I looked at the video demo and tried the live demo and I still have no idea what it does and what value it brings to the user (why adding a watermark to a video needs an AI?). Also, it's super slow and not responsive.

So many AI startups and I have yet to see one that makes sense for me. But I don't blindly trust any output from any LLM, so that's probably the reason.

Hi, thanks for trying out our demo! You're right - watermarking a video doesn't need AI, but we use AI to help enable nontechnical users to build that watermarking workflow, as well as any other workflow that they want to automate without having to interact directly with Python scripts.

Focus on things that need AI in these demos. Even a simplified non-technical UX to add a watermark does not need AI.

“As well as any other workflow they want to automate” is doing a lot of heavy lifting where concrete use cases should be highlighting why your tool does what it does the way it does.

If you're going to use a spreadsheet as your UI, I think you should be more careful how you describe the semantics of rows and columns. And make a strong case for why this representation makes sense.

People expect that rows represent observations and columns represent variables. Along those lines, would it not be more accurate to say each row represents an instance of a task and column represents a sub-task or step in that task?

"each row corresponds to an AI agent executing a task" just... doesn't make sense. The rows exist before you press the "execute" button, after all. The agent executing the (generic) task is something that happens on or with the sheet.

Seconding this -- I actually had copied "each column represents a step in the workflow and each row corresponds to an AI agent executing a task" to post a comment like this, but then checked through the comments to see if someone beat me to it, and here you are!

I'll add my terminology though, since it's slightly different. I think we're mostly agreed that "each column represents a step in the workflow" is fine. But for me the sheet represents an agent configuration, and each row is a specific job the agent performs.

We're using a spreadsheet UI because it's familiar to millions of office workers and easy to understand the step-by-step progression of a workflow. The wording that you proposed makes a lot of sense to us.

I still don't understand how multi-step LLM based AI agents work.

If the probability of an LLM making a mistake = 5% and you have 10 steps then the accuracy of the overall workflow is 60%. Which is useless. Even if we have major advancements in the performance of LLMs and it drops to 1% then still the overall workflow is 90% which is poor.

So what is the plan here ? There is a limit to how many tasks in businesses can tolerate so much inaccuracy.

Let's say the task is automatically aggregating customer support info.

First step is collecting incoming emails

Second step is summarizing each one

Third step is batching by issue/severity

Notice how there is tolerance for deviance/error. "An error" looks like coding a ticket red instead of yellow, or slightly misrepresenting what a client said. The overall workflow can still be net positive.

Re: Witnessing an operations manager show us folders of spreadsheets for his business, we realized that spreadsheets have limited functionality.

did you bother finding out where those spreadsheets come from, internal systems, external reports from vendors, are they consolidated bank statements, inventory counts and status, amazon/shopify inventory status

your ai tool should enable them to work with these spreadsheets as a starter.

I totally agree with vector_spaces comment, having a AI agent create a new workflow and train business manager on using it is a dead end. They have had the last 30years to explore VBA, Access and the other tools Microsoft comes with, and they last thing they will do is understand python the way your demo shows

Looks like https://github.com/MoritzLaurer/GPT-google-sheets

Now this I would use…

Yeah 200 lines of JavaScript, available for the last year. Super cutting edge

Does this integrate with Google Sheets or Excel? If not, i would not use this. My workflow lives in spreadsheets but not your custom spreadsheets. They live in Google Sheets/Excel so you need to meet me where I do my work if you want to make my life easier

Yes, we have integrations with Google Sheets, so you can write directly there.

Based on the watermarking video, it seems that your interface is actually sort of 3-dimensional? Meaning that a single column (watermarking in the video I watched) represents multiple underlying steps? I feel like to fully leverage the spreadsheet UI you need to explode that view out so the row more clearly represents each sub-step in a column?

Also: are there conditionals? So you can skip a step/column if not needed, or repeat as many times as needed?

I tried to launch the demo, it's stuck in "Loading Manaflow demo...".

Console has errors:

> failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 422 () clerk.browser.js:2 Uncaught (in promise) Error > at s._fetch (clerk.browser.js:2:48584) > at async X._baseMutate (clerk.browser.js:2:49256) ingest/static/recorder.jsv=1.139.3:1

> Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404

Great job on putting stuff out there. I understand the reasoning behind using spreadsheets, but wouldn't a flow chart/node based interface make more sense for this and be more intuitive? That way people can just upload their sheets/list to the beginning of the node and the subsequent actions/nodes would be the agents.

I have more comments/feedback if you're interested (mostly UX).

Great work. I didn't not go into the details, and I like the concept and motivation.

My feedback: approach this problem, solve the problem, then use a technique. Show a repetitive work that someone does, and let the viewer watch machine doing it automatically.

In other words, your aim is right, but knowledge you possess is distracting you to solve it neat and clean.

Another one of these companies which will sell to other YC companies and "exit" in a few years.

I wish you luck but honestly it seems like you have not done the ground work behind what operation managers actually do.

Your assumption that operations managers will be swiftly replacing their human charges with AI agents indicates that you haven't spent enough time understanding the businesses of your customers. You really need to take a job in one of these roles for several months and spend more time talking to the people whose jobs you intend to automate away with this product, otherwise you're not going to reach people with this.

Tech people seem to have this cluster of assumptions that leads them to conclude that there aren't intelligent people in non-tech roles, and that these people can't see obvious optimizations of their roles because of their lack of coding skills or something.

The reality is usually that there are layers upon layers of hidden complexity in these businesses -- ones that require a mix of domain expertise and deep awareness of the business and human context to effectively manage. Often you won't even have so much as heuristics to go on.

That isn't to say that automation and AI can't be leveraged to great effect, but it's simply not going to be the drop-in solution you claim it is. Claiming it is in this way -- esp with your smug lip-service to job annihilation -- is going to rub people the wrong way.

Instead you should re-message this around augmentation and making jobs easier so that people can focus on other concerns, and reducing costly errors introduced by manual process.

It's unclear who exactly your target is, but if you are going for e.g. parts manufacturers, local shipping & logistics companies, small CPG brands, then the examples in your videos are all wrong. Get the weird Fibonacci stuff out of the side panel, clean out any junk that says "test" and use polished examples related to reconciling purchase orders, forecasting demand for a new product line, managing production schedules, etc. You need to make the value this thing adds accessible to intelligent people who don't have a CS degree.

> and that these people can't see obvious optimizations of their roles because of their lack of coding skills or something.

Actually the biggest mistake is thinking technology is an optimisation at all.

Many times it's easier, cheaper and faster to do it manually especially when the magnitude or complexity of the work is low. And once a task becomes repetitive the cognitive load on the worker will be orders of magnitude higher with some app or AI agent.

Definitely agreed -- I was being somewhat tongue in cheek there

The hard problems at most companies whose solutions could move the needle the farthest tend to be cultural. Sometimes we make gains in that direction as a side effect of introducing the right technology. Those cases are exceptional: technology is rarely sufficient, and as you say, often not needed in the first place.