Axe – A 12MB binary that replaces your AI framework
Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.
Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.
I built Axe because I got tired of every AI tool trying to be a chatbot.Most frameworks want a long-lived session with a massive context window doing everything at once. That's expensive, slow, and fragile. Good software is small, focused, and composable... AI agents should be too.Axe treats LLM agents like Unix programs. Each agent is a TOML config with a focused job. Such as code reviewer, log analyzer, commit message writer. You can run them from the CLI, pipe data in, get results out. You can use pipes to chain them together. Or trigger from cron, git hooks, CI.What Axe is:- 12MB binary, two dependencies. no framework, no Python, no Docker (unless you want it)- Stdin piping, something like `git diff | axe run reviewer` just works- Sub-agent delegation. Where agents call other agents via tool use, depth-limited- Persistent memory. If you want, agents can remember across runs without you managing state- MCP support. Axe can connect any MCP server to your agents- Built-in tools. Such as web_search and url_fetch out of the box- Multi-provider. Bring what you love to use.. Anthropic, OpenAI, Ollama, or anything in models.dev format- Path-sandboxed file ops. Keeps agents locked to a working directoryWritten in Go. No daemon, no GUI.What would you automate first?
HN · launched Mar 12, 2026 · 227 upvotes (top 3%) · 0 views
Niche: ai agent development platforms · 598 launches, 24 in the last 7 days ▼ -23% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- AI-native
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 598 launches in ai agent development platforms →
Could you build this?
Yes A lightweight standalone CLI tool in Go or Rust that compiles down to a small binary to execute structured LLM prompt pipelines is straightforward to build with AI assistance.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: crabtalk.ai (daemon + commands architecture), Axe (stateless CLI pipes), nanobot (agent framework)
Concerns raised: nanobot stability issues (v0.1.4.post4, regressions between updates), State persistence and chaining with depth-limited agents, Prompt injection and behavioral drift attack surface, Data consistency across runs with multiple agent interactions, Agent guardrails and preventing unintended behavior
Feature requests: Security primitives and guardrails at the framework layer, Better documentation/blog content for SEO, Public repository access to tiny-agents project
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 703 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #50 of 704 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 134 days after the earliest competitor.
- AX by Google · ph · 2026-09-22 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- Axe · hn · 2025-11-24 · 16 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Running AI agents across environments needs a proper solution · hn · 2026-03-24 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Clawbernetes · hn · 2026-02-20 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- I built an OS that is pure AI · hn · 2026-03-28 · 34 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Axeon · ph · 2026-10-21 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Dumped Wix for an AI Edge agent so I never have to hire junior staff · hn · 2026-03-19 · 20 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- We built a <60ms, open-source alternative to E2B using RustVMM and KVM · hn · 2026-04-22 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.47
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.