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Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE
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Hello HN, I don't post on here much, but wanted to get some eyes on a new project I'm just launching. I think we definitely need one more AI code agent..I'm a long-term C++ dev, and over 30+ years I've created some successful audio dev tools (JUCE, the Tracktion DAW, the Cmajor DSP language). All of these came from me getting annoyed with something I had to use, and deciding to have a go at my own take on whatever it was.So Juggler is my attempt at an AI code agent, after spending too many hours loving what the models could do, but hating the CLI experience, and having some opinions of what a better UX might be for this stuff.Lots more blurb on the website and github, but a quick tech dump which might grab your attention if you're into these things:A session is a document, not a log file. Each conversation is a Yjs CRDT tree. It can branch into sub-threads (recursively), and you can drill down, backtrack, edit, undo/redo, and inspect everything: tool calls, approvals, and the raw context JSON going to the model, etc. The UI is based around Finder-style Miller columns rather than a big doom-scroll, and is quick to navigate.Because it's a CRDT behind a local web server, multiple clients can attach P2P to a live session: the native desktop app, a browser tab, or your phone. Run the headless server on the box where the code lives, view it from wherever.Almost everything is a JavaScript plugin: every item in the context (read/write/bash/etc.), the LLM loop strategies, slash commands, and their UIs. You can inspect, fork, or replace any of them. I don't do much agent customisation myself, but lots of people do, and I'd love to see what they think of with this plugin API.Go backend, Wails for windowing (no Electron), plain type-checked JS (strict JSDoc), Yjs for the documents. Usual BYOK provider support: Claude (CLI or API), OpenAI/Codex, Gemini, Ollama, OpenRouter, DeepSeek, etc.The app's AGPLv3; the extension SDK and bundled extensions are Apache-2.0, so extensions have no copyleft strings attached. No signup, no telemetry, trying to make it frictionless for people to try it out..It's very much a beta, and is a one-man side project. It hasn't yet had a proper kicking from the real world, but I'm confident some people with similar preferences to my own will like it!https://juggler.studio
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The initial public indexing or launch date for Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE within our tracked developer communities was recorded on July 14, 2026.
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The original author or development team describes the product as follows: "Hello HN, I don't post on here much, but wanted to get some eyes on a new project I'm just launching. I think we definitely need one more AI code agent..I'm a long-term C++ dev, and over 30+ years ..."
Community Voice & Feedback
Very interesting. I tried to make a tree based agent two years ago but back then the LLM couldn’t manage to navigate the tree effectively. But today everything is different: better LLMs, and we have better understanding on how to instruct them.I’ll try it and maybe I’ll be inspired to make my current home brewed agent more document focused again.One drawback is much higher token usage because we get a very good saving in the cached data.A little heads up: in your web page, the header download button force double screen with on mobile (iPhone 17 pro). No big problem but always an annoying when a page scrolls in two directions.
> Using a code agent involves editing big chunks of multi-line text, and getting hosed with information that you need to scan, navigate, and understand. I find a terminal UX horrible for all those tasks, and Juggler is resolutely a GUI app.Thank you for building software made for actual productive usage instead of weird ricer clout and other performative nonsense.> Yes, it's another AI coding agent. The industry definitely needed one more.It actually does need more of them. The current count of harnesses that don't suck is a float somewhere around 0.3, maybe.Keep doing what you're doing!I'd love to have software that is actually made to solve problems instead of somehow pretend-granting me some identity. Or just being made by people with no taste in general.My god the agent harness space is so bad. As if no one in there has ever seen a software in their whole life.
Miller columns rather than a big doom-scrollSold, this is my biggest annoyance with Cline.Go backend, Wails for windowing (no Electron), plain type-checked JS (strict JSDoc), Yjs for the documents. Usual BYOK provider support: Claude (CLI or API), OpenAI/Codex, Gemini, Ollama, OpenRouter, DeepSeek, etc.Double soldAs a longtime sound engineer I'm pretty familiar with JUCE and your other productions, so I will be trying this with confidence.
As this post gradually sinks downwards on the HN front page, I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who've made all the lovely comments, it's great to get some feedback to show I haven't been wasting my time building this!And as I said, this whole project was 100% done by me in my spare time, with zero money behind it, and no real plan for what happens to it now!If you like it, please spread the word, as I don't have a marketing budget! If it manages to get a big enough userbase then hopefully I'll be able to figure out some way to make it a full-time gig, as it's been really fascinating to build!
This looks nice, and I like the more opinionated take on how "communicating" with an agent should work.The post talks a lot about what this is and how it works. I'm curious, from your usage of it, how does it change your way of working with the LLMs? How does working with it go differently from Claude Code?Specifically: Everything is a tree. That's interesting, but how do you end up using it? Attack the same problem different ways?
@julesrms thank you for lending more credibility to the idea that agent conversations need to be natively branching. It's crazy that we're almost 3 years in on this LLM joyride and we still don't have the ability to do, like, reddit/slack-style "aside" convo threads.~~edit~~wait, are you doing that? Love JUCE btw
Having now given it a quick spin, I like the UI concept and could definitely see myself working with this. I ran into a bug(?) almost immediately though, I hooked up Deepseek 4 Pro, gave it a small task and got this```
LLM error: POST "https://api.deepseek.com/v1/chat/completions": 400 Bad Request {"message":"The `reasoning_content` in the thinking mode must be passed back to the API.","type":"invalid_request_error","param":null,"code":"invalid_request_error"}
```I'm unsure about putting my Anthropic key in there as I've lost track of what they ban you for or whether that eats money from outside of my subscription.Oooh, and nicer support for codefences would be good.
LLM error: POST "https://api.deepseek.com/v1/chat/completions": 400 Bad Request {"message":"The `reasoning_content` in the thinking mode must be passed back to the API.","type":"invalid_request_error","param":null,"code":"invalid_request_error"}
```I'm unsure about putting my Anthropic key in there as I've lost track of what they ban you for or whether that eats money from outside of my subscription.Oooh, and nicer support for codefences would be good.
This looks really interesting and a unique take on the AI agent orchestration. I think we need a bunch of experiments in this area as it's clear we are entering a new paradigm and the tools for it are lacking. The session tree in particular has merits.I've got my own attempt with OrcaBot (short for orchestration of bots). It's also been a 6 month solo build experiment. I'm not trying to plug.. just that I'm also neck deep in Steve Yegge's Stage 8 AI-assisted coding chart and understand how much thought and effort went into this.Thinking about where this is all going with talking to AI like fully autonomous employees similar to @Claude can you see a comms app type approach that combines something like slack with your tree/thread structure? It's somewhat orthogonal to your "inspect everything" but could intersect by bringing click through/open in options...
ACP support would be a big deal and would make this a real contender for me. It looks super nice, but the idea of re-writing my Pi plugins is a real blocker.I’m generally happy with my agent and want to keep that, but I do think the UI could be better and this looks like a neat step that way.
This looks cool! I'll check it out. Out of curiosity: I assume you've also used agents to help build this, and on the site you mention working on this for ~6 months. Most one-man projects I see that use ai seem to focus on creating and presenting a concept as soon as possible
(to a lot of people I think the main benefit of stuff like vibing is that you really quickly get something that you can have others test out).On the site you also mention being pretty opinionated about the tools you use / build, which I imagine is part of the reason why you spend more time on this before releasing it. What was your experience using ai to build a larger project with a very specific idea / taste in mind?
(to a lot of people I think the main benefit of stuff like vibing is that you really quickly get something that you can have others test out).On the site you also mention being pretty opinionated about the tools you use / build, which I imagine is part of the reason why you spend more time on this before releasing it. What was your experience using ai to build a larger project with a very specific idea / taste in mind?
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