Show HN: SubjectiveZero, an open-source agentic node editor for creative coding

Hey there,

My name is Clem, I've been a solo indie dev for a couple years now, exploring frontier tech like XR and agentic workflows in the context of creative / interactive work.

I've been building creation tools for a while and some common design challenge is to figure out the right level of abstraction for your tool. You can always make it super advanced and complex with low level concepts (shader composition, actual code etc.) but then you get something with a high complexity / learning curve. On the other hand, if you make your tool too high level, it might be easier to use at first, but people will most likely hit a wall eventually and start fighting with your tool to get their edge case done (you see that on mobile a lot actually).

With this prototype (called SubjectiveZero), I'd like to imagine that we can kind of move the "slider" on the abstraction layer, meaning that you can actually start with prompts that describe the goal, and you can go as high level (stay with abstract prompts) or low level as you'd like (more specific prompts, or even edit the generated code directly)! The agent orchestration actually understand your context and work along side with you to figure out what could be the best node graph structure for your project (that and some fun little procedural UI done at the node level).

If i had to pitch it in 30 seconds, I'd say "Think TouchDesigner and friends but with agent orchestration".

When you use it, it will generate real native code (Swift/Metal for now) that you can actually hot reload and iterate on either manually or through agents. It's still an early prototype and macOS only for now, but I'd love to get genuine feedback that could help me drive where this project should go next (or not).

Lastly, I'm absolutely open and upfront on the fact that I used agentic coding for this, but as people say: "kept on a short leash". The architecture and specs were relatively well thought out and I personally prefer to be in the loop and review all the code being written to make sure it's going in the right direction.

Oh and it's open source :-)

Hope you like it! https://sxp.studio/apps/subz

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48861217

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