Table of Contents
- What is OpenFiend?
- What OpenFiend Can Do Today (v0.1)
- Why Transparent AI Agents Matter
- What's Coming Next
Most AI assistants work like black boxes. You type something, wait, and hope for the best. Bob is different. He's being built around a simple idea - transparency as the first principle.
I’m Jonah Reed, a solo developer building OpenFiend in public as a learning project in AI agent development.
What Is OpenFiend? A Transparent AI Agent Platform
OpenFiend is an open-source side project centered around a lil' guy named Bob.
Unlike quite a few other assistants, Bob shows his reasoning in real-time. Right now, the UI displays logs, I'm expanding what gets tracked as the project grows.
What OpenFiend Can Do Today (v0.1)
Right now, OpenFiend is in its early, messy era. It’s a functional learning project where Bob can engage in full conversations powered by a SQLite backend.
The Current Tech Stack:
- Frontend: React + Vite + Tailwind CSS
- Backend: Node.js + Express + WebSockets
- Database: SQLite (via Drizzle ORM)
- AI Integration: Vercel AI SDK
Features currently live:
- Context switching: Persistent conversation history.
-
A clean 3-panel layout: Chat in the middle, history on the left, and an audit trail on the right.
Why Transparent AI Agents Matter (and why I'm building this)
I'm curious whether transparency matters to people. OpenFiend is my experiment in building this openly - to keep myself honest, and because I genuinely want to learn in public instead of abandoning yet another side project.
Check out the code here (if you're interested):
jreed18
/
openfiend
Bob. A fiend on your side. Local-first AI agent that shows every move and asks before making them.
O P E N F I E N D
NO BLACK BOXES. NO TRUST REQUIRED.
Security-first AI agent platform.
Every action visible. Every permission explicit. Everything auditable.
> WHAT IS THIS
OpenFiend is an AI agent platform where transparency isn't a feature — it's the architecture.
The first agent — Bob — is a paranoid, audit-log-obsessed assistant powered by Claude. You talk to Bob through a real-time WebSocket chat interface. Everything he does is logged, visible, and controllable.
This is v0.1. It's early and messy, but we're (I'm) making it work!
> QUICK START
git clone https://github.com/jreed18/openfiend.git
cd openfiend
cp .env.example .env.local # add your API keys (see .env.example)
pnpm install
pnpm dev
| Service | URL |
|---|---|
| Frontend | localhost:5173 |
| Backend | localhost:3737 |
| WebSocket | ws://localhost:3737/ws |
Requires Node.js 22+ and pnpm 9+
> ARCHITECTURE
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ OPENFIEND │
├──────────────┬────────────────────────┬──────────────────────┤
│ LEFT RAIL │ CENTER PANEL │ RIGHT PANEL │
│ │ │ │
│ conversation│What's Coming Next: Streaming, Tools, and Live Audit Trails
Building in public means showing the bugs alongside the features. To someone who cares about being "perfect," this is a nightmare.
Good. That’s the point.
What's next on the roadmap?
If you’ve ever struggled with "shiny object syndrome" or just want to watch a solo dev try to keep an open-source project alive in the wild, I’d love for you to follow along.
I'm a solo developer learning AI agent development by building one from scratch in public. If you've used any similar tools in the past, what are they and what do you wish they handled better? Bob and I are taking notes.
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