Hi everyone,
I have some bitter sweet news to share with all of you: We have decided to de-prioritise building our mobile responsive app builder (Anvil) in favor of helping teams build custom AI agents that streamline internal operations.
Last year, we were incredibly excited to announce Anvil, our responsive mobile layout builder aimed at making internal applications more accessible on every device. We've since made significant progress, but I know we've been quiet about it lately, and many of you have reached out for an update.
While building Anvil, we learned a lot about the challenges teams face when designing responsive internal tools. As we delved deeper, it became clear that squeezing complex dashboards, forms, charts, and tables onto small screens—even when responsive—often led to cumbersome user experiences. Simply put, responsive layouts alone weren't fully solving the accessibility and usability issues many developers faced.
Meanwhile, the rise of AI significantly changed our perspective on internal tool design. We realized that an AI-powered chat interface could dramatically simplify how users interact with their data, especially on mobile and smaller screens. Instead of navigating crowded layouts, users could intuitively ask questions, update data, or trigger workflows through a simple conversational interface. And when visual context is necessary, chat can still seamlessly integrate custom UI elements like tables, charts, and forms—providing clarity without complexity.
This insight was transformative. It led us to pivot from purely responsive layout building to something we now see as the true future of internal tools: AI-powered conversational agents.
Today, I'm thrilled to announce the launch of our new platform: agents.appsmith.com. Built on the strong foundations of Anvil, our agent builder helps you quickly create responsive, AI-powered chat interfaces. These agents can connect directly to your internal data and allow users to perform tasks efficiently through conversation, supported by custom UI components when needed.
We understand that some of you eagerly anticipated Anvil’s standalone launch, and we're deeply grateful for your patience and support. Our decision to shift gears wasn't taken lightly—we genuinely believe AI-driven conversations will make internal tools not just responsive, but truly accessible and user-friendly for everyone.
Thank you for being part of our journey. I invite you all to explore agents.appsmith.com and experience firsthand how AI agents can revolutionize your internal tools.
As always, I'm here to listen and eager to hear your thoughts.
Warm regards,
Nikhil
Chief Product Officer, Appsmith
So you are deprioritizing GUI authoring, which is your bread and butter, in favor of AI chatbots, which hundreds of other companies are doing, most of which will always do it better than you? I'd love some better clarity as to why this is better for me as a customer, or any significant set of customers?
Hello,
We are continuing to invest in our existing GUI editor and there are many exciting new features like UI packages & 15 new integrations being rolled out! We decided to pause our work on a mobile responsive builder to prioritise a chat interface that uses LLMs. Appsmith at it's core has always been about simplifying the building of tools for internal operations and we see that agents will play a pivotal role in this. While there are a lot of companies providing options to build AI agents, our focus is to reduce the amount of code required to do this for internal operations. Appsmith agents is one of the few products that can connect to any of your internal APIs and databases, create complex multi-step workflows with humans in the loop and can work inside your existing SAAS and internal tools so that users do not have to context switch. Would love for you to try it out and let us know what you think!