alt Hacker NewsHow is this a new paradigm?
This idea for JSON -> form has existed for a decade, one example: https://github.com/eclipsesource/jsonforms
Replies
Correct,
But there is more, paraphrasing the post itself:
This library has a lot to offer. These are the main characteristics:
1. A JSON engine. The form is governed by a JSON definition that you can store in a DB, version, diff, or generate it with LLMs as a validated JSON.
2. We provide also 28 headless components (and growing) that you can style with CSS variables. We offer APIs so you can drop in Material, Shoelace, or your own components.
3. A DX typed authoring layer on top to write forms programmatically, that generates JSON. So you don't have to write it.
4. The same definition can render the UI components in React, Angular, Vue, Lit, or Vanilla JS.
5. We also have a deterministic MCP that has tools for to validate the model's output, generate JSONs or code, and ensure that the definition returned by the LLM is always valid.
So we see ourselves as the one shop stop for all your form needs.
The basic idea of declarative forms goes back way further than that. I wrote a Perl library that generated a form from Oracle table metadata 30 years ago, and I very much doubt I was the first one to think of it.
I haven't looked at Golem specifically, but every other approach I've seen breaks down for complicated UIs. User-friendly validation and conditional forms require procedural logic. Invariably the declarative format (JSON in this case) ends up with up with a bunch of programming constructs.