Show HN: Sim – Apache-2.0 n8n alternative

(github.com)

Comments

solarkraft 11 December 2025
This looks really cool for DIYing workflows, especially since you seem to have a very useful selection of tools!

Did you build your own agent engine? Why not LangGraph?

Say I was building a general agentic chat app with LangGraph in the backend (as it seems to provide a lot of infrastructure for highly reliable and interactive agents, all the way up to a protocol usable by UIs, plus a decent ecosystem, making it very easily extensible). Could I integrate with this for DIY workflows in a high quality fashion (high-precision updates and control)?

Is there a case for switching out LangGraph‘s backend with Sim (can you build agents of the same quality and complexity - I’m thinking coding agent)? Could it interact with LangGraph agents in a high quality way so you can tap that ecosystem?

Can I use Sim workflows with my current agent, say, via MCP?

smarx007 11 December 2025
So here is a case that I wanted to implement in n8n a few years ago and it required quite heavy JS blocks:

- I want to check some input - pick one of your 138 blocks

- I want to extract a list of items from that input

- I want to check which items did I encounter before <- that's the key bit

- Do something for the items that have not been encountered before; bonus point for detecting updated and deleted items

- Rinse and repeat

It could be a row added to a CSV file, a new file dropped into a Nextcloud folder, a list of issues pulled from a repo, or an RSS feed (Yahoo! Pipes, what a sweet memory).

How good is the support for such a case in Sim? And did it get better in n8n?

Multicomp 12 December 2025
Excited to try this out, I've been looking at LangFlow and similar tools for doing DAG workflows. Sure, I could prompt or try to do an MCP or a claude skill for my utility workflows, but they aren't strongly followed and I want to, where possible, make each AI agent call be smaller, like a function.

This is definitely going to be given a try tomorrow morning. I think first up will be something easy and personal like going through the collection of NPC character sheets in my recent campaign and ensuring all NPCs have the following sections with some content in them, and if not, flagging them for my review.

popalchemist 12 December 2025
> You can run Sim locally using Docker, with no execution limits or other restrictions.

This is big. Thank you.

spflueger 11 December 2025
Looks interesting. The 12GB minimum RAM requirements seem quite steep though. Why so much?
hbarka 11 December 2025
I wonder how the free open-source in this stacks up to the free open-source in n8n.
SCUSKU 11 December 2025
A bit of feedback, the readme gifs are a little too fast, it's hard to tell what exactly is happening.
pylotlight 12 December 2025
This is the other major project in this space, although there are many, so finding the differences can be challenging.

https://www.activepieces.com | https://github.com/activepieces/activepieces

rcarmo 12 December 2025
This looks really cool, but not being able to use my own LLM endpoints for the Copilot is an instant turn-off.
eightnoteight 12 December 2025
for the workflow DAG, what type of backend are you guys using? is it like temporal or self-built durable workflows
brene 11 December 2025
How does it deal with loops? I’ve often see workflow builders struggle at that?
greggh 12 December 2025
Development seems pretty rapid, how often are breaking changes forcing workflow modifications to keep updated with the latest versions?
vegasbrianc 12 December 2025
Open Sourced until we get rug pulled..
saubeidl 12 December 2025
How does this compare to say, Node Red?
malcolmgreaves 11 December 2025
What does “n8n” stand for? I’m assuming it’s a shortening of a longer word, like k8s.
devangjhabakh 12 December 2025
This is amazing! Thank you all for building this!