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abelsm

153 karma · joined September 14, 2019

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abelsm··on What happens if you put work into the second dimension?
thanks! we wanted to put it out there and see if there's interest before investing more time in polishing it. it's been really helpful to see the discussion here.
abelsm··on What happens if you put work into the second dimension?
Cofounder of FlutterFlow here. Not atm, as it started as an internal project. But it's something we're considering.
abelsm··on CARA 2.0 – “I Built a Better Robot Dog”
Awesome video. It's interesting, informative, and entertaining.

Founders I talk to that are doing hardware, broadly speaking, say it's a competitive advantage as it's not as crowded. Content like Aaed's will hopefully nudge more people into it.

abelsm··on The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts
The breach of trust here, which is hard to imagine isn't intentional, is enough reason alone to stop using Vercel, and uninstall the plugin. That part is easy. Most of these agents can help you migrate if anything.

The question is on whether these platforms are going to enforce their policies for plugins. For Claude Code in particular this behavior violates their plugin policy (1D) here explicitly: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13145358-anthropic-so...

It's a really tough problem, but Anthropic is the company I'd bet on to approach this thoughtfully.

abelsm··on Show HN: Dreamflow – Visual editor for AI generated Flutter apps
Hi HN, I’m one of the founders of FlutterFlow (YC W21). We launched Dreamflow earlier this year.

What it is: Dreamflow generates a Flutter app from a prompt, then lets you keep working in a real dev environment with a visual editor, AI agent, and full code (code is the source of truth).

Why we built it: 1) make small changes dead simple: tweak properties, move widgets, add components without editing code or prompting; and 2) give the agent precise context: select a widget to add it to the prompt (screenshot included automatically); the agent has access to read runner logs.

What’s different:

- Bi-directional editing: canvas ↔ code; standard Flutter. - Runs in the browser: hot reload, preview. - Agentic edits with diffs; widget-aware context + log access.

How to try: Prompt: “Fundraising CRM for founders: pipeline (Targeted -> Closed); investors (name/firm/check size/intro source); notes + next steps + due date; goal $X/$Y; tabs Pipeline/Investors/Tasks/Settings”

Then preview, rearrange visually, integrate a backend or keep it local, and export/publish.

Current gaps: Visual coverage isn’t complete; GitHub integration is in progress; importing existing Flutter projects isn’t supported yet.

We’d love your feedback. Where does the visual editor help or get in your way? Which integrations would you expect first?

abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
Agreed, making it more natural to create apps in a way that follows Flutter best practices is a desirable end goal. There's so much to improve, it's exciting :-)
abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
It's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison, but the memory use of FlutterFlow is comparable to WebFlow. Our landing page is built using WebFlow, and I compared memory use of that to a comparably sized project in FF.

Performance could certainly be improved (especially for Web), but it's gotten much better over the last year.

abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
thank you!
abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
Thanks for the suggestions! Yes, there's definitely room for improvement with the generated code ... I think the padding -> SizedBox conversion at least in some cases (only when main-axis padding is added) can be automated. We can experiment with code improvement features such as that and see how it works.

Expanded + Percentages for widths are possible already

abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
There were a lot of issues with custom widgets when we first launched the feature, we've deployed several fixes since then. But there's still more to do on our end to make it clear what errors you're getting. Thanks for the suggestion!
abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
yes, we've been writing a lot of Dart over the last couple of years and also enjoy it quite a lot. interested in hearing what issues GP faced.
abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
The reasons we prioritized Firebase is because it works really well with Flutter and was also what most of our early users preferred. FlutterFlow itself is in fact a Flutter+Firebase app. We take the best ways we know how to build Flutter+Firebase apps and make it easy to do, in a browser.

We definitely want to support more DBs in the future, just a matter of time. Meanwhile, we see some users achieve that goal using API integrations and code export

abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
Yep, you can push the latest changes directly to Github. We always use a specific branch "flutterflow". Users can then merge in changes, as long as the changes on the main branch are not changing the layout visuals significantly, Git handles the merge nicely.

Ofc you can't import code into FF from your main branch, at least at the moment. But it's still been working well for our users

abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
There are 3 ways you can use custom code for business logic:

- Custom Functions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbNtmue0ZZo

- Custom Widgets: https://community.flutterflow.io/c/whats-new-in-flutterflow/...

- Custom Actions: https://community.flutterflow.io/c/whats-new-in-flutterflow/...

The reason there are 3 different kinds of custom code is so that it can easily integrate with the visual builder ... for instance a "Custom Action" function will show up when you add an action on a Button Tap, or TextField submit. A "Custom Widget" can be dragged in and passed parameters, and a "Custom Function" can be used to set values. Would love any feedback

abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
Thanks! We're gonna work hard to get it to a place where the set up you love and are used to is also available in FF (or vice versa), and that you get the best of both worlds.
abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
We're allow-listing domains for any educational institutions that's not on our list. Thanks for sending that link, we'll take a look!
abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
Thanks for your feedback! The reason we don't have this yet is only because we're a small team, but we're growing and will definitely have NGO/non-profit discounts!
abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
Re: AppGyver, one big difference is the ability to generate clean code that can be exported. And there's also Flutter, which we think is the framework that will finally make low-code app builders work.

Being able to easily search and find where your network requests, custom function calls, conditional variables, etc are used is definitely something that has come up. We've started making progress by adding visual elements that help you identify them. For instance, you can see what element on the widget tree has a query (or action) on it based on an icon + color. We plan on adding toggles for overlays of different views, along with the ability to see where an API call is used (from the API configuration page), or where a specific collection is read (from the Firestore configuration page). It's definitely solvable, and we'll keep talking to users and iterating till we get there :)

abelsm··on Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually
Great to hear from an early access user, thanks so much and very glad you enjoyed the experience!

Wish you the best of luck as well

abelsm··on FlutterFlow: Low-code Flutter apps
Yes, we plan on supporting desktop. Right now you can actually customize the canvas size. Just click on the canvas size to modify it: https://twitter.com/flutterflow/status/1389695362714071043
abelsm··on FlutterFlow: Low-code Flutter apps
thanks! we have some exciting features coming up. - deploy to app stores from FlutterFlow, via Codemagic - search functionality, via Algolia - several widgets (map/chat/pop-ups/bottom sheet)

in terms of our team, we're looking to bring on a community manager and a content strategist.

abelsm··on FlutterFlow: Low-code Flutter apps
It's on our list.
abelsm··on FlutterFlow: Low-code Flutter apps
Thanks so much for sharing feedback!

In this scenario, your collection is "purchases" and there's a "buyerId" field in a purchase document? And you want to get the email from buyerId?

If buyerId is a uid, you can do another query to get the user document from uid and get the email address from that. I may be misunderstanding the question.

abelsm··on FlutterFlow: Low-code Flutter apps
We don't support editing code in FlutterFlow atm. But this is something we want to enable.

What we see a lot of our users do now is push to Github (flutterflow branch), and merge in to their main branch where they have their custom logic.

abelsm··on FlutterFlow: Low-code Flutter apps
We have a $30/mo plan. :)
abelsm··on FlutterFlow: Low-code Flutter apps
FlutterFlow cofounder here. Thanks for your input on our pricing.

It's more than knowing how to code, we've been building with Flutter for a while now, but there's still no way we could have coded FlutterMet in under an hour. It would take us 10 hrs+ to manually do that. But it took <1 hour in FlutterFlow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXsjnd_4SBo

Also, we allow you to push the generated code to your Github repository, so you don't have to keep paying us once you build your app. :)

abelsm··on iPG: YC Interview Questions (With Voice)
The classic YC interview tool, with a speech synthesizer. Works well for practicing over headphones on mobile.