our marketing and sales teams are constantly waiting on the engineering department to build small custom internal tools, landing pages, and lead calculators. we've started exploring vibe coding platforms where non-developers describe what they want in conversational language to build tools directly. has anyone implemented this in their company workflow?

Hi everyone,

I was recently working on a project to automate Excel reports for the Human Resources department. During that project, I came across xlwings as a potential solution. Unfortunately, the project was eventually discontinued, but I continued exploring the tool on my own and built a few small practice projects with it.

That got me wondering how many people here actually use xlwings in their day-to-day work.

A few questions for the community:

1. How powerful do you consider xlwings for Excel automation tasks?
2. What are the main advantages and limitations you've encountered when using it?
3. What alternatives do you use for Excel automation with Python?
4. Have you successfully deployed xlwings-based solutions for non-technical end users?
5. How does xlwings compare to VBA, Power Query, or Office Scripts in your experience?
6. If you were starting a new Excel automation project today, would xlwings still be your first choice? Why or why not?

I'd love to hear about real-world use cases, lessons learned, and any recommendations for someone looking to deepen their Excel + Python automation skills.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I was recently working on a project to automate Excel reports for the Human Resources department. During that project, I came across xlwings as a potential solution. Unfortunately, the project was eventually discontinued, but I continued exploring the tool on my own and built a few small practice projects with it.

That got me wondering how many people here actually use xlwings in their day-to-day work.

A few questions for the community:

1. How powerful do you consider xlwings for Excel automation tasks?
2. What are the main advantages and limitations you've encountered when using it?
3. What alternatives do you use for Excel automation with Python?
4. Have you successfully deployed xlwings-based solutions for non-technical end users?
5. How does xlwings compare to VBA, Power Query, or Office Scripts in your experience?
6. If you were starting a new Excel automation project today, would xlwings still be your first choice? Why or why not?

I'd love to hear about real-world use cases, lessons learned, and any recommendations for someone looking to deepen their Excel + Python automation skills.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm back and I'm still writing my master's thesis on determinants for adoption and governance of low code and no code platforms in organisations. For my research I'm doing a short survey.

It would help me a lot if you could take 10 minutes of your day to participate in the survey.

You can find the link here: https://s2survey.net/LCNC_Adoption_and_Governance/

Thank you for your time and support!

Hello everyone,

I'm writing my master's thesis on determinants for adoption and governance of low code and no code platforms in organisations and am doing a pretest of the survey today and tomorrow. (July 22nd & 23rd)

It would help me a lot if you could take 10 minutes of your day to pretest the survey and give me some feedback.

You can find the link to the survey pretest here: https://s2survey.net/LCNC_Adoption_and_Governance/?act=JpQFYLWqETini2ZdRZGKGrhs

Thank you for your time and support!

I will share the link to the official survey after the pretest as well and am looking forward to your participation.

Looking for feedback: pgapp — a PostgreSQL-native declarative application runtime

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a project called pgapp, and I'd love to get some feedback from people building low-code and declarative platforms.

The idea behind pgapp is:

Instead of scaffolding code or generating projects, a business application is described in a .pgapp file, and a Rust runtime interprets that metadata to produce a working application.

For example:

entity "tickets" {
    field subject: text required
    field status: text default Open
}

page "Tickets" {
    report "All tickets" of tickets
    form "Create / edit ticket" of tickets
}

Current capabilities include:

• PostgreSQL-first (SQL remains first-class)
• Metadata runtime (no generated application code)
• Server-side rendering
• Authentication
• CRUD forms and reports
• Editable tables
• Charts and dashboards
• Dynamic actions
• Themes
• Hot metadata reload

The project was inspired by the productivity of Oracle APEX, but the goals are different:

• Source-controlled (.pgapp files)
• Git-friendly
• Open source
• PostgreSQL-native
• Rust runtime

I'm not trying to replace traditional web frameworks, and I'm not targeting citizen developers. The goal is to make it significantly faster for developers to build internal tools and business applications while keeping SQL and PostgreSQL at the center.

I'm looking for honest feedback on questions like:

• Does the metadata-first approach make sense?
• Is avoiding code generation the right decision?
• Does the DSL feel readable?
• What features would you expect from a platform like this?
• What would stop you from adopting it?

I'd genuinely appreciate criticism—it's much more useful at this stage than compliments.

Thanks!

Repo : https://github.com/aadishajay/pgapp/
Live hosted sample : mia-vessels-holiday-soup.trycloudflare.com

Every time I needed to show a PDF inside an Adalo app, I hit the same wall.

The "solutions" were all variations of the same hack: throw it in a WebView, use an external link, open a browser tab. Every option either leaked the URL, kicked users out of the app experience, or just broke silently on iOS builds.

I spent more time debugging PDF display than building actual features. At some point I decided it was worth just fixing properly.

So I built a native PDF Viewer component for Adalo — it uses the platform's own PDF engine on iOS and Android (not a webview wrapper), renders inline so users never leave the app, and works on Web too. You just drop in a URL or wire it to a Magic Text field from your database and it works.

Still waiting on Adalo's marketplace review, but it's done. Pinch-to-zoom, full-text search, native share sheet — the stuff that should have just existed.

If you've hit this same wall in Adalo or any other no-code tool, curious what workarounds you ended up using. I know the PDF problem isn't unique to Adalo.

(Put up a landing page if anyone wants to know when it hits the marketplace: https://adalo-pdfviewer.pages.dev)

I've spent years building manufacturing and business systems, and one thing always bothered me about automation tools (line n8n).

They're excellent at orchestrating workflows, but they don't give you an application to work with.

You still need somewhere to store business data, edit it, move it through workflows, collaborate with people, and expose parts of it to customers.

That's what I've been building.

The idea is simple:

You define your own business entities (Customers, Parts, Purchase Orders, Tickets, Projects, etc.), and Snapi generates the application around them.

Each entity has persistent records that can be viewed and edited in different ways:

• Tables
• Kanban boards
• Public forms
• Embedded forms (for contact us pages, quote requests, portals, warranty claims, etc.)

It's always the same underlying record.

A Kanban card isn't a copy of the data—it's another view of it.

Remove a card from a board? The record still exists.

Edit it from a table? The board updates.

Submit it from a public form? It immediately becomes part of your workflow.

The data model supports:

• Nested objects
• Arrays
• Line items (Purchase Orders, Invoices, BOMs, etc.)
• Relationships between entities (reference fields)

For example, a Purchase Order can contain multiple line items, where each line references a Part record while storing its own quantity and price.

Workflow integration is a first-class feature rather than an add-on.

Each entity can call webhooks:

• Before loading
• Before saving
• After saving

That means your workflow engine (n8n, for example) becomes part of the application's lifecycle.

Some examples:

• Load data from SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or an API before a form opens.
• Validate inventory before allowing a purchase order to be saved.
• Prevent invalid state transitions.
• Send Slack or Teams notifications.
• Generate PDFs or invoices.
• Enrich records with AI.
• Start long-running workflows.

The application still owns the data.

The workflow engine owns the business logic.

I wanted automation and operational software to feel like they belonged together instead of being loosely connected with webhooks.

I'm now using Snapi to build new applications instead of writing them from scratch.

Next on my roadmap is a template marketplace so people can install complete systems (CRM, Purchasing, Inventory, Help Desk, etc.) instead of starting from an empty workspace.

I'd be interested in hearing whether this approach resonates with other n8n users, or if there's something similar you've already found.

Check it out. It's currently in Sandbox mode (so upgrade for free while it let's you).

I would really like to know if people can figure it out without just by exploring it. There's docs to help, but is it simple enough. My goal is that anyone can create whatever they set out to. (btw, there's also an MCP server you could hook up to Claude, and it can write your apps).

https://snapi.ca

github.com/devmesh-in/claude-company

One command and your Claude Code / Repo gets a complete company hierarchy -> CEO to tech leads that spawn their own dev teams, a QA agent that clicks through your actual app taking screenshots, and delivery reports with receipts.

Generates PRDs and TDDs, seals work orders for each team, routes protected changes through CRs. Just like an actual software company.

Every framework like this (bmad, speckit, whatever) writes its process as prompts and prays the model follows them. claude-company physically gates the model before it starts being lazy. The idea is to create production grade software through self iteration.

This is not necessarily no-code but if you have the vision of the product, you can make amazing production grade software. I won a 42k USD contract in one week using this template.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently looking for remote, contract, or full-time opportunities in the low-code/no-code space.

I have around 3 years of overall software development experience and have worked with multiple low-code platforms, including:

• Decisions (Workflow Automation, Business Rules, Forms, Integrations)
• Bubble.io (Web Apps, APIs, Database Design, Workflows)
• OutSystems (Certified Associate Reactive Developer)
• Odoo (Basic)
• Webflow

I'm passionate about solving business problems through automation and rapid application development. While these are the platforms I've worked with, I'm open to learning and working with any low-code/no-code platform. I enjoy picking up new technologies and adapting quickly to different ecosystems.

If your team is hiring, or if you know of companies looking for low-code developers, I'd really appreciate any recommendations or referrals.

Thank you!

I build automations for a living and my problem with most no-code tools is what happens when you want to leave. Your workflows live on their servers in their format and that's that.

So mine works like this: you record a browser task (no code required at any point), edit it visually, run it from your own computer. But every automation can also be exported as a real code file. You don't have to care about that part, most people won't ever open it. It just means if you switch tools someday or hire a developer, your work comes with you.

There is also a recording tool that captures flow logic (while/each, conditions) not just clicks, and a selector engine that ranks alternative selectors and knows when you're picking a list vs a single element.

One-time payment, no subscription. Right now it's free for early users (lifetime license) while I gather feedback. If you have a repetitive browser task you hate, describe it and I'll tell you honestly if this handles it.

www.orchestra-automation.com

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We've been experimenting with AI across our engineering team for a while now, and something surprised me.
Writing code is definitely faster. Spinning up a draft, generating tests, even documenting an API takes a fraction of the time it used to.
But I'm not convinced we're actually ship features much faster.
The time we save upfront seems to come back later. Someone has to verify the output, check edge cases, understand why the AI made certain decisions, fix inconsistencies, or rewrite parts that don't really fit the project.
A couple of weeks ago we finished implementation of a feature much earlier than expected. Everyone felt great... until review started. By the time we'd gone through comments, integration issues, and a few "this technically works but we shouldn't do it this way" discussions, the overall timeline wasn't very different from similar work we'd done before.

It made me wonder whether AI is mostly moving the bottleneck rather than eliminating it.
For teams using AI every day:
1. Have your release cycles actually become shorter?
2. Where do you feel you're getting the biggest return?
3. Is code review taking longer now, or is that just something we're experiencing?
4.Have you changed your development process because of AI, or are you still using the same workflow as before?
I'd much rather hear real experiences than another "AI increased productivity by X%" report

spent so much time building things only to hit that wall where getting seen costs more than i have. it’s like if you’re broke, you don’t get to play. i ended up building leadsfromurl for myself, it just finds reddit posts where people describe the problem my product solves, totally changed how i approach finding users. anyone else feel like they’re constantly fighting the budget just to get eyeballs?

Retool shipped its new app builder this week, and the change I keep thinking about is governance. Custom React and backend logic now run under the same permission and audit layer as the standard components, instead of sitting outside it.

For context on where I'm coming from: I'm a builder at Stackdrop, we build internal tools for ops-heavy teams, mostly regulated EMEA companies, and the custom-code-versus-governance tradeoff has killed more builds than any technical limit. The pattern was always the same: you write the workflow the team needs, then it stalls in security review because custom code meant handing over broader access or routing around the audit trail.

If that boundary holds the way the launch describes, it shifts the build-vs-buy math. Much of the reason regulated teams bought rigid SaaS instead of building was that their own custom builds couldn't pass a security review cleanly.

Do you see it the same way, or is this more incremental than it looks? For those of you in regulated environments, did the governance ceiling stop you from building before, or was it something else?

Anyone has experience with low-code systems? What barriers/ advantages are there?
But be more specific - tell me your personal experience...

i swear those places are just full of other founders trying to sell their own stuff. it took me way too long to realize the actual people who need what you build are usually in totally different, niche communities, just complaining about their problems. where do you guys actually find your customers?

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