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.
Why are companies slapping "OS" in their product naming? it's stupid
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.
So to run this 'OS', I need to have an existing running OS...
If Cloudflare's been using this internally, could that explain why their dashboards are so confused, disjointed and broken?
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.
Why do people add "OS" to their product/project name when it is not an OS at all?
When did junk like this start being called an operating system?
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.
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."
So, a security-oriented cloud agent framework? Better call it an OS.
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.
(edit: nvm I got it, they don't have an example URL in their provider UI lol, hard to tell whether they want full path or /v1 path) flopped for me locally, can't get a basic openrouter openai endpoint working
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.
> 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.
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.
Has anyone experienced using Buzz or YC's qm? How does this compare with those?
I'm curious if the primary customer will be developers or IT admins
They had a demo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101234
Wait, isn’t that what Mistral does for their Vibe interface for companies?
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.
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.
Why?
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.
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.
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.
gas town 2 real???
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Finally, we have an "OS" written in typescript. And here I was thinking that an OS would be the only exception to Atwood's law /s
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This is close to what I need for my company. Currently I'm test driving Open WebUI.
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.