The details on what the architecture of this aren't clear, but I can see that the big feature is deeper integration into the browser.
To me this is an obvious direction for all coding agents to go in. Right now the cursor chrome browser MCP server doesn't work very well, but it's very obvious to me that this is the direction things need to go in.
I'm not sure why focusing on a framework would fundamentally make this any better than the generic approach to getting good context directly from the browser.
I spent a couple of hours last night testing it out.
The login process didn't work well, but it's due to my browser having a seperate container for Github.
I asked it to add a feature using Stimulus.js to my very simple gallery page written in Rails, when you hover over an image in the gallery, it should make an icon appear, and when clicking the icon, a modal should pop-up that allows the user to do cropping.
It picked up on my database models and it produced a very good result, however, it seemed to have issues verifying its solution, it particularly seemed to struggle with "on-hover".
The solution it produced was a lot better than what claude-code produced, and I liked the interface.
I also ended up hitting the limits on the Anthropic API, and it wasn't obvious to me what I should do in that case, but that's likely not the fault of Tidewave, and the Context Window Usage having a maximum of 200.0k also seemed very high, but that probably contributed to me hitting a limit.
This looks promising. I will definitely be giving it a shot. I have been getting pretty good results with Claude Code and Rails for a while now, I'm kind of excited to see how much things can improve with this.
Hi folks! Great to see our work on the front page, and I'm happy to answer questions.
Regarding next steps, we're currently working on React integration, with Python and JavaScript server-side web frameworks coming next. If you're interested, here's our survey/waiting list: https://forms.gle/8MeXwGjpBFDeGNQw9
I would love to have a React Copilot that has access to the console, network logs, the actual html elements, computed styling etc. + my code.
This would be such a game-changer. I am also convinced that monorepos will become the de facto standard, since it is way easier for LLMs to navigate / implement features across the whole stack.
I've been using the tidewave plugin for a bit now, this browser addition seems pretty cool. I'm curious about the pricing though. It says we need to provide our own github copilot or anthropic keys, but there's then a limit on the number on usage before you need to pay.
Is this because data is going through a tidewave server or something, or is it just a way to create a bit of a free trial vs "now you need to pay us"?
As someone who builds AI products and having used agentic coding tools since they came out (often with Rails projects), I don't get this. There was a similar project called Rails MCP Server which said:
> "This Rails MCP Server implements the MCP specification to give AI models access to Rails projects for code analysis, exploration, and assistance."
And again I don't get the value. I can see some slight benefits to having a tight browser integration but I don't think that's worth leaving the IDE / CLI tools and the workflows they bring. You can also use Playwright MCP or just screenshot easily for more context. Claude Code can now run your server in the background and view logs as well. In a perfect world where LLM's can one shot whole features, maybe. But I can't let Claude Code go 10 minutes without it introducing a bad pattern and having to stop it. Reducing that visibility even further with this does not seem like a good combo.
I'm not wanting to tear down others projects either, just giving my perspective. I should try it to see how it does in the wild but the Copilot license or Anthropic API key requirement also deters me as well as having to have a project specific dependency.
Is it safe to say that the Tidewave MCP server will remain FOSS, but anything Tidewave Web related (localhost:4000/tidewave) will be proprietary yet optional?
I've been loving Tidewave MCP since the day it launched and I wish I had that for all my work. I also fight the pain of driving web browsers through the playwright MCP every day, and while it's a huge help, it's also massively slow and kills my context window.
I want these problems solved. But I want them solved in a way that isn't unique to one stack, because I don't have the luxury of sticking to my preferred Elixir stack all the time. I also want them solved in a way that doesn't force me to take a huge backward step in my AI usage by bypassing my all-you-can-eat Max subscription.
The $10 subscription isn't that expensive, but then again, since this isn't a complete solution, it's going to be on top of other subs like Cursor/Max/Phoenix.new etc etc and it becomes death by a thousand cuts.
Maybe I just need to calm down a bit and not look at it as all-or-nothing.
Like, sure, switching to this full-time would be impossible. But maybe as a tool in my toolbox, where I pay $10 and use it once-in-a-while, when I have a tricky thing to do and it's worth me burning $10-20 on API tokens just to unblock me.
I'm just concerned that software development is fast becoming pay-to-play / pay-to-win, and that can quickly lead to chickenization, where prices are carefully titrated to shift most of the value to the tool providers.
We've seen this play out in infrastructure and tooling, and most orgs now "donate" a huge chunk of their profit margins to AWS.
Hard for my team to get excited about this, because we haven't been able to use Tidewave at all, as neither it nor the Rust-based proxy support local HTTPS (which we need for our integrations with several third-party services, e.g. oauth providers).
I just tried it first time.
I was happy when I saw it integrates with GitHub Copilot subscription and then I went ahead with Claude Sonnet 3.7 (from the GitHub Copilot provided models) and made some cool changes to our app.
It would be great to have ability to customize it for other frameworks and languages in the client/server way and headless if possible. Then it can be a part of bigger platforms.
The ability to have access to the context of the code, run tests and edit the code in place, are capabilities I could not even dream about when I started coding.
How Jose manages to see the potential of a technology (Erlang, LLM's) and produce something so elegant and useful is amazing. It has certainly changed my life.
23 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 45.3 ms ] threadTo me this is an obvious direction for all coding agents to go in. Right now the cursor chrome browser MCP server doesn't work very well, but it's very obvious to me that this is the direction things need to go in.
I'm not sure why focusing on a framework would fundamentally make this any better than the generic approach to getting good context directly from the browser.
The login process didn't work well, but it's due to my browser having a seperate container for Github.
I asked it to add a feature using Stimulus.js to my very simple gallery page written in Rails, when you hover over an image in the gallery, it should make an icon appear, and when clicking the icon, a modal should pop-up that allows the user to do cropping.
It picked up on my database models and it produced a very good result, however, it seemed to have issues verifying its solution, it particularly seemed to struggle with "on-hover".
The solution it produced was a lot better than what claude-code produced, and I liked the interface.
I also ended up hitting the limits on the Anthropic API, and it wasn't obvious to me what I should do in that case, but that's likely not the fault of Tidewave, and the Context Window Usage having a maximum of 200.0k also seemed very high, but that probably contributed to me hitting a limit.
Usually only one correct and idiomatic way to do things, and rails in particular really leans on convention over configuration.
Regarding next steps, we're currently working on React integration, with Python and JavaScript server-side web frameworks coming next. If you're interested, here's our survey/waiting list: https://forms.gle/8MeXwGjpBFDeGNQw9
This would be such a game-changer. I am also convinced that monorepos will become the de facto standard, since it is way easier for LLMs to navigate / implement features across the whole stack.
Question: What happens to our data - i.e. the code and context sent to your service?
Is this because data is going through a tidewave server or something, or is it just a way to create a bit of a free trial vs "now you need to pay us"?
> "This Rails MCP Server implements the MCP specification to give AI models access to Rails projects for code analysis, exploration, and assistance."
And again I don't get the value. I can see some slight benefits to having a tight browser integration but I don't think that's worth leaving the IDE / CLI tools and the workflows they bring. You can also use Playwright MCP or just screenshot easily for more context. Claude Code can now run your server in the background and view logs as well. In a perfect world where LLM's can one shot whole features, maybe. But I can't let Claude Code go 10 minutes without it introducing a bad pattern and having to stop it. Reducing that visibility even further with this does not seem like a good combo.
I'm not wanting to tear down others projects either, just giving my perspective. I should try it to see how it does in the wild but the Copilot license or Anthropic API key requirement also deters me as well as having to have a project specific dependency.
<<<< Wave
yet this is Jose Valim we are talking about. creator of Elixir, Plug, contributor in Phoenix and Rails
Guy is a machine https://github.com/josevalim
I believe he will deliver, will check it time to time, interesting approach
I've been loving Tidewave MCP since the day it launched and I wish I had that for all my work. I also fight the pain of driving web browsers through the playwright MCP every day, and while it's a huge help, it's also massively slow and kills my context window.
I want these problems solved. But I want them solved in a way that isn't unique to one stack, because I don't have the luxury of sticking to my preferred Elixir stack all the time. I also want them solved in a way that doesn't force me to take a huge backward step in my AI usage by bypassing my all-you-can-eat Max subscription.
The $10 subscription isn't that expensive, but then again, since this isn't a complete solution, it's going to be on top of other subs like Cursor/Max/Phoenix.new etc etc and it becomes death by a thousand cuts.
Maybe I just need to calm down a bit and not look at it as all-or-nothing.
Like, sure, switching to this full-time would be impossible. But maybe as a tool in my toolbox, where I pay $10 and use it once-in-a-while, when I have a tricky thing to do and it's worth me burning $10-20 on API tokens just to unblock me.
I'm just concerned that software development is fast becoming pay-to-play / pay-to-win, and that can quickly lead to chickenization, where prices are carefully titrated to shift most of the value to the tool providers.
We've seen this play out in infrastructure and tooling, and most orgs now "donate" a huge chunk of their profit margins to AWS.
So far very good.
The ability to have access to the context of the code, run tests and edit the code in place, are capabilities I could not even dream about when I started coding.
How Jose manages to see the potential of a technology (Erlang, LLM's) and produce something so elegant and useful is amazing. It has certainly changed my life.