Show HN: RowboatX – open-source Claude Code for everyday automations
Claude Code is great, but it’s focused on coding. The missing piece is a native way to build and run custom background agents for non-code tasks. We built RowboatX as a CLI tool modeled after Claude Code that lets you do that. It uses the file system and unix tools to create and monitor background agents for everyday tasks, connect them to any MCP server for tools, and reason over their outputs. Because RowboatX runs locally with shell access, the agents can install tools, execute code, and automate anything you could do in a terminal with your explicit permission. It works with any compatible LLM, including open-source ones. Our repo is https://github.com/rowboatlabs/rowboat , and there’s a demo video here: https://youtu.be/cyPBinQzicY For example, you can connect RowboatX to the ElevenLabs MCP server and create a background workflow that produces a No
Why it failed
Claude Code is great, but it’s focused on coding. The missing piece is a native way to build and run custom background agents for non-code tasks. We built RowboatX as a CLI tool modeled after Claude Code that lets you do that. It uses the file system and unix tools to create and
- Kind
- startup
- Status
- Shut down
- Inventor
- segmenta
- Ended
- 2025
- Source
- hackernews