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Essential insights from Hacker News discussions

Tidewave Web: in-browser coding agent for Rails and Phoenix

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

The Hacker News discussion about Tidewave Web reveals several key themes regarding its functionality, benefits, and potential drawbacks compared to existing tools and approaches.

Deeper Browser Integration and Contextual Awareness

A central theme is the advantage of integrating AI coding agents directly into the browser, offering deeper access to the application's rendered state and underlying structure. This allows agents to understand elements and their context more precisely than generic code analysis tools.

  • "awongh: The details on what the architecture of this aren't clear, but I can see that the big feature is deeper integration into the browser. To me this is an obvious direction for all coding agents to go in."
  • "towhans: I can imagine having an in browser, framework level tool would know exactly which controller and which template generated this element and could target it more precisely while using less tool calls and less tokens."
  • "josevalim: We are working on React integration, first within Rails and Phoenix, but then also standalone."
  • "robertkoss: I would love to have a React Copilot that has access to the console, network logs, the actual html elements, computed styling etc. + my code. This would be such a game-changer."

Framework-Specific Advantages

Several users and the creator emphasize that being framework-specific provides significant benefits by allowing the AI to understand and leverage the structured nature of template languages and the framework's internal workings.

  • "josevalim: There are two main reasons why being framework specific can be a big boost: 1. We annotate and understand your template language... The more structured the template language is (JSX, HEEx, etc), the better job we can do, which means LLMs don't have to guess."
  • "josevalim: 2. We also run code within the web framework. This means database access, built-in documentation using the exact versions in your project, access to language and framework reflection/introspection APIs, etc. So the agents have more, err, agency."
  • "thrown-0825: I think opinionated frameworks like this are a good fit for ai. Usually only one correct and idiomatic way to do things, and rails in particular really leans on convention over configuration."
  • "yanis_t: Opinionated frameworks, strict types, and whatever non-ai tools for correctness validations (typescript, linters, compilers) are all helpful."

Comparison to Existing Tools and Workflows

The discussion frequently contrasts Tidewave Web with other AI coding tools and browser automation solutions, such as Claude Code, Cursor, Playwright MCP, and Phoenix.new.

  • "kawsper: The solution it produced was a lot better than what claude-code produced, and I liked the interface."
  • "pelagicAustral: This looks promising. I will definitely be giving it a shot. I have been getting pretty good results with Claude Code and Rails for a while now, I'm kind of excited to see how much things can improve with this."
  • "ddon: Very cool, we use it as MCP server when we develop things using Claude Code... how would using Tidewave Web change our workflow?"
  • "josevalim: You can think of Tidewave MCP as integrating the agent with the language runtime, while Tidewave Web integrates the agent with your actual app and its interface. It knows your views and templates, it can correlate it with the rendered page, and then automate the browser to implement and validate features."
  • "abrookewood: Hey Jose, How does this differ from Phoenix.new?"
  • "josevalim: Phoenix.new is about remote agents, while Tidewave integrates with your app running on your machine!"
  • "abrookewood: Cool. That's actually interesting. I found with Phoenix.new that I would start there, but later ended up running everything locally - with the Tidewave MCP server of course!"
  • "joshmlewis: As someone who builds AI products and having used agentic coding tools since they came out (often with Rails projects), I don't get this. There was a similar project called Rails MCP Server which said: 'This Rails MCP Server implements the MCP specification to give AI models access to Rails projects for code analysis, exploration, and assistance.' And again I don't get the value. I can see some slight benefits to having a tight browser integration but I don't think that's worth leaving the IDE / CLI tools and the workflows they bring. You can also use Playwright MCP or just screenshot easily for more context."
  • "josevalim: First, Playwright MCP is really not enough. For example, imagine you are building a project management software and you are working on a feature for transferring tasks between projects. Testing this feature requires at least a user who is admin and at least two projects... With Tidewave you just point and click and it works across browsers."
  • "yed: Playwright MCP has a mode where it can run as a Chrome Extension, which allows you to use it on your active browser session. Not sure if you can do point and click to communicate but it covers the development setup and login bit."
  • "pelagicAustral: I've been using it for a few hours and I find that it struggles at times with some of the instructions, it completely obliterated a modal and overall I didn't felt like I trusted it too much with larger tasks, but then I started working with Claude Code on a console, and Tidewave on my browser and the workflow is pleasing, I only give UI portions of work to Tidewave and it works well, it's nice to be able to select elements and pass instructions for refactoring UI..."

User Experience and Early Feedback

Initial testing has provided mixed but generally positive feedback, with users highlighting both strengths and areas for improvement, such as handling complex interactions and API limits.

  • "kawsper: I spent a couple of hours last night testing it out. The login process didn't work well, but it's due to my browser having a seperate container for Github. I asked it to add a feature using Stimulus.js to my very simple gallery page written in Rails... It picked up on my database models and it produced a very good result, however, it seemed to have issues verifying its solution, it particularly seemed to struggle with 'on-hover'."
  • "kawsper: I also ended up hitting the limits on the Anthropic API, and it wasn't obvious to me what I should do in that case, but that's likely not the fault of Tidewave, and the Context Window Usage having a maximum of 200.0k also seemed very high, but that probably contributed to me hitting a limit."
  • "josevalim: Thank you kawsper for the feedback! We are going to introduce more visibility into the context limit and make it easier to summarize."
  • "josevalim: Regarding the on-hover, do you still have the snippets around that it tried? We instruct the model to dispatch events using the proper browser APIs and I wonder what it tried to do. I would love to hear more! You can ping me on Tidewave's Discord (https://discord.gg/5GhK7E54yA) or send me an email (see github.com/josevalim)."
  • "preciz: I was happy when I saw it integrates with GitHub Copilot subscription and then I went ahead with Claude Sonnet 3.7 (from the GitHub Copilot provided models) and made some cool changes to our app. So far very good."

Data Privacy and Pricing Model

Concerns and questions arise regarding data privacy, the necessity of providing API keys, and the pricing structure.

  • "cdiamand: What happens to our data - i.e. the code and context sent to your service?"
  • "josevalim: We log basic request metadata (timestamps, model used, token counts). Prompts and messages are not logged unless you explicitly opt-in. We don't store tool results. Note the underlying model provider you use may store data separately depending on your user agreement with them."
  • "bluehatbrit: I've been using the tidewave plugin for a bit now, this browser addition seems pretty cool. I'm curious about the pricing though. It says we need to provide our own github copilot or anthropic keys, but there's then a limit on the number on usage before you need to pay. Is this because data is going through a tidewave server or something, or is it just a way to create a bit of a free trial vs 'now you need to pay us'?"
  • "josevalim: It is both. There is a Tidewave server (which will play a more meaningful role once we introduce agent coordination) but we also hope the limit will be enough for people to see value in the tool and convert into paying users (so we can continue improving it)."
  • "systemz: Looks cool, I'll wait for some sort of local LLM support eg ollama before buying it"
  • "elepedus: I'm super-conflicted about this.... I also fight the pain of driving web browsers through the playwright MCP every day, and while it's a huge help, it's also massively slow and kills my context window. I want these problems solved. But I want them solved in a way that isn't unique to one stack... I also want them solved in a way that doesn't force me to take a huge backward step in my AI usage by bypassing my all-you-can-eat Max subscription."
  • "elepedus: The $10 subscription isn't that expensive, but then again, since this isn't a complete solution, it's going to be on top of other subs like Cursor/Max/Phoenix.new etc etc and it becomes death by a thousand cuts."
  • "elepedus: I'm just concerned that software development is fast becoming pay-to-play / pay-to-win, and that can quickly lead to chickenization, where prices are carefully titrated to shift most of the value to the tool providers."
  • "rglover: > I'm just concerned that software development is fast becoming pay-to-play / pay-to-win The people did it to themselves."
  • "josevalim: I hear you. I'd love to integrate with whatever model subscription is available but it seems using Max outside of Claude products is against their terms. I suggest reaching out to Anthropic and letting them know you would like to use your Max subscription with other coding agents."
  • "obiefernandez: Nonstarter if can’t use it with Max plan"

Future Development and Roadmap

The development team has a clear roadmap for expanding support to other frameworks and technologies.

  • "josevalim: Regarding next steps, we're currently working on React integration, with Python and JavaScript server-side web frameworks coming next."
  • "taatparya: Does it include support for Ash framework?"
  • "josevalim: It should just work. Ping me if you run into any issues!"
  • "canadiantim: Could it work with Django?"
  • "josevalim: It is in our roadmap!"

Open Source vs. Proprietary

A point of clarification is made regarding the licensing of different components.

  • "prophesi: Is it safe to say that the Tidewave MCP server will remain FOSS, but anything Tidewave Web related (localhost:4000/tidewave) will be proprietary yet optional?"
  • "josevalim: Yes!"

Technical Limitations and Integrations

Some users have encountered specific technical hurdles or expressed desires for further integrations.

  • "enraged_camel: Hard for my team to get excited about this, because we haven't been able to use Tidewave at all, as neither it nor the Rust-based proxy support local HTTPS (which we need for our integrations with several third-party services, e.g. oauth providers)."
  • "josevalim: Can you ping me on Tidewave's Discord or send me an email (you can find on github.com/josevalim)? We did test it on https recently and it worked fine, so there is something more going on. I'd be glad to see this ironed out!"
  • "neoecos: How do you feel, competing with Phoenix.new ( Chris) ?"