Launch HN: Manaflow (YC S24) – Automate repetitive office work in tables
Hey HN! We’re Austin, Lawrence, and Wesley from Manaflow (https://manaflow.com). Manaflow is a spreadsheet where each column represents a step instruction of a task and each row represents an AI agent executing a case of the task. With one click, you can execute thousands of tasks involving data retrieval, gluing APIs, and taking actions.

Here’s a video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwaaqjHGkT4

And a live demo: https://manaflow.com/demo

The idea to build an AI automation tool for small-to-mid-sized businesses (SMBs) emerged from our extensive conversations with local managers, directors, and operators. We learned that SMBs are constantly overwhelmed with manual workflows and heavily underutilize technology, especially compared to bigger businesses with teams of engineers.

Witnessing an operations manager show us folders of spreadsheets for his business, we realized that spreadsheets have limited functionality. While spreadsheets can handle data entry and track states manually, you can’t program spreadsheets to connect with other apps, call APIs, read PDFs, search the internet, or take actions.

At heart, operation managers are expert workflow programmers as they direct humans to do tasks. We think that tomorrow’s operation managers will program AI agents in English to perform these tasks instead. The ideal way to execute workflows is not manually operating software tools and spreadsheets, but by merely clicking a button that enables AI agents to handle them end-to-end.

Manaflow’s primary interface is a spreadsheet where each column represents a step in the workflow and each row corresponds to an AI agent executing a task. The workflow powering each spreadsheet is programmed using natural language, allowing non-technical users to describe tasks and steps in plain English, eliminating the need for coding skills. Each spreadsheet has an internal dependency graph to determine the execution order for each column. AI agents assigned to each row execute tasks in parallel, handling processes such as data transformation, API calls, content retrieval, and sending messages. You can watch us build a basic workflow here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbJN7pNb30.

One of our customers uses us to take original videos from Google Drive, watermark them with their logo, and then email the final products to their clients — all in one click of a button. This has cut their 20-hour manual workflow down to 20 minutes, and Manaflow has become a core part of their operations. Here’s a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTTTRrzICVg

Another use case is using Manaflow to enhance customer insight processes by tagging and classifying customer segments based on their interview transcripts. The automated tagging helps quickly sort through interview data and identify customer profiles for driving product development strategies. Here’s a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXEBJTh2i8Y

Manaflow has many built-in tools like oauth connections, RAG for PDFs, web crawling, Google search, and browsing LinkedIn that our customers can use. For example, researchers and consultants use Manaflow to automate the retrieval of key stats & data from fact books, while businesses use us to transform raw invoice documents into structured invoice data. Here’s a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hBcTjuqPFs

ASK: We’re experimenting with two ways to program workflows. 1) Use natural language instructions to build workflows where columns are sorted and executed in the order of a dependency graph, 2) Notion-inspired editor that lets you define Python tools and Manasheet columns for the AI agent to fill out. If you’ve read this far, please revisit https://manaflow.com/demo?beta and let us know what you think! We'd also love to hear your insights and experiences in the workflow automation space!