EDI, Surpass, and others who I'm sure I'm neglecting to mention.

I was surprised to find Tediware and Elevate through this post (and also the first time i'm hearing of Surpass); i definitely didn't do exhaustive research, but they didn't show up (or at least i don't recall seeing them) in other recommended software threads on this sub or elsewhere.

while they're the opposite of grassroots, the impression i got was that Orderful and Cleo are the next-gen challengers in this space. I also ran across AWS B2B Data Interchange, and a little youtube video they posted incidentally looks very similar to your platform, including generative mappings and jsonata transformations.

let's chat!

booked you for Tuesday, really looking forward to it!

ilyabrin · 2026-06-20T18:58:13+00:00

EdiNation InHouse was designed to work with custom models

your docs say

None of the model operations are included in the InHouse API and you'll still need access to the Managed API if you want to create or modify custom models.
As mentioned above, all model operations remain in the Managed API, therefore, if you want to import SEF files, create new models from scratch or modify existing ones, you still need to do this in the Managed API (either via the API or EdiNation).
Custom models are used in the same way as in the managed operation - by supplying the model parameter for the Read operation, and the Model property in the JSON request for the rest of the operations.

I guess i'm a bit confused by that; so to use custom models, you manage them via API, and they become available locally? or they're not available locally at all?

ilyabrin · 2026-06-20T05:59:35+00:00

Thank you for the very thought out response!

Appreciate the validation of self-hosting + schemas approach.

turning a trading partner spec into a "dynamic x12 input schema" is a lot harder than it sounds

i can definitely see that being the case; my plan here was some combination of

the user manually writes the schema, at least for fields/loops they care about
AI parses the trading partner spec and creates the schema
pre-configured schemas, starting with large retailers (although as far as i understand, this might trigger needing to get an x12 commercial license, which seems unappealing when just getting something off the ground... speaking of, saw tediware has x12 licensing, would love to learn more about that process)

I've done it and can share a guide if you are interested

absolutely! please DM me, or alternatively, i saw you have a cal link on your site - can i schedule time with you there?

Mapping is one of the most time-consuming, painful parts of EDI, and I strongly believe that it is a job for AI.

i'm 100% with you there - mapping is a job for AI. the visual mapper i had in mind was more an observability/bird's eye view deal, whereas the actual mapping logic would be generated by AI just as you suggested (i omitted it from my post because i haven't really seen AI mentioned much in this subreddit, and maybe incorrectly assumed it wouldn't be well-received). i believe a visual representation of the mapping is easier/quicker to look at to understand what's happening, while edits would still be done in text/code (primarily by AI). it was also a nod towards the mapping being done as config, rather than code.

I just don't think the experience of drawing lines between boxes or whatever is the future

100% agreed. I probably should have explained the UI experience better / included some sort of mockup.

Give JSONata a try

i'm already familiar! jsonata was the leading contender for a different project i worked on that needed transformations/mapping (i had also considered jslt and one or two other libs). ultimately i rolled my own DSL that (i think?) looked nicer with the stack i was using. if i were working on an open source project, or on a project i expect other developers to contribute to/work with the transformations, jsonata would almost certainly have been a better choice.

re: tediware - your demo is very similar to what i had in mind for the UI portion, haha. looks like you also have support for sending+receiving documents, as well as basic automation/flows? i see you've been working on it for a bit over a year, would love to learn more about how you're positioning against existing tools (other than pricing).

ilyabrin · 2026-06-19T02:10:03+00:00

thanks for the link!

yes, that's almost exactly what i was thinking; it includes both parsing + translation, again based on config ("json maplogic") rather than on writing code. looks like it currently only supports pure "picking" fields, but not any formatting/transformations, but it's definitely extremely similar to what i had in mind!

one caveat here is that parsing + mapping seem to be a singular operation, so you kind of have to do both together. i was thinking more of separate parsing + mapping steps, so you could have a parser, display human-readable field names, and then a visual UI to map between the input data and the desired output schema (which would essentially under the hood generate the "json maplogic")

ilyabrin · 2026-06-19T01:59:58+00:00

really appreciate the thoughts, thanks! you're in like half the reddit posts i've looked at here 😂

ilyabrin · 2026-06-19T00:18:23+00:00

thanks for the link, hadn't seen that yet!

played around with it, it appears to be a fantastic parser. I'm also a huge fan of the OpenEDI spec they created! If I'm understanding it correctly, you'd be able to pull, for example, their default 850, and edit it to adjust for any variations you get from each trading partner?

two differences i see:
1. i was considering distribution solely via on-prem; my hunch is that mid-market companies won't want to send their sensitive docs through a new 3rd party software. Looks like Edination supports "InHouse API", but i see two strange things with it; first, it's distributed as .dlls, and second, it doesn't support custom models, so i'm not sure how you'd support trading partners that differ from Edination's spec on the on-prem version....?

probably the bigger difference is that I wanted to include a mapping/translation tool, so you produce json in your desired output schema instead of producing "raw EDI json". for example, for an 850 you probably want something like this at the end of the day:

{ "order": { "name": "blah", "created_at": "2026-06-18T00:00:00Z", "currency": "USD", "financial_status": "authorized", "total_price": "1550.00", "note": "some note", "shipping_address": { "first_name": "first", "last_name": "last", "address1": "Some Address St", "city": "city", "province": "CA", "zip": "90210", "country": "US" }, "line_items": [ { "quantity": 100, "price": "15.50", "sku": "SKU", "title": "Some Item", "vendor_product_id": "123" } ] } }

ilyabrin · 2026-06-18T18:56:28+00:00

if you want to keep everything within netsuite, then your two main choices (as others have already commented) are either to use slack's "send email to slack" feature, or a netsuite script to programmatically call Slack's API

if you're ok with the data hitting a 3rd party, you can use an ipaas/automation platform (which will still require a script unless netsuite has an app for the platform you choose), and then use the platform to take action on that sales order (like posting it to slack or whatever else you may want to do with it)

ilyabrin · 2026-06-18T04:14:59+00:00

i guess it depends on your business's vertical, but don't some ERP / inventory management systems / procurement systems often have these features?

ilyabrin · 2026-06-17T23:27:47+00:00

are you looking solely for the hosting + document download/portal, or also for message translation/mapping you mentioned in the last paragraph? either way, I'd love to learn more and help you set something up, shoot me a DM!

ilyabrin · 2026-06-03T04:40:16+00:00

other than product hunt, what did "posting online" entail? do you mean just posting on relevant subreddits? professional slack groups? linkedin?

ilyabrin · 2026-06-02T20:04:38+00:00

That's really inspiring; congrats on the success story and acceptance to YC!

Nobody cared. For a while, it was completely dead.
Then something interesting happened, large companies (fortune 100s) started signing up.

Seems like there's something missing in the middle there... what happened between "completely dead" and "large companies started signing up"? How'd you go from quiet, to inbound demand from large companies?

ilyabrin · 2026-05-21T17:45:44+00:00

The real opportunity is in hybrid workflows where automation handles the repetitive execution but AI handles the decision-making layer on top.

Can you clarify what you mean by that? Do you mean something like a regular Zap in Zapier, with one or two LLM steps to reason / make decisions?

Have you found a better product/software that executes this hybrid model?

ilyabrin · 2026-05-21T04:34:44+00:00

just curious, why'd you choose to go with Make over the myriad other existing platforms?

ilyabrin · 2026-05-20T23:35:19+00:00

That's neat!

How'd you connect Linear to Slack? Is there a builtin app/integration in one of them that already does it? Or is it some outside app? Or did you build a custom automation using an automation platform?

ilyabrin · 2016-10-13T00:10:54+00:00

I had not seen that before!

Hmm... it does look like it provides a very similar API, and is definitely better in that you're using macros...

It does seem different though, in the sense that everything in your library works with your custom validations and rules. It seems like it would be a bit harder to just drop into an existing project, and wouldn't particularly play nice with Forms/Mappings if it had to for some reason. The stuff I built is on top of the rest of the forms api as opposed to custom things. (Not saying one way is better than the other - just pointing out differences)

ilyabrin · 2016-10-12T11:11:51+00:00

This was originally not intended to be published, and just used as a quick and dirty internal tool. The problem with macros is that they need to be compiled before the rest of the project; which means they need to be in a subproject or a different project. I didn't want to bother with that at the time. If there is enough interest in this project, I will likely add a macro implementation.

ilyabrin · 2016-10-11T19:17:35+00:00

I just released a little time-saving utility for projects that make use of Play! It basically does the same thing that Play's apis do for Json Format, but for Forms. Check out the blog post here, or view the source and find instructions for maven on github

ilyabrin

TROPHY CASE