Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design
https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard📌 Whiteboard：讓人類與AI Agent一起畫架構圖的開源IDE
TL;DR：YC新創打造開源桌面應用，讓人類與coding agent在同一個畫布上共同設計軟體架構。
當agentic coding讓PR速度暴增，四個曾任技術主管的工程師卻發現一個副作用：越來越多程式碼合併進系統時，團隊已經看不懂agent做了什麼決定。這種「看不懂自己系統」的感覺，他們稱之為「認知債務」。
🤔 agentic coding的甜蜜與代價
Whiteboard的四位創辦人Sid、Alex、Ketan、Milan都是在agentic coding成為業界標配前夕辭去技術主管職位的工程師。他們在打造前一個產品的MVP時發現，一邊享受agent帶來的開發速度，一邊卻難以維持一個「可理解」的程式碼庫；當愈來愈多PR在他們沒有完全理解的情況下被合併，這種認知債務逐漸累積，最後連他們自己都難以再對系統做出貢獻。
🧩 從HTML artifact到基於VSCode重建
團隊最初以HTML artifact做出MVP，但很快遇到限制，於是重新設計出三個核心能力：
- 底層基於CodeOSS（即VSCode核心）打造：純HTML工具很難把規格書或架構圖與程式碼連結起來。在Whiteboard中，點擊循序圖（sequence diagram）、實體關聯圖（ER diagram）或agent執行軌跡中的一句話，都能直接跳轉到對應的程式碼；瀏覽程式碼時也能沿用VSCode原生的快捷鍵與LSP支援。團隊認為這點格外重要，因為許多技術取捨往往要等第一版實作完成後才會浮現。
- 用Rust寫的語意diff檢視器：這是一個具備AST感知能力的diff工具，讓使用者只看到與自己相關的程式碼變更。系統預設會把大型新增函式摘要成虛擬碼（pseudocode），並自動摺疊或隱藏單元測試與大量文件異動；整個行為可透過一套WASM外掛系統自訂。
- 決策紀錄（Decision Log）：團隊發現很難掌握agent自主做出的一連串決策，因此打造工具讓agent能查詢並將自己的執行軌跡連結回Whiteboard，方便使用者理解自己設定的需求如何被實作，以及agent中途自主做了哪些判斷。
🧩 怎麼用
Whiteboard可整合現有的coding agent工具，例如Claude Code、Codex等，並提供一套SDK讓agent能在應用內的畫布上繪圖說明自己的工作內容。目前提供macOS與Linux版本的桌面應用安裝，整個專案以MIT授權開源。
📊 誰在用
README指出，Salesforce、Modal等公司的團隊已將Whiteboard用作架構或規格層級異動的審查工具，主要有兩種使用情境：一是審查自己agent的工作成果，讓agent先產出原型與對應的Whiteboard session，再據此討論設計；二是審查他人的異動，團隊發現Whiteboard與Greptile這類工具搭配使用效果不錯，先用自動化程式碼審查工具處理小型異動，再把需要人類判斷的變更升級到Whiteboard session中討論。
💡 深入分析
Whiteboard的價值主張不是憑空造新工具，而是把VSCode既有的LSP、跳轉、快捷鍵能力，疊加上一層diff可視化與決策追溯機制，讓agent的產出重新變得「可審查」。這種選擇務實：與其重造一套編輯器基礎設施，不如站在CodeOSS的肩膀上，專注在agent協作這個新問題上。
⚠️ 限制
目前釋出的是桌面應用，安裝僅支援macOS與Linux；團隊規劃未來推出付費的託管網頁版，加入session建立管理、執行軌跡儲存與多人協作審查等功能，但強調核心功能會維持可自架（self-hostable）。
🎯 實務啟示
如果你的團隊已經大量採用coding agent，卻開始感受到PR審查跟不上產出速度、或愈來愈難解釋系統為何長成這樣，Whiteboard提供的「diff只看相關變更＋決策可追溯」思路值得參考：與其事後補審查，不如把架構討論搬到agent產出程式碼的同一個工作流程裡。
🔗 來源
- 標題：Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design
- 作者／機構：sidharthkmenon（Whiteboard團隊）
- 連結：https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard
#OpenSource #DeveloperTools #AIAgent #CodingAgent #IDE #VSCode #SoftwareArchitecture #YCombinator #AST #CodeReview
原始資料 Hacker News · 收集於 2026-09-25
摘要原文
Hello! We’re Sid, Alex, Ketan, and Milan. We’re building Whiteboard ( https://whiteboard.dev.fast/ ), an open-source desktop app where humans and agents can architect software together in a common workspace. Here’s our repo: https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard . We were missing the feeling of a “whiteboard session” with another dev where you leave with a deep understanding of a system, so we built this app for ourselves. Whiteboard plugs into the tools you already use - e.g. Claude Code, Codex, etc. – and gives your agent an SDK to draw on an in-app canvas to describe its work. We began with an MVP based on HTML artifacts and started rethinking the app as we ran into limitations: 1. Built on top of CodeOSS: We found that in pure HTML tools it was hard to connect a spec or diagram to code. In Whiteboard, when you click on visualizations like a sequence diagram, an entity relationship diagram, or a quote from the agent’s trace, you can jump to the underlying code directly. When navigating code, you get keybindings and LSP support from VSCode out of the box. We’ve found this is especially valuable because tradeoffs are often only discovered after a first pass at implementation (re: slop) 2. Semantic diff viewer: we wrote a semantic, AST-aware diff viewer in Rust so you can only view the code changes which are relevant to you [1]. We’ve set up some sane defaults: large added functions are summarized as pseudocode, and things like unit tests and large documentation changes are collapsed / hidden. This is all customizable with a WASM-based plugin system. 3. Decision Log: We found it difficult to reason about what set of decisions our agents made autonomously. So we built tools for agents to query and link their own traces to the Whiteboard, so you can understand how the requirements that you set were implemented, and understand what decisions your agent made autonomously. Here’s a quick demo video explaining more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChPn3ftULWE Folks at companies like Salesforce and Modal are using Whiteboard today as a review tool for architecture or spec-level changes – really any change where they want to be involved: 1. Reviewing your own coding agent’s work: because Whiteboard makes it easier to review large amounts of code, folks will typically have their AI agents create a prototype and a corresponding Whiteboard session so they can iterate on the design. 2. Reviewing other people’s changes: We’ve found that Whiteboard is particularly helpful when composed with tools like Greptile. For example, you can run an automated code reviewer on small changes and escalate to a Whiteboard session for the changes that require human judgement. Why we built this: we’re four buddies from college who quit our jobs as tech leads right before agentic coding became industry standard. As we iterated towards an MVP for a previous idea, we struggled to maintain a comprehensible codebase while reaping all the velocity benefits of agentic coding. As more PRs were merged without our understanding, we felt a ‘cognitive debt’ begin to seep in, until it became difficult for us to even contribute to the system [2]. We’re releasing our desktop app under an MIT license. Please poke through and feel free to contribute! Eventually we’ll charge companies for a hosted web version that manages whiteboard session creation alongside features like trajectory storage and multiplayer reviews. Everything will always remain self-hostable. Thanks for reading, and we hope you try it out! We would love to hear any feedback and to learn from your expertise. Here’s are the project links again: https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard , and you can install (for MacOS + Linux) at https://install.dev.fast [1] diffs library: https://github.com/devdotfast/diffr [2] Credit for the term ‘cognitive debt’ goes to https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2026/07/02/understanding-is-the...
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