Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design(github.com)
411 points by sidharthkmenon 19 days ago | 141 comments
tl;dr: Whiteboard is an open-source (MIT) desktop IDE that lets coding agents like Claude Code and Codex draw diagrams, sequence charts, and decision logs on a shared canvas linked directly to your code. Built on a vendored Code OSS fork, it includes a Rust-based semantic AST-aware diff viewer that collapses noise like tests and docs, and lets you click visualizations to jump to the underlying source. It runs against local checkouts; file editing and multi-repo reviews aren't yet supported.
HN Discussion:
  • ↑Enthusiastic praise for the visual approach and streaming diagram technique as trend-setting
  • ~Questions why not build on existing open-source alternatives like C4/likec4
  • ↓Calling something an 'IDE' without file editing capability is a significant contradiction
  • ↓Concerned about LLM hallucinations in generated diagrams reducing trust in the tool
  • ↓Confusion/concern about repository data being uploaded to an authoring server despite 'local' framing