alt Hacker NewsCloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work
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Everytime I read about new things from Cloudflare they look really cool but I cannot shake the feeling of not wanting to use them for fear of lock-in, am I too paranoid?
"OS for work" - like, what does it mean? OS is operating system, it runs on a hardware and provides you to operate the system. I hate when companies destroy the English language with vibe invented terms.
Cool. The gadgets/blueprints paradigm reminds me of Smalltalk or Lisp environments in a way -- you're shipping a messy thing, a packaged version of your own personal, always-evolving environment.
Natural language wrapper around programming. Sandboxing and controlling external interactions to minimize the cost of mistakes. As I see it, the core idea here is facilitating habitability (in the Richard P Gabriel sense) via abstracting software development and distribution in a way that allows non-programmers to engage.
I'm not sure LLMs are quite there with results/$ to fully support a personal computing revolution here. I suspect useful blueprints will largely be wrappers or reimplementations of software that is still primarily created and distributed outside of this environment. But there's promise here, and it's cool.
Why are companies slapping "OS" in their product naming? it's stupid
I'm mostly going off the tweet, it could be I just don't understand, but how do you managed shared data if everyone has their own copy of the code and they can add whatever features they want? I mean, I'm assuming that any sort of significant feature requires some sort of change to the data model, and even with a schema-less database you could have conflicts if two things use the same field name, for instance? Also what happens with updates? Like, part of IT is keeping people up to date, but if everyone has their own bespoke customizations how do you not clobber those?
Also the security story doesn't completely add up to me. Like, if I'm a user and I can just add features that I want, what's to stop me from placing data in there that's maybe covered under HIPPA or some other sensitive data (protected class, or even just stuff like authentication information)? Right now a small number of people need to think about data security, but this seems like it'd extend it to anyone? That kind of data, it's not just about "keeping it internal by default", there are a lot of rules around storing it at all.
I dunno, it kind of makes me think of when people suggest forking an open source project if the maintainers won't accept a suggestion. Sure, you can do that, and it does happen, but you're also basically signing up to maintain it for decades. I'm not sure if anyone wants to maintain Alice in accounting's very weird spreadsheet app 10 years after she's left the company?
(Again I'm not throwing shade, just trying to understand better)
AOS would make more sense for the naming convention here.
A question to the other builders in this space: how are you positioning yourself and differentiating against incumbents like this or even Claude Cowork? Are you finding many clients looking at your system and telling you they could prompt Claude directly?
Why do people add "OS" to their product/project name when it is not an OS at all?
This represents a small part of what IT is worried about. Offer a beer and say the word "SharePoint" if you want the long version of where this could wind up.
The issue isn't letting end-users add features. The issue is twelve end-users customizing something that produces output, saving it, and now nobody can read it.
This can get solved. If it even gets a chance to gain traction (it should, though IT will of course push back). But let's not pretend we're there yet.
"We invented the AI agent"
It's a chat app
"We invented the AI creative suite"
It's a chat app
"We invented the AI OS"
It's a chat app
So, a security-oriented cloud agent framework? Better call it an OS.
If Cloudflare's been using this internally, could that explain why their dashboards are so confused, disjointed and broken?
When did junk like this start being called an operating system?
Probably better if they make it obvious that you need Workers paid plan:
"Your Cloudflare account is on the Free plan, but the Cloudflare OS backend needs Dynamic Workers, which requires the Workers Paid plan."
This is effectively a Codex/Claude app competitor. Good move from Cloudflare since it helps them sell their core infra offerings. I like the direction they’re going with access control.
This is revolutionary stuff. It crystalises latent thoughts I've had about how to safely integrate agentic capability for serious work.
We're starting to see indifferently architected AI creep into every engineering tool, from requirements management to coding, MATLAB, EDA and Solidworks. At the same time we see LLMs orchestrating long running hacking campaigns that will leverage other agents and automation to propagate. We really need an architecture that can handle that complexity.
Kenton Varda hitting the ball out of the park again.
Well everyone is trying to create an environment where they can safely delegate tasks to agents.
I am no different, but my approach is a dedicated powerful computer on your desk rather than something in the cloud. I am calling it Tarvis AI (derived from TARS from Interstellar and Jarvis from Iron Man), more details here: https://tarvisai.com
I have tried many of the VM/cloud-based agent setups, and they either tend to be only novelties since you can’t do much with 2-4 vCPUs + limited RAM or they start racking up expensive cloud bills.
I realized that the underlying operating systems for AI have to be built from the ground up for agents instead of taking current OSes and taming them for agents. Not sure how much of that philosophy is followed by Cloudflare. Excited to see growth in this area.
Also worth reading is the blog post by the Cloudflare CIO Sam Rhea on how they are actually using it internally, with some examples.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-use-ai-with-cloudflare-os...
In case anyone else is curious, local Gemma4 12B Q6 XL really struggles to make use of this for simple goals like a daily briefing after an MCP tool call. I don't think there's a simple artifact concept? Still early but confused.
I have a feeling we're all working towards the same thing, but with different frameworks and infra. The Cloudflare OS experience looks, to me, very much like what I created for myself with https://rcarmo.github.io/projects/piclaw (except that I rely on focusing different instances on different sets of skills and tooling, so only two have "Office" skills, for instance).
this is a cool idea, but i suspect will be limited in use cases. the vast majority of people don't want or can't modify their software competently and will rely on others to do that. once you're relying on someone else, they do not want to maintain different copies for every user, that sounds like a maintenance nightmare for admins or else such a new paradigm that it takes a new generation of admins 20 years to get comfortable.
This "OS" label reminds me of ms with ".NET", a choice they definitely seemed to regret
> Cloudflare OS is available today and is open source. Check out the cloudflare-os GitHub repository. You can deploy it into your own Cloudflare account and use your own Access policies, AI Gateway configuration, data, and integrations.
In case anybody missed it.
I can't help but wonder if these things that are now emerging have a sort of "borrowed time" component tied to them.
I see the examples, and they clearly tackle both organizational inefficiencies and human connection/communication as the core problems.
Sounds like things are converging to "my AI will talk to your AI" and the role of humans will just be a human "router" in the loop switching up nodes in a graph, like the return of Switchboard Operators from the 1950s.
Really not a fan of calling things an OS that are not an OS. This seems interesting, but it is also tied to CloudFlare workers, so beware.
I really don't know how folks accept such vendor lock-in. Imagine using Cloudflare Workers as your main tech stack. This is crazy.
They had a demo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101234
Seems like a good candidate to replace my home-grown llama.cpp web UI clone. This comment used to be a gripe about their provider UX not giving an example URL (realized /v1 is expected as the final segment).
So to run this 'OS', I need to have an existing running OS...
I think this is trying to do something similar to exe.dev, but not doing it as well
Has anyone experienced using Buzz or YC's qm? How does this compare with those?
Setting up your public URLRetrying… (attempt 5 of 6) Fingers crossed!! The last one gotta be the one...
EDIT: It let me down... (Something unexpected went wrong on our side.)
Please let me now if deploying it on your custom domain worked for you please...
EDIT: Retrying it now worked but I had to subscribe to R2 (which is free for 10GB apparently). However, after that it will tell you that you need to enable the Dynamic Workers which is actually paid...
"Your Cloudflare account is on the Free plan, but the Cloudflare OS backend needs Dynamic Workers, which requires the Workers Paid plan."
So no free preview for me today.
Engineers should be wary about being forced into using particular prompts/skills/instructions.
Why would I use a shared LLM-in-the-cloud, instead of my own? The shared one precludes any possibility to customize or differentiate my workflow, prompts, or skills. As an employee that sounds like a death sentence to doing my job effectively.
Wait, isn’t that what Mistral does for their Vibe interface for companies?
how this can be compared against Microsoft agent framework?
Seemingly Cloudflare’s strategy nowadays is shipping “open-source” projects that are coupled with their own infastructure. First EmDash CMS, now this.
Everyone is building these same looking apps that look like Codex, Claude desktop. We don't need these. Slackbots work more than well enough to collaborate with agents.
I think this is cool!
I think it is cool!
I'm curious if the primary customer will be developers or IT admins
Why?
Im having a hard time figuring out what the intended user interface is here. The screenshots im seeing makes this look to be an electron app, but the repo seems to be implying that this is a deployed web app.
If this is just another librechat I'll be disappointed, and frustrated- because this is so 5 months ago.
Does this beat self-stewarding my data, and placing relevant protections around my data instead.
Then the UI's, the "Apps", are just ephemeral instances over my live data whose permission I am consistently setting or reviewing.
I feel like that more accurately represents a "person" behind the data: when I am producing, creating and expressing in real life, I do not ask some intermediary 3rd-party for permission to access my voice and my output. I just produce and let whatever gets created be made there in the physical environment or in someone's head. Today's apps (edit: & cloudflare's direction here) feel more like "The moment I express or generate something, I lease it's output from someone else and ask for their permission to access my output".
From: https://os.cloudflare.app/
> "Give every person an agent and workspace built around how your company works, what it knows, and the systems it relies on."
Hundreds of thousands of so called "AI startups" have been eliminated.
I liked Kenton's take on this: https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572?s=20
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.