Interval
p/interval-2
Build complete internal tools with just backend code.
Alex Arena
Interval 1.0 — Create complete tools with just backend code
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Interval lets you create complete internal tools with just backend code. It's for engineers who love writing code but hate building UIs. Just write the logic that makes your tools work – Interval takes care of the UI, API calls, validation, and more.
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Alex Arena
Hey Product Hunt! 👋 My name is Alex and I’m one of the creators of Interval. We let you build complete internal tools with just backend code. Today we’re excited to launch our 1.0 release. We built Interval for engineers who love writing code but hate building UIs. Because you build tools with Interval using *just backend code* (TypeScript/Node or Python), you can focus on what you love—writing the code that makes your tools work—while Interval takes care of the UI, network communication, validation, etc. Back in June, we shared an early preview of Interval on Product Hunt and while our core approach hasn’t changed, we’ve learned a lot and expanded what Interval can do significantly since then. A single line of Interval code can now (for example) render a table, prompt a user to verify their identity w/ 2FA, or ask them to upload a file. It’s a subtle unlock, but because all of the code you’re writing is backend code, it becomes much quicker to build tools with Interval vs. anything else we’ve seen before. You can do things like query your database on one line and then pass the results into a table for the user to view on the next. And if you integrate Interval into your existing backend, you can take advantage of everything in your preferred stack. For example, we use Prisma as the ORM in our main app and reuse the same instance in our internal tools with no additional work. All of this means you can build a lot with Interval with remarkably little effort. Over the past few months, it’s been common for us to see teams spin up complete admin dashboards or customer support tools in hours instead of days or weeks. All of this means you can build a lot with Interval with remarkably little effort. Over the past few months, it’s been common for us to see teams spin up complete admin dashboards or customer support tools in hours instead of days or weeks. To give you a better idea of what Interval is capable of, we’ve pulled together some more examples on our site. My favorite one so far is a _complete_ tool to ask questions about any Postgres database in plain English, implemented with Interval, the Postgres Node library, and OpenAI in <80 lines of code. So that’s Interval. I’m excited to hear what you think + answer any questions. And if you want to start building, our SDKs are available for JavaScript/TypeScript and Python.
Nikunj Kothari
Congrats @alexarena and team for launching 1.0! Been following this team for a while and really excited to see their launch. Curious how would you say this is different than retool? Also share more on where does the code actually run?
Alex Arena
@nikunj Thank you! On the differences between Retool: the output (customer support tools, admin dashboards, etc.) is pretty similar between both products, but _how_ those tools are built is really different. While Retool gives you a drag-and-drop UI builder, Interval is made for backend devs and lets you create UIs directly in your backend code. So you don’t need to learn another drag-and-drop tool or frontend framework :) Re: where the code actually runs… this is another really cool component of Interval. We host the UI for you on interval.com but the actual backend code (including everything sensitive like your environment variables, business logic, etc.) runs on your infra and Interval can’t see it by design.
Rana Phool
Great work on Interval 1.0! Can't wait to see how quickly developers can build internal tools using this product. Looking forward to the possibilities!
Alex Arena
@rana_phool thanks!
Alex Halliday
@alexarena - congrats on the launch! Amazing execution on all fronts, can't wait to see the platform develop.
batuhan içöz
Congratulations @alexarena & team! We use Interval at Texts.com and I'm glad we do! It's always super boring and tedious to build out internal dashboards. It's still somewhat boring with Interval but in a good way...it's too easy. It takes a few lines of code using their SDK to programmaticly describe what I want, add some DB queries and get a working tool for our team to use. A lot of us who works/worked in small teams would know that there are a lot of small, mundane actions only exists at best as script or a SQL query because they it doesn't worth the time to build a UI, do access controls, get some logging etc etc. So non-technical people always need the help of an engineer for those. With Interval, if you have a script already, you are almost done, seriously.
Hassaan Raza
Congrats on the launch! Interval is such an essential tool for us already. Super excited about all the enhancements!
Joan Roig
Alex and Interval team, congrats on the launch. Interval has changed the way we approach internal tooling at my company. It feels like magic, extremely intuitive, and fun to use. Also, Interval's support is top-notch. Can't wait to see where you take it from here!
Alex Arena
@joan_roig1 Thank you! It's been amazing to have VStream as early Interval users 🙌🙌
Coleman Oates
Alex and team — congrats on the launch! 🎉 We've been using Interval for a while now, and it's been magical from the start. Excited to see the product continue to grow!
Casey Newton
Extremely cool!
Alex Arena
@caseynewton thank you 🙌
Tom Medema
Sounds like magic, looking forward to giving it a try. 🙏
Anurag Baddam
Very cool!! How do you view Interval versus an alternative like Retool?
Olly Wilson
Great job on the release! We’re gonna find Interval hugely useful in our workflows!
Jacob Trefethen
Nice work!
Dominic Whyte
Go Alex and team!!!