Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design
- ID
- 28453
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 25 Sep 2026, 1:21 AM
- Fetched
- 25 Sep 2026, 2:26 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 6.0
- Created
- 25 Sep 2026, 2:26 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersai_agent_users
What happened
Whiteboard is a Show HN open-source desktop app (repo devdotfast/whiteboard, 657 stars, 27 forks, 438 commits, YC W26) that gives coding agents a shared canvas for software design. It plugs into existing agents like Claude Code and Codex and exposes an SDK so the agent can draw its work — the README's example workflow is asking your agent to review your current branch against main and open the result in Whiteboard. Builds are offered for macOS and Fedora, and the README says it works best with 'GPT-6 Sol' and 'Claude Opus 5.5' while admitting the default system prompt isn't yet fully tuned.
Why it matters
If you already run Claude Code or Codex, the try-out cost is one download for macOS or Fedora plus connecting your existing agent — no API keys or account mentioned. But the README itself warns the right defaults aren't baked into the system prompt yet, so budget time to write your own prompts (the repo ships example prompts plus AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md context files) before judging whether canvas output beats reading a diff. Treat the model recommendations as the maintainers' stated preference, not a benchmark.
Discussion angle
Does a visual canvas of a branch review actually change what you merge, or does it just move the same reasoning into a prettier artifact? Ask who has tried agent-generated design diagrams before code changes and whether the diagram caught something the diff didn't.