DEV Community: Narayandas Akhil Achary

I built an open-source tool that gives your local AI model a real browser and 80+ APIs — no code needed

Narayandas Akhil Achary — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 17:31:34 +0000

Loopi is an open-source desktop automation platform I've been building to solve a problem I kept running into: most automation tools make you choose between visual (but cloud-only) or powerful (but code-only). Why not both?

The Problem

Here's what a typical "automate something with AI" project looks like today:

Zapier/Make for API orchestration — but cloud-only, no browser control, expensive at scale
Playwright/Puppeteer for browser automation — but requires writing and maintaining code
LangChain/AutoGPT for AI agents — but entirely code-based, hard to debug, no visual feedback

Three tools. Three codebases. Three sets of credentials. Constant context switching.

What Loopi Does

Loopi combines all three into a single visual desktop app:

🖱️ Visual drag-and-drop workflow builder — powered by ReactFlow, no code required
🌐 Real Chromium browser control — navigate, click, type, extract, screenshot in a real browser window you can watch live
🤖 Local + cloud AI — connect OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, or run Llama/Mistral/Gemma locally with Ollama (your data never leaves your machine)
🔌 80+ built-in integrations — Slack, Discord, GitHub, Notion, Postgres, MongoDB, Stripe, Gmail, Telegram, S3, and many more
📊 Typed variable system — {{user.name}}, {{items[0].price}}, auto-detected types with dot notation
⏰ Scheduling — run on intervals, cron expressions, or one-time schedules

Building Your First AI Agent

Here's what a real workflow looks like in Loopi:

[Schedule: every morning 8am]
    ↓
[Browser: navigate to competitor pricing page]
    ↓
[Browser: extract text from .pricing-table]
    ↓
[Ollama/Llama: "Summarize any price changes vs last week: {{extracted_text}}"]
    ↓
[Slack: post summary to #competitive-intel]

That entire workflow is built by dragging nodes — no code. The Ollama node runs locally, so the competitor data never hits a third-party server.

Why Local AI Matters

The Ollama integration is the one I'm most proud of. When you connect a local model:

No API keys needed
No per-token costs
Your workflow data stays on your machine
Works completely offline
Supports Llama 3, Mistral, Gemma, Phi, CodeLlama, and any other Ollama-compatible model

For privacy-sensitive automations (processing emails, internal documents, customer data), this is huge.

How It Compares

Feature	Loopi	n8n	Zapier	Playwright
Visual builder	✅	✅	✅	❌
Real browser control	✅	❌	❌	✅
Local AI (Ollama)	✅	❌	❌	❌
Runs locally	✅	Self-host	❌	✅
Open source	✅	✅	❌	✅
Free	✅	Limits	❌	✅

Loopi is the only tool that gives you all of these together.

The Tech Stack

For those who want to contribute or just geek out:

Electron — cross-platform desktop app
React 19 — UI
TypeScript — throughout
ReactFlow — the node editor
Tailwind CSS + Radix UI — styling
Biome — formatting and linting

What We're Building Next

The areas we most want help with:

New AI model providers — Gemini, Cohere, local GGUF models
Agentic workflow templates — research agents, monitoring agents, content pipelines
New service integrations — the 80+ is a start, not a finish
AI copilot improvements — auto-generate workflows from natural language descriptions
Tool-use / function-calling — for connected LLMs

Getting Started

# Download the latest release
# Windows: .exe installer
# Linux: .deb package

# Or build from source:
git clone https://github.com/Dyan-Dev/loopi.git
cd loopi
pnpm install
pnpm start

🌐 Website: https://loopi.dyan.live/
📁 GitHub: https://github.com/Dyan-Dev/loopi
🎥 Demo video: https://youtu.be/QLP-VOGVHBc

The project has 144 GitHub stars and is growing. If you're into automation, AI agents, or just want to give your local LLM actual hands and eyes — give it a try and let me know what you think.

PRs and ideas are very welcome 🙏

🔥 Loopi

Narayandas Akhil Achary — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 19:42:55 +0000

🚀 Meet Loopi: The Open-Source Visual Automation Tool I Wish I Had Years Ago

Narayandas Akhil Achary ・ Dec 9

#productivity #webdev #opensource #discuss

🚀 Meet Loopi: The Open-Source Visual Automation Tool I Wish I Had Years Ago

Narayandas Akhil Achary — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 19:40:29 +0000

For years, I automated browser tasks the “normal” way — with long Playwright or Selenium scripts. It worked… but it was slow, messy, and painful to debug at 3 AM.

So I built Loopi, an open-source, visual browser automation tool that makes automation feel more like designing a flow in Figma than writing a script.

This is the story and the tool.

Why I Built Loopi

Browser automation is powerful, but the developer experience hasn’t improved much:

You write long scripts for simple tasks
You maintain selectors manually
One small UI change breaks everything
Debugging becomes a time-sink
Sharing automation with teammates is messy

I wanted something that was:

Fast to build
Easy to debug
Visual
Open-source

Friendly to both coders and non-coders

Loopi is that tool.

Check it out if it sounds relevant:

GitHub repo: https://github.com/Dyan-Dev/loopi
Quick docs: https://loopi.dyan.live/
Release notes: https://github.com/DyanDev/loopi/releases/tag/v1.2.3

🎥 Introducing Dyan: A Self-Hosted Visual REST API Builder (Demo Inside)

Narayandas Akhil Achary — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:10:04 +0000

🚀 What is Dyan?
Dyan is a developer tool that helps you:

🔧 Visually define API endpoints (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE)
🧠 Write custom logic in JavaScript (Python support coming)
⚡ Test instantly with live input/output
💻 Run everything locally — your backend, your control

No code generation. No framework lock-in. Just fast iteration.

📺 Watch the Demo
In this video, we:

Create a /user endpoint in the Dyan builder
Add logic using the in-browser editor
Test it live inside Dyan’s runtime

Hit it from Postman at http://localhost:3000/api/user

Dyan Video

🛠 Tech Stack

🖥️ Frontend: React + Tailwind CSS
🔧 Backend: NestJS
📦 Database: SQLite (works with PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.)
🧪 Runtime: Secure JS sandbox via vm2

🌍 Try It Yourself

🔗 GitHub: github.com/dyan-dev/dyan
💬 Discord: Join the community
🌐 Website: dyan.live

We’re building this in public and actively looking for contributors — feel free to jump in and say hi!

💡 Coming Soon

POST/PUT/DELETE full support
Docker Compose deployment
Magic link auth
Plugin system for auth, DBs, AI, and more

Build, Test, and Export REST APIs Visually – Meet Dyan (Open Source)

Narayandas Akhil Achary — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 09:35:47 +0000

Ever wished you could build APIs without writing all the backend boilerplate?

Dyan is an open-source, self-hosted platform to visually create and test REST endpoints. You can write logic in JavaScript or Python, plug in your database, and soon even export the entire backend as a Rust microservice.

✅ Define endpoints visually
✅ Use JS/Python to write custom logic
✅ Test inputs/outputs in the browser
✅ Extend or export as code
✅ Self-hosted and open source

👨‍💻 Stack: React + Tailwind (Frontend), NestJS + Prisma (Backend)

🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/dyan-dev/dyan
💬 Discord: https://discord.gg/ZQ4pKRA7

We have several beginner-friendly issues open now. If you're into building devtools or visual programming, join us!

🎉 Introducing Dyan: Visually Build REST APIs Without the Boilerplate

Narayandas Akhil Achary — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 17:04:13 +0000

We just open-sourced Dyan – a self-hosted tool that lets you visually design, test, and manage REST APIs in your browser.

🔧 What is Dyan?

Dyan is a modern developer platform that lets you:

Define REST API endpoints visually
Add logic with JavaScript or Python
Test endpoints instantly with live preview
Store your custom endpoints and logic

🛠 Tech Stack

Frontend: React + Tailwind
Backend: NestJS (TypeScript)
Storage: SQLite + Prisma
Execution Engine: vm2 sandbox

💡 Why Use Dyan?

Save time building boilerplate APIs
Quickly mock and validate backend logic
Share logic across endpoints
Open source and customizable

👨‍💻 Want to Contribute?

Dyan is an early-stage, and we’d love your feedback, issues, and PRs!

🧭 Start here → https://github.com/dyan-dev/dyan

💬 Join the conversation: open an issue, suggest features, or help shape the roadmap.

⭐ If this sounds useful, consider starring the repo and sharing it with fellow developers!