{"slug": "showboat", "name": "Showboat", "category": "ai", "category_name": "AI tools and apps", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 5, "warners": 0, "score": 3.783, "rising": 0.02, "first": "2026-02-10", "latest": "2026-09-25", "why": "Showboat seems like it could actually be quite useful for humans too", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Showboat seems like it could actually be quite useful for humans too", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "simonwillison.net", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://github.com/simonw/showboat", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Showboat", "showboat"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 797519744, "item_id": 49844984, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49844984", "by": "chris_st", "date": "2026-09-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You might want to look at Simon Willison's showboat [0] tool, which generates walkthroughs of code to explain changes.", "excerpt": "You might want to look at Simon Willison's showboat [0] tool, which generates walkthroughs of code to explain changes. [0]: https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/linear-walkthroughs/", "context": "", "use_case": "Code walkthroughs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) \u2013 An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design"}, {"id": 751943828, "item_id": 46996489, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46996489", "by": "vessenes", "date": "2026-02-12", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "new showboat a lot for this", "excerpt": "A year ago (geez!) I used aider, as you describe. Now I use claude with agent orchestration and beads. Well actually, I\u2019m currently using openclaw to spin up multiple claudes with the above skills. If I need to drop down to claude, I do. If I need to edit something (usually writing I hate), I do. I haven\u2019t needed to line edit something in a while - it\u2019s just faster to be like \u201cthis is a bad architecture, throw it awa", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM5 Released on Z.ai Platform"}, {"id": 751476368, "item_id": 46967273, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46967273", "by": "samuelson", "date": "2026-02-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Showboat seems like it could actually be quite useful for humans too", "excerpt": "I love your content, but I wish you'd make your blog theme responsive for wider screens/non-mobile. I prefer to read content like this on a large screen. Showboat seems like it could actually be quite useful for humans too, just for making quick notes from a CLI without opening an editor. The \"pop\" command makes me wonder if there would be a benefit to also having an array-like in addition to the stack-like interface", "context": "", "use_case": "quick notes from CLI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "wenc", "context": "ML work with agents", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47209977", "date": "2026-03-01"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["code walkthroughs", "quick notes from cli", "agent workflow gates"], "compared": [{"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "beads", "name": "Beads", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 788695778, "item_id": 49293486, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293486", "by": "simonw", "date": "2026-08-13", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've experimented with a few projects around that now", "excerpt": "It's fascinating. On the one hand, if you really want to unlock the potential of coding agents you can get a whole lot more value from them if you don't force yourself to read every line of code they produce for you. On the other hand, that's clearly a terrible idea! These machines make mistakes. Unreviewed code is the most obvious form of technical debt - sure, you'll get a boost in the short term but how much will ", "context": "25+ years of experience", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Understanding Is the New Bottleneck"}, {"id": 784366848, "item_id": 49022928, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022928", "by": "simonw", "date": "2026-07-23", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've released two pieces of software inspired by those ideas myself - Showboat", "excerpt": "When I said \"misinterpretation\" here I was talking about people assuming that the Ford story was a simple case of \"Ford fired their employees because they thought AI could replace them, then had to hire them all back again\". That's not what happened. A TON of AI projects have crashed and burned in the past few years. This stuff is really hard to adopt at an organizational level, much more so than for individuals. I'v", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making"}, {"id": 752926914, "item_id": 47057932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47057932", "by": "simonw", "date": "2026-02-17", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "https://github.com/simonw/showboat - 292 stars", "excerpt": "Here are a few of mine from the past month - for all of them 90%+ of the code written by Claude Code: - https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json - https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-ast - https://github.com/simonw/showboat - 292 stars - https://github.com/simonw/datasette-showboat - https://github.com/simonw/rodney - 290 stars and 4 contributors who aren't me or Claude - https://github.com/simonw/chartroom Noting ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Thousands of CEOs just admitted AI had no impact on employment or productivity"}, {"id": 752052113, "item_id": 47003257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47003257", "by": "simonw", "date": "2026-02-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "using my Showboat testing tool this morning", "excerpt": "Here's a document produced by Claude Code using my Showboat testing tool this morning to help explore SeaweedFS (a local S3 clone) - it includes trying things out with curl and getting screenshots from Chrome using my Rodney tool: https://github.com/simonw/research/blob/main/seaweedfs-testing/README.md", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I asked Claude Code to remove jQuery. It failed miserably"}, {"id": 752051204, "item_id": 47003200, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47003200", "by": "simonw", "date": "2026-02-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "a new tool I built called Showboat. It's less than a week old but it's so far been working really well", "excerpt": "I don't use CLAUDE.md, I instead use simple token-efficient conventions. Most importantly all of my Python projects use a pyproject.toml file with this pattern: [dependency-groups] dev = [\"pytest\"] Which means I can tell the agent: Run \"uv run pytest\" And it will run the tests - without first needing to setup a virtual environment or install dependencies or anything like that. I wrote more about that pattern here: ht", "context": "", "use_case": "agents manually testing changes", "switched_from": "", "story": "I asked Claude Code to remove jQuery. It failed miserably"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47002404", "title": "I asked Claude Code to remove jQuery. It failed miserably", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46963887", "title": "Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833867", "title": "Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) \u2013 An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290299", "title": "Understanding Is the New Bottleneck", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48964185", "title": "AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208398", "title": "MCP is dead. Long live the CLI", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 797519744, "item_id": 49844984, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49844984", "by": "chris_st", "date": "2026-09-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You might want to look at Simon Willison's showboat [0] tool, which generates walkthroughs of code to explain changes.", "excerpt": "You might want to look at Simon Willison's showboat [0] tool, which generates walkthroughs of code to explain changes. [0]: https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/linear-walkthroughs/", "context": "", "use_case": "Code walkthroughs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) \u2013 An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design"}, {"id": 755359635, "item_id": 47209977, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47209977", "by": "wenc", "date": "2026-03-01", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "MCPs (especially remote MCPs) are like a black box API -- you don't have to install anything, provision any resources, etc. You just call it and get an answer. There's a place for that, but an MCP is ultimately a blunt instrument. CLI tools on the other hand are like precision instruments. Yes, you have to install them locally once, but after that, they have access to your local environment and can discover things on", "context": "ML work with agents", "use_case": "code walkthroughs", "switched_from": "", "story": "MCP is dead. Long live the CLI"}, {"id": 751943828, "item_id": 46996489, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46996489", "by": "vessenes", "date": "2026-02-12", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "new showboat a lot for this", "excerpt": "A year ago (geez!) I used aider, as you describe. Now I use claude with agent orchestration and beads. Well actually, I\u2019m currently using openclaw to spin up multiple claudes with the above skills. If I need to drop down to claude, I do. If I need to edit something (usually writing I hate), I do. I haven\u2019t needed to line edit something in a while - it\u2019s just faster to be like \u201cthis is a bad architecture, throw it awa", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM5 Released on Z.ai Platform"}, {"id": 751476368, "item_id": 46967273, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46967273", "by": "samuelson", "date": "2026-02-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Showboat seems like it could actually be quite useful for humans too", "excerpt": "I love your content, but I wish you'd make your blog theme responsive for wider screens/non-mobile. I prefer to read content like this on a large screen. Showboat seems like it could actually be quite useful for humans too, just for making quick notes from a CLI without opening an editor. The \"pop\" command makes me wonder if there would be a benefit to also having an array-like in addition to the stack-like interface", "context": "", "use_case": "quick notes from CLI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built"}, {"id": 751442289, "item_id": 46965143, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965143", "by": "giancarlostoro", "date": "2026-02-10", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'll be sure to try these out.", "excerpt": "I'll be sure to try these out. I've been building my own alternative to Beads with a concept called \"gates\" which do not let you close tasks as complete until a gate passes. Would love to throw these in as \"gates\" for my current workflow.", "context": "", "use_case": "agent workflow gates", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Showboat and Rodney, so agents can demo what they've built"}]}