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p/abstraScale critical business processes with Python + AI
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Michael Seibel

Abstra Workflows - Scale critical business processes with Python + AI

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Abstra is a Python-based workflow engine to design and manage custom business processes with no overhead, powered by AI. Merge automated tasks with manual reviews, gain real-time insights into operations, and track history with logs & git-friendly versioning.

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Bruno Vieira Costa
Maker
šŸ“Œ
šŸ‘‹ Hey PH! Iā€™m Bruno, founder of Abstra. We help companies build better, scalable and robust business processes. Iā€™m very excited to present our new product, Workflows! A Python-based workflow engine to automate and manage operations with the power of code ā€“ without the overhead. After a few years helping companies build with no-code, we understood where the real pain was. When companies scale, their tools simply canā€™t keep up ā€“ spreadsheets get too bulky, scripts break. Handy no-code (as we saw first hand) tools donā€™t fit customization, auditing and tech compliance policies, and building in pure code is just too time-consuming and expensive for engineers. Thatā€™s why we built Workflows. With Workflows, you can: - Create a fully custom process, by building in Python - Use AI to leverage basic coding skills into full autonomy - Integrate with any tool and infrastructure in your stack - Enjoy countless out-of-box compliance benefits If you currently need to automate any company process and you tick one of these boxes: - You are struggling with no or low-code tools - You have critical scripts running locally in someoneā€™s machine - You need to give non-technical team members autonomy - You want visibility into how processes are being edited and executed - You are a Python fan šŸ Abstra was made for you. Book a quick chat ā€“ get 22% off if you sign up by May 17th. Thanks @mwseibel for hunting us!
Pedro Lucca
My cofounder literally cried when he saw Abstra - he said this would've saved him >80h of work at his previous job. What are some surprising ways you've seen people use Abstra to save time?
Bruno Vieira Costa
Maker
@pedro_lucca1 thank you! We saw many non obvious uses of Abstra From party games, to astrophysics simulations lol But even on our core focus of business cases we get surprised with how many different things people are building
Congrats on the launch Bruno šŸš€ Using AI to help build connector scripts is such a great idea! One of the best applications of AI. Out of interest, what made you pick Python over other languages?
Bruno Vieira Costa
Maker
@jgani thank you! We choose Python because a few reasons: - It is the most popular language among non developers - It is simple to read enough so AI generated code can be understood by people who doesnā€™t code much - It is simple to learn - Itā€™s simple to ā€œmeta programā€ so we can build great dev tool experiences on top - It has a great automation/data handling library set And most importantlyā€¦ it is fun ā¤ļø
Erika Kacelnik
Maker
Hi everyone! I'm SO proud of the team and excited to see Workflows off to the world! We'll be hanging out here in the comments all day ā€“ hit us with any questions šŸ¤©šŸ¤ 
Lucas Gomes
Congratz on the launch! It's so rare to find a tool so powerful and simple at the same time. Abstra rocks!
Erika Kacelnik
Maker
@lgomess Hey Lucas! thank you šŸ¤©
Michael Shver
Always nice to see a product that can help businesses to make their work with processes easier, especially a product that can work for both tech and non-tech people! What would you say is the main difference between your platform and other platforms of workflow automation?
Erika Kacelnik
Maker
@michaelshver hi Michael! We think so too šŸ˜Ž In terms of main differentials, I'd point out: - Seamless integration with any system or service due to our Python-based architecture - Real-time workflow visibility, with detailed insights into process rules and their execution ā€“ including statuses and errors ā€“ for quick optimizations - Optimized for scalability and efficiency, ensuring quick adaptation as the business grows without constant redevelopment - Advanced governance features, including custom compliant logging, advanced access control and self-hosting And, as you said ease of use for all coding skill levels, allowing entire organizations to streamline their operations!
george calcea
@brunovcosta nice product! Some questions: 1) Can it be used without the interface? I mean...can it be installed like a library and create the workflows programatically? 2) Do you support for loops? 3) Have you developed the workflow engine from scratch or do you use a library for that? If so, which library? Congrats for your launch!
Sophia Faria
Maker
@brunovcosta @george_calcea Hey George! I can jump in here: 1 - do you mean creating workflows without GUIs? if so, the answer is yes - you can connect jobs, webhooks and scripts to run workflows automatically without manual user interaction. if you mean the interface for designing workflows, abstra is an open-source python package to orchestrate python scripts, all logic is controlled by python files within your project directory. here's the lib if you'd like to see more: https://github.com/abstra-app/ab... 2 - yes, and every other type of process flow (conditionals, iterators, multithreading, etc) 3 - we developed the engine from scratch :) Thanks so much for supporting us!
Aaliya Shah
Congratulations on the launch! Looks amazing product.
Bruno Vieira Costa
Maker
@aaliya_shah thank you!
Leonardo Teixeira
Love it. Sharing with friends
Dave Brougham
Very nice idea here guys, congrats on the launch! Couple of notes from checking out the product: - The notification bar of with the status of ā€œWere LIVE on Product Hunt!ā€ Is a great idea. - The site is very well laid out, really easily to navigate and there is a lot information there for people to explore and learn about the product. - Are the workflow script limited in any way? Can I deploy a script completely written by myself or is there a set number of requests that my script could make for example? - How does ownership/copyright of the custom scripts work?
Erika Kacelnik
Maker
@davebroio Hi Dave! Thanks for the feedback on the website :) You can deploy any of the scripts you have already coded to Abstra. You can also enrich your existing code with any Python lib you'd like, we support that. Our infrastructure is very scalable and well equipped to deal with heavier processing. If you need more memory/CPU than we usually offer off the bat, it's easy to arrange for that. Also, any script you use or code in Abstra is 100% yours. That is a big principle for us and one of the platform's advantages ā€“ no lock-in! You're free to migrate whenever you want (even though we're pretty sure you won't have to ā˜ŗļø)
Victor Hayashi
Hello to the entire Abstra team! Congratulations on the launch and may you continue to create new spaces. I love being able to be part of all of this as a customer.
Erika Kacelnik
Maker
@victor_hayashi Thanks for being such an important part of our journey, Victor! šŸ„¹šŸ«¶šŸ¼
Aman Wen
blending Python and AI to streamline business processes, that's the sort of innovation I want to get behind. Cutting out overhead while keeping things clear and trackable feels like hitting the productivity jackpot. So I'm wondering, how steep's the learning curve for a team that's Python-aware but AI-newbies? Will we be riding the workflow wave smoothly, or should we brace for a bit of a crash course? Cheers for the hard work!
Bruno Vieira Costa
Maker
@aman_wen thank you! You can definitely ride it smoothly This new wave of AI, that weā€™re using, became popular also because it can be used as a black box You donā€™t need any training to use Abstraā€™s smart console. You can just chat with it or use it as an API
J D
How does this compare to something like Windmill.dev for example? What benefits does it have considering its price point vs the open source, self hosted option offered by Windmill and others?
Bruno Vieira Costa
Maker
@jonte I see a few things: - windmill canā€™t be as easy to install and simple to use because itā€™s architecture decisions - our dynamic forms are pretty unique - we offer database, file system, granular access control, programmable notifications, kanban, etc.. out of the box As far as I know, windmill is taking a more ā€œdata pipelineā€ direction and weā€™re focusing on business processes Since our focus is business, convenience justify our pricing
Ruben Fiszel
@jonte @brunovcosta Maker of windmill here: > - windmill canā€™t be as easy to install and simple to use because itā€™s architecture decisions Please expand, we are used by more than 50k+ users everyday and they are able to self-host in a few minutes with our docker-compose and start building powerful flows as fast. > - our dynamic forms are pretty unique Ours is too, you use interactive python statement to build forms while we parse the AST of the python program to infer it from the main function parameters. > As far as I know, windmill is taking a more ā€œdata pipelineā€ direction and weā€™re focusing on business processes No that's wrong, we are used for business processes and benefit of being the fastest and most powerful engine, we are used at very large scale for that purpose by some of our customers. > - we offer database, file system, granular access control, programmable notifications, kanban, etc.. out of the box Windmill does too (well not the kanban but that seems a bit nitty) Congrats on the launch and looking forward to some healthy competition
Bruno Cecatto
Hi Bruno! Workflows sounds like a game-changer for businesses looking to scale efficiently! I'd love to understand more about the typical customer journey: at what point do companies usually realize that Abstra is the solution they need? How do they discover and decide to adopt Workflows? Thanks for sharing this innovation, and congratulations on the launch!
German Syroezhkin
Cool stuff! How would you compare it to Rivet https://rivet.ironcladapp.com/?
Fabrizio D'Urso
@brunovcosta very interesting, upvoted!
Ayub Ā· Kuinji.com
Yet another automation tool using python and Ai? or is it a way to democratise the space? Either way, wishing you good luck @brunovcosta
Erika Kacelnik
Maker
@ayub Hi Ayub! That's exactly right ā€“ democratizing access to code is our company's founding principle and what we've been aiming for when developing products, always. Abstra does that in 2 ways. The design of the building process itself reduces many of the barriers early coders face, such as having to learn how to deal with front-end, back-end and infrastructure all at once šŸ˜µā€šŸ’« Our products focus on providing front-end and infrastructure out-of-box, and simplifying how you code the back-end. Beyond lowering the barriers to entry for junior users, this speeds up senior coders like crazy. Adding AI just further eases the bits you do still need to code. An example for that is our Smart Console, which is fed with context on our platform and your project, so it can give you a head start when starting a script from scratch and help debug any issue, no matter how hairy. Hopefully you get to use the platform and see this all for yourself!
Rafael Pinheiro
Amazing! Congrats on the launch @brunovcosta ! It is crazy how fast you keep shipping.
Gabriela Martins
love love looove it!! already shared with everyone
Gabriel Medeiros
amazing tool! upvoted :)