Nicheloom

Market intelligence for builders — see what's gaining traction before it's crowded.

SymDerive

A functional, stateless symbolic math library

Details

External ID
46842711
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
—
Website domain
—
Launched
Feb. 1, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
26
Upvotes percentile
0.7284366576819407
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Description

Hey HN,I’m a physicist turned quant. Some friends and I 'built' SymDerive because we wanted a symbolic math library that was "Agent-Native" by design, but still a practical tool for humans.It boils down to two main goals:1. Agent Reliability: I’ve found that AI agents write much more reliable code when they stick to stateless, functional pipelines (Lisp-style). It keeps them from hallucinating state changes or getting lost in long procedural scripts. I wanted a library that enforces that "Input -> Transform -> Output" flow by default.2. Easing the transition to Python: For many physicists, Mathematica is the native tongue. I wanted a way to ease that transition—providing a bridge that keeps the familiar syntax (CamelCase, Sin, Integrate) while strictly using the Python scientific stack under the hood.What I built: It’s a functional wrapper around the standard stack (SymPy, PySR, CVXPY) that works as a standalone engine for anyone—human or agent—who prefers a pipe-based workflow. # The "Pipe" approach (Cleaner for agents, readable for humans) result = ( Pipe((x + 1)**3) .then(Expand) .then(Simplify) .value ) The "Vibes" features:Wolfram Syntax: Integrate, Det, Solve. If you know the math, you know the API.Modular: The heavy stuff (Symbolic Regression, Convex Optimization) are optional installs ([regression], [optimize]). It won’t bloat your venv unless you ask it to.Physics stuff: I added tools I actually use—abstract index notation for GR, Kramers-Kronig for causal models, etc.It’s definitely opinionated, but if you’re building agents to do rigorous math, or just want a familiar functional interface for your own research, this might help.I have found that orchestrators (Claude Code, etc) are fairly good at learning the tools and sending tasks to the right persona, we have been surprised by how well it has worked.Repo here: https://github.com/closedform/deriverI will cry if roasted too hard

Enrichment

Theme
scientific computing and deep tech tools
Vertical
Horizontal
Function
Dev tools
Audience
Developer
AI stance
Not AI
Project type
Hobby / open-source project
Normalized one-liner
symbolic mathematics library
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

Partial Basic symbolic parsing is straightforward, but creating a complete, mathematically sound computer algebra system (CAS) requires deep expertise in mathematical algorithms and algebraic simplification routines.

What it would actually take: A robust symbolic math engine requires building an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) representation for mathematical expressions, implementing canonical expression rewriting, term-rewriting systems, pattern matching, and algorithms like Risch integration or Gröbner bases. The hardest challenges are preventing expression bloat, guaranteeing termination in simplification passes, and formal mathematical correctness without relying on bulky mutable dependencies like SymPy. This requires domain expertise in computational mathematics, compiler design, and formal verification.

Discussion

14 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: xACT (tensor pattern specifications), SymPy (symbolic math library), Mathematica (tensor simplification)

Concerns raised: Import ambiguity and barrier to entry when mixing snippets from multiple packages, Using `from X import *` violates Python best practices and PEP guidelines, Lack of rigorous performance benchmarking for Pipe approach vs standard SymPy style, Complex tensor expression simplification for GR/hydrodynamics not fully detailed

Feature requests: Integrate xACT's symmetry/antisymmetry pattern specifications for tensors, Better documentation on simplification of complex tensor expressions

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 284 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #96 of 285 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 93 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product

Same idea, different domain

Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.