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AI · alternatives · 2026

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24 alternatives to Blocks: AI-Powered Custom Function Builder from Structured

Hello HN community, We've recently launched a new feature at Structured called Blocks, aimed at simplifying custom function creation and management for developers. I wanted to share some insights and get your thoughts. Key Features: - Natural Language to Code Translation: Input commands like "Remove HTML tags from this text," and Blocks turns them into functional code, easing the burden of complex coding syntax. - Sandbox Testing: A robust environment where you can safely test and refine your functions with either sample data or your own datasets, ensuring reliability before deployment. -…

Blocks is an AI-powered feature from Structured that helps developers build custom functions using natural language commands. Users can describe what they need—like "remove HTML tags"—and the tool converts it into… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. Blocks: AI-Powered Custom Function Builder from Structured launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1
    Blocks▲448

    Hi HN, We just launched Blocks - an AI platform where anyone can build custom work apps and AI agents in minutes, no coding required. We’re seeing a shift in how software is built and used. With AI, software isn’t just about tracking processes anymore - it can actively help people get work done. The problem is that most teams still face 2 options: either buy off-the-shelf tools that never quite fit, or invest a lot of time and money into custom development. Neither works well. Blocks is the third option. It’s an AI-native platform where teams can create apps and AI agents for their workflows…

    2025 · blocks.diy · its alternatives →

  2. 2
    Blocks▲715

    AI-powered builder to create your emails

    2023 · useblocks.io · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Build native applications in seconds

    2023 · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Making the web better, with blocks

    2022 · blockprotocol.org · its alternatives →

  5. 5TA
  6. 6

    https://the-pocket.github.io/Tutorial-Codebase-Knowledge/

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    I spent a few hours last weekend testing whether AI can replace code by executing directly. Built a contact manager where every HTTP request goes to an LLM with three tools: database (SQLite), webResponse (HTML/JSON/JS), and updateMemory (feedback). No routes, no controllers, no business logic. The AI designs schemas on first request, generates UIs from paths alone, and evolves based on natural language feedback. It works—forms submit, data persists, APIs return JSON—but it's catastrophically slow (30-60s per request), absurdly expensive ($0.05/request), and has zero UI…

    Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Build web applications, with your data, without code

    2015 · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Hello everyone. I've been working on this experimental editor called Huzzah. I've been working almost exclusively with coding agents since January of this year, and over the past few months I began to feel utterly exhausted by them. They're great, but I'm finding it more and more tedious to write full sentences for every change I want. Not only that, but it seems there's a complexity limit for codebases - beyond a certain point the agent begins confusing itself. I'd like to go back to writing code, but I don't want to go all the way back to fully manual coding. So I've come up with this…

    Aug 2026 · danielvaughn.dev · its alternatives →

  10. 10
    CodeWords▲385

    Hey HN, Aymeric here, co-founder of Agemo and maker of CodeWords. Generating nice-looking UIs with AI has been democratized now thanks to tools like Lovable, v0 and bolt. Going from natural language to a complex back-end workflow is still an unsolved problem. We started our journey by researching neurosymbolic methods applied to software/code generation problems and it landed us a feature in the ARC-AGI report last year (https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.04604). We've now applied this research to build an AI-native workflow automation platform to enable builders of any…

    2025 · agemo.ai · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Hey everyone, ML Blocks is a node-based workflow builder to create multi-modal AI workflows without writing any code. You connect blocks that call various visual models like GPT4v, Segment Anything, Dino etc. along with basic image processing blocks like resize, invert color, blur, crop, and several others. The idea is to make it easier to deploy multi-step image processing workflows, without needing to spin up endless custom OpenCV cloud functions to glue together AI models. Usually, even if you're using cloud inference servers like Replicate, you still need to write your own image…

    2024 · mlblocks.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hi HN, we’re Nate and Ty, co-founders of Continue, an open-source autopilot for software development built to be deeply customizable and continuously learn from development data. It consists of an extended language server and (to start) a VS Code extension. Our GitHub is https://github.com/continuedev/continue. You can watch a demo of Continue and download the extension at https://continue.dev — — — A growing number of developers are replacing Google + Stack Overflow with Large Language Models (LLMs) as their primary approach to get help, similar to how…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    I've been exploring the (not so=) amazing potential of AI in coding and have compiled a list of tools. From AI-powered IDEs to code generators, this resource is my contribution to the community. I'm still on the fence about including txt2sql projects, as their functionality seems too basic to me. And I'm personally maintaining this, so your feedback is wellcome.

    2025 · aicode.danvoronov.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14
    Typeblock▲132

    Build AI apps with no-code

    2023 · typeblock.co · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Discover user-curated resources for niche no-code problems

    2021 · its alternatives →

  16. 16
    Blocks▲85

    A minimalist browser-based game.

    2016 · blocks.ovh · its alternatives →

  17. 17
    OpenMolt▲132

    Hi HN! I built OpenMolt, an open-source framework for creating programmatic AI agents in Node.js. Instead of wiring complex workflows (that can break), you define agents in code with instructions, tools, integrations, and memory. The agent then plans steps and executes actions like calling APIs, updating data, or interacting with services. When things break or change, the agent can adapt instead of failing like static workflows. The goal is to make agents behave more like real software systems than prompt scripts. It includes: - a planning/execution loop - tool and API integrations -…

    Mar 2026 · openmolt.dev · its alternatives →

  18. 18AB

    I’m Frank, part of the engineering team re-imagining how software is built at Superblocks. We’re an extensible low-code platform that developers use to build mission-critical internal apps and workflows. We just launched “Control Blocks”, a visual builder for backend business logic that enables developers to drag and drop “blocks” (conditional, loop, parallel, try/catch, variables etc.) onto a canvas and construct cohesive business logic that reads linearly like code. The industry's approach to visual builders thus far has primarily been free-form flow diagrams where lines define the…

    2023 · superblocks.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19
    Blockman▲113

    Highlight nested code blocks

    2021 · marketplace.visualstudio.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Data infused components for building websites and apps

    2024 · blocks.cosmicjs.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21
    Blocks▲84

    Blocks is a drag-n-drop email builder

    2022 · useblocks.io · its alternatives →

  22. 22CC

    Chunk co-founder here. We spent the last 2 weeks building this to scratch our own itch: As developers, we often have problems that could be solved just by running a few lines of code. Sometimes, running this code on your local machine is fine. But other time, the code need to run automatically reacting to external events or to run continuously, which means, it needs to run on a server somewhere. So now, you have to find a cloud provider, to package or build the code and finally to deploy it. All of that for what could be literally be 4 lines of code. We couldn’t find an easier way to do…

    2022 · chunk.run · its alternatives →

  23. 23
    Boxes.devfree tier, from $19/mo▲112

    Hi HN, we’re Nick and Drew, and we’re building boxes.dev – the first cloud-only agentic dev environment (ADE) that gives every Codex and Claude Code agent its own cloud computer. We’re two engineers who previously built Gem (co-founder/CTO and first hire), and we spent the last year coding almost exclusively using Codex and Claude Code. It’s been a huge change to how we code, and it’s been exhilarating seeing the models keep getting better – but we eventually realized that developing on localhost was holding us back: - Git worktrees are clunky to set up and use for parallelizing work -…

    Jun 2026 · boxes.dev · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Write like Notion. Save as Markdown. Ready for AI.

    2025 · tty215.github.io · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →