Juggler - Open-source GUI coding agent with editable conversation trees
Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE
Juggler is an open-source GUI coding agent designed for developers who demand hands-on control over their LLM interactions. Unlike traditional chat-based agents, it offers a visual workbench where conversations are structured as editable trees rather than linear transcripts. Built by the creator of JUCE, it features a native desktop app with multi-client architecture, allowing seamless collaboration across browsers and devices. Users can inspect tool calls, manage branching threads, and extend functionality via JavaScript plugins, all while supporting major models like Claude, OpenAI, and Ollama.
It is a proper GUI. This is not a console app. It's all about graphical visual navigation, inspection, and control.
- julesrms
As this post gradually sinks downwards on the HN front page, I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who've made all the lovely comments, it's great to get some feedback to show I haven't been wasting my time building this!
And as I said, this whole project was 100% done by me in my spare time, with zero money behind it, and no real plan for what happens to it now!
If you like it, please spread the word, as I don't have a marketing budget! If it manages to get a big enough userbase then hopefully I'll be able to figure out some way to make it a full-time gig, as it's been really fascinating to build!
- robbomacrae
This looks really interesting and a unique take on the AI agent orchestration. I think we need a bunch of experiments in this area as it's clear we are entering a new paradigm and the tools for it are lacking. The session tree in particular has merits.
I've got my own attempt with OrcaBot (short for orchestration of bots). It's also been a 6 month solo build experiment. I'm not trying to plug.. just that I'm also neck deep in Steve Yegge's Stage 8 AI-assisted coding chart and understand how much thought and effort went into this.
Thinking about where this is all going with talking to AI like fully autonomous employees similar to @Claude can you see a comms app type approach that combines something like slack with your tree/thread structure? It's somewhat orthogonal to your "inspect everything" but could intersect by bringing click through/open in options...
- gnarlouse
@julesrms thank you for lending more credibility to the idea that agent conversations need to be natively branching. It's crazy that we're almost 3 years in on this LLM joyride and we still don't have the ability to do, like, reddit/slack-style "aside" convo threads.
~~edit~~
wait, are you doing that? Love JUCE btw
- Semkas
This looks cool! I'll check it out. Out of curiosity: I assume you've also used agents to help build this, and on the site you mention working on this for ~6 months. Most one-man projects I see that use ai seem to focus on creating and presenting a concept as soon as possible
(to a lot of people I think the main benefit of stuff like vibing is that you really quickly get something that you can have others test out).
On the site you also mention being pretty opinionated about the tools you use / build, which I imagine is part of the reason why you spend more time on this before releasing it. What was your experience using ai to build a larger project with a very specific idea / taste in mind?
- anigbrowl
Miller columns rather than a big doom-scroll
Sold, this is my biggest annoyance with Cline.
Go backend, Wails for windowing (no Electron), plain type-checked JS (strict JSDoc), Yjs for the documents. Usual BYOK provider support: Claude (CLI or API), OpenAI/Codex, Gemini, Ollama, OpenRouter, DeepSeek, etc.
Double sold
As a longtime sound engineer I'm pretty familiar with JUCE and your other productions, so I will be trying this with confidence.
- hypfer
> Using a code agent involves editing big chunks of multi-line text, and getting hosed with information that you need to scan, navigate, and understand. I find a terminal UX horrible for all those tasks, and Juggler is resolutely a GUI app.
Thank you for building software made for actual productive usage instead of weird ricer clout and other performative nonsense.
> Yes, it's another AI coding agent. The industry definitely needed one more.
It actually does need more of them. The current count of harnesses that don't suck is a float somewhere around 0.3, maybe.
Keep doing what you're doing!
I'd love to have software that is actually made to solve problems instead of somehow pretend-granting me some identity. Or just being made by people with no taste in general.
My god the agent harness space is so bad. As if no one in there has ever seen a software in their whole life.
- everforward
ACP support would be a big deal and would make this a real contender for me. It looks super nice, but the idea of re-writing my Pi plugins is a real blocker.
I’m generally happy with my agent and want to keep that, but I do think the UI could be better and this looks like a neat step that way.
- sbloz
This looks nice, and I like the more opinionated take on how "communicating" with an agent should work.
The post talks a lot about what this is and how it works. I'm curious, from your usage of it, how does it change your way of working with the LLMs? How does working with it go differently from Claude Code?
Specifically: Everything is a tree. That's interesting, but how do you end up using it? Attack the same problem different ways?