Developer launches mysetup.ai to share AI workflows and tools
A new platform lets engineers publicly document their AI agent setups, sparking debate over security, barrier to entry, and whether sharing workflows helps or hurts in a competitive AI landscape.
What to know
- steveybrown launched mysetup.ai to create a community hub for engineers to share their AI agent configurations, tools, and workflows, responding to fragmented posts across social media.
- A vocal segment of the Hacker News community resists sharing setups via the platform, citing security concerns about MCP credential requirements, privacy fears, and the principle that proprietary workflows now represent competitive advantage.
- The creator responded to friction by clarifying that manual, non-MCP contributions are optional and updating the site to make them more prominent.
- Early adopters and platform supporters want aggregated analytics, trend histograms, and API access to monitor how developers work with AI tools, though participation remains limited.
The dispute Whether the friction and credential requirements of the platform outweigh the value of shared knowledge—and whether sharing proprietary workflows helps or harms individual developers' competitiveness. · positions read across 24 posts and comments
Sharing AI workflows helps the community learn; site should lower barriers and add analytics.
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“Interesting to see how many people are spinning up custom workflows and factory-type patterns…Would love to see this collated into a regular survey to pick out trends.”
garethsprice · Hacker News ↗
The credential and MCP requirements are a security risk and usability barrier.
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“There is no way in hell I'm connecting to some arbitrary MCP server and connecting my Github account to it. Noppppeeeee.”
vegadw · Hacker News ↗
Sharing proprietary workflows reduces job security and competitive advantage in an AI-driven market.
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“In the age of AI, developer productivity and job security will involve your proprietary workflow. It no longer makes sense to share your knowledge with the world. I'd highly advise people don't do this.”
hackmack10 · Hacker News ↗
The site's prompting users to share costs and tool choices is useful for discovering what works.
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“It'd be useful to see 'approx monthly cost' or something similar. I love seeing other people's setups…”
OtherShrezzing · Hacker News ↗
steveybrown Founder of mysetup.aivegadw HN commenter, AI userhackmack10 20-year industry veteran, HN commentergarethsprice mysetup.ai userniccl HN commenter
How it unfolded 6 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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background
Community requests aggregated insights and cost transparency — Commenters express interest in trend analysis across shared setups—histograms of tool popularity, cost breakdowns, and API/feed access so their own agents can monitor the platform. One user notes seeing setups costing $400+ monthly and wishes that were more transparent upfront.
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Early adopters share setups and praise knowledge-sharing opportunity
A handful of users have already posted their setups to the site, describing them with screenshots, token/sec benchmarks, and monthly costs. They express enthusiasm for seeing how others organize their workflows and hope the platform collects useful trend data over time.
“Interesting to see how many people are spinning up custom workflows and factory-type patterns that run alongside AI coding tools (myself included).”
— garethsprice -
It’s called Autobot, it’s designed to get as close as I could reasonably get to a real world Iron Man Jarvis.WHAT IT DOESOSS/MIT Harness that helps agentic tasks run for up to 4 days using without performance degradation. Designed to work really well in native, conversational voice mode. Does a good job with knowledge work, managing computer use…
2 more of the top 3 · 10 posts in this stretch
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Well, not a dev here, so my primitive setup is to have an alias in my .bashrc that launches firefox with the prompt added to the Google AI mode, so all I have to do is Super+T (terminal), type 'ai' followed by my query. For laughs, this also allows to bake in response styles: query="$*" base="Respond like Dr. House, do not hold back the…
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Nice idea. https://mysetup.ai/u/gareth - tried to include useful hints for others (screenshots, token/sec results, monthly costs, etc).Interesting to see how many people are spinning up custom workflows and factory-type patterns that run alongside AI coding tools (myself included).Would love to see this collated into a regular survey to pick out…
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Users request markdown-based sharing and lower-friction alternatives
Commenters propose simpler ways to contribute, such as posting markdown summaries instead of connecting accounts, or point to existing alternatives like public GitHub repos. One user notes they already share their Pi setup via GitHub rather than using the site.
“So I have to connect over MCP or log into github through the page to share anything? How about being able to post a markdown summary of my setup instead of plugging my credentials and tools into a third party site?”
— selicos -
So I have to connect over MCP or log into github through the page to share anything? How about being able to post a markdown summary of my setup instead of plugging my credentials and tools into a third party site?Strix HALO 128gb - Framework mainboard in a custom SFF PC. Just moved from Ubuntu to Fedora 44. Using: LM Studio (primary), Lemonade…
2 more of the top 3 · 6 posts in this stretch
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Locking this to X accounts destroys nearly all of the value for me, because the data is limited to only setups from people who are still using X. Given how overtly authoritarian and hateful the general rhetoric is on that site, this narrows it down to only a specific kind of person's setup. Given the context of what X is, one can largely assume…
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This is so complicated, I would have to install mcp-adapter to Pi etc. I just have a public github repo with my Pi setup
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Creator updates site to highlight manual contribution option
steveybrown responds to criticism that MCP is a barrier to entry, clarifying that manual contributions are optional and updating the site to make them more prominent. The change acknowledges community friction over the technical requirements.
“Fair point, MCP contribution was always optional, although not obvious. I've updated it to make manual contributions outside of MCP more prominent…”
— steveybrown -
Do you plan to synthesize the data and show top 2 Popular setups? This would be for newbies who want to start with a powerful setup, and for those looking to discover new tools. Thanks!
2 more of the top 3 · 3 posts in this stretch
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Fair point, MCP contribution was always optional, although not obvious. I've updated it to make manual contributions outside of MCP more prominent
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I stopped reading after "Ask them on X", but contribution by MCP just compounds on the issue.
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Developers question competitive advantage of sharing setups publicly
A 20-year industry veteran argues that in an AI-driven landscape, proprietary workflows have become a form of job security and competitive differentiation, making public sharing of setups counterproductive. Other commenters echo skepticism about why one would expose their workflow details.
“In the age of AI, developer productivity and job security will involve your proprietary workflow. It no longer makes sense to share your knowledge with the world.”
— hackmack10 -
As always with smallish tools/services like these whipped up with an LLM, I find there's more value in seeing the "source code", i.e. the prompt itself.Turns out it's quite useful in this instance, and I just made a small couple of tweaks to get a summary of my own workflow.FWIW, this is what I modified it to:Help me share how I work with AI with…
2 more of the top 3 · 3 posts in this stretch
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Agree. I was going to type in my setup, but no way I'm touching the instructions on https://mysetup.ai/connect. Also I don't use Codex, Claude, or Pi.
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It'd be useful to see "approx monthly cost" or something similar. I love seeing other people's setups, but the first post I clicked on describes at least $400/mo in subscription plans.
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Critics raise security and credential concerns about MCP requirement
Hacker News commenters push back on the platform's reliance on MCP (Model Context Protocol) connections and GitHub authentication to contribute. Multiple users express reluctance to grant the site access to their credentials, with some questioning whether the barrier to entry makes the platform self-selective.
“There is no way in hell I'm connecting to some arbitrary MCP server and connecting my Github account to it. Noppppeeeee.”
— vegadw -
This feels self-selective to how some people work, because it requires using MCP to contribute.I'm a reasonably heavy AI user, and have some custom skills/MCP servers I'd share, but there is no way in hell I'm connecting to some arbitrary MCP server and connecting my Github account to it. Noppppeeeee.
1 more of the top 2 · 2 posts in this stretch
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I was immediately hoping for some local-AI setups that do real work, on limited resources. Unfortunately it looks like this is still waiting on more people to share.
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steveybrown launches mysetup.ai for sharing AI workflows
Developer steveybrown releases mysetup.ai, a platform designed to let engineers share and discover how others work with AI agents, tools, and orchestration setups. The creator was inspired by seeing fragmented posts about AI builds across social media and wanted a dedicated space for detailed, comparable setups.
“I wanted a dedicated space to see the tools, workflows and systems behind how others build. And somewhere to keep my own setup up to date and easy to share with my friends and colleagues.”
— steveybrown -
first by HN Frontpage, 10d ago
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What people are saying 10 voices from 1 site · best of 24 · verbatim
- Will the platform gain critical mass of shared setups to make trend analysis and benchmarking useful?
- Can manual, low-friction contribution options overcome the initial MCP barrier?
- In a competitive AI labor market, does public sharing of workflows actually undermine individual job security?
- Sep 22
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quite interesting but i don't see a proper ranking of whose setups are better reviewed or popular?
- Sep 17
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Can anyone recommend a setup for a 4090 + 32gb ram that will be at least somewhat similar to the experience of Claude code?
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"Explore this setup with your agent →" : No, No. I'll never point my AI to an unknownn, prepared place just to explore it. This link should be flagged.
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I use almost zero MCP servers. I do vibe a bunch of custom CLI tools with minimal access to do the things that support my workflows. Been happily integrating with all-the-things, while my companies MCP server connectivity changes daily based on security posture and firewall configs, etc....
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I use $20 cursor plan and use the agent UI for prompts, jetbrains ide for general file browsing + reviewing diffs. This has been my sweet spot to maintain understanding while still leveraging LLM benefits.
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I'd love to see some sort of histogram of different styles of AI usage for coding: how many people just use Chat v Claude v something fancy that I don't know about v something even fancier that I don't know about v ...And if there were a dimension of day-job v personal use, I'd be even happierDoes anyone know if such a thing exists
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Wait, why can't you search by tool instead? It's just people-first? Cool idea but try harder for your v1!
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Nice project!Here’s my setup: https://mysetup.ai/u/katspaughMostly vanilla Claude but inside a VM.
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My local setup: I begrudgingly open `claude` on a terminal, hate it for 8 hours, then turn off my computer and forget it exists. Rinse and repeat
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20 year industry vet here. Yeah, no thank you. In the age of AI, developer productivity and job security will involve your proprietary workflow. It no longer makes sense to share your knowledge with the world.I'd highly advise people don't do this.