Vendo - Let your users build their own features inside your product
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Vendo is an open-source customization layer in your product that lets every customer add the features and micro-apps they need, just by describing what they want. Until now software has been rigid, and every customer had to adapt to it. Vendo makes it dynamic, so your product shapes itself around each customer, built on your own API and inside the guardrails you set.
Replies
@nourzahzah Congrats for the launch! haha clicked purely because of the headline. "Let your users build their own features" is the kind of thing most SaaS teams would never say out loud. The endless "can it work a little differently for us?" queue is painfully real, curious how the guardrails work when a user builds something that touches sensitive data.
@nourzahzah @lolo_cappucci Great question lorenzo! We have strict controls in place to make sure that everything the model displays can ONLY display real data (no hallucinated numbers), and will be releasing some benchmark numbers soon on this. We also have a Vendo Guard that intercepts every single tool call the agent makes, and asks the user for explicit permission if needed.
@gor_geghamyan Thank you Gor!
@nourzahzah Wow looks cool, wouldn't be surprised if it's 100B company in 3 years!
@zachx0 Great question Zach, and this is a problem we have worked hard to solve! We have a smart conflict resolution process that tries to re-apply the same user edits to the updated code and tries to resolve it as much as it can itself. If it is unable too though, we surface it to the user and let them know.
I am wondering how the agent does not touch the source code but touches the database and possibly security design? Does the product owner get to know what has been added on by a user and who then is responsible when something does not work well?
@richatsealedvault Great question! Everything the agent creates is stored in a seperate artifact per app, that is completely seperate to the source code. It only interacts with the API using the existing user authentication, so everything works within your existing security guardrails. And yes, we have an insights page in our console where you can see everything your users are creating.
@yousef_helal Thanks for answering my curious questions. As a developer, I find it intriguing and would explore it some more. Congratulations on your successful launch. Cheers!
@richatsealedvault Thank you Richard!
I found navigating many SaaS UIs (e.g., Rippling) frustrating. They're built to serve every possible customer, so the UI is crowded with features and buttons that have nothing to do with what I came to do. As an end user, being able to personalize the UX will be super useful!
@rayruizhiliao We think so too, thanks Ray!
@rayruizhiliao That's been the experience of a lot of people that we've spoken to! And companies are finding it hard to keep up with all the requests. We think Vendo can be a game-changer for them!
Very interesting guys. I really like the idea, but I am curious to howthis really work in practice. Does the user request really buid a feature in realtime for just that particular customer? Have seen some cool demos of the new gimini for this lately. Definetly some potential here. Congrats on the launch!
@prebenandersen Thank you Preben! And yes, it builds everything in realtime. We will be releasing some benchmarks soon demonstrating that we are not only faster than anything else out there at this, but the only ones able to hold accuracy as well.
@yousef_helal That is really cool. Would love to get a demo of this and here more.
@prebenandersen Lets do it! Here is our calendar link: https://cal.com/team/vendo/intro-call
interesting - can def see adv of this as a way to add val to customers. hows it sandboxed tho ?
@ibrahim_abdu1 Great question! We have two layers. For quick screens where there is no need for a backend, we have a QuickJS-based sandbox that runs everything and generates the UI for the user (this happens instantly, and it looks native on your site). For features/apps that need a backend or more advanced capabilities, we spawn an ephermeral sandbox where everything runs from.
@yousef_helal ok how does this impact latency?
@ibrahim_abdu1 For the first layer (the QuickJS-based sandbox) it does not affect latency at all, and it is instant. This is since it is in-process so there is no noticeable delay. For more advanced applications requiring an ephermeral sandbox, there is a slight increase in latency (still sub-second). But we keep a warm pool to minimize this!
@yousef_helal nice!
Very Interesting! Can this pull in data from tools outside our product, or is it only our own data?
@i_hdesd Thanks! Both, actually. It runs on your API and data, and anything it generates is built from your own components so it doesn't invent anything. On top of that, your users can connect their own outside tools (we support hundreds of integrations), so the agent can pull from those too.
This makes so much sense, I’d love to have customizability in my software. Would also makes sense to identify what people are building and make it generally available to everyone. Is this something you help with?
@rohans0509 Yes it is! We have an insights dashboard where companies can view every single thing their user creates, and we give them interesting analytics based off of them.
@rohans0509 @yousef_helal What insights you do you think are most important to follow or track?
Let us know if you have any questions, we'll be here answering everything!
This is the future of SaaS.
@mikestaub Absolutely!