How this translates in the application is through features like allowing for custom tool calling with code execution, JSON schema input for response format, etc. I'd love to hear your thoughts using Sim Studio - let us know how we compare to the other workflow builders!
In my experience so far it's not just complicated, but effectively impossible. I struggle to get a single agent to reliably & consistently use tools, and adding n+1 agents is a error multiplier.
Do you mind elaborating on what differentiates Sim Studio from n8n, Flowise, RAGFlow and other open source flow based AI automation platforms?
For instance, n8n has a "memory" parameter, which is not an inherent parameter of LLMs. You can inject your agent's memories into the agent message history (or system prompt) - which is the most common scenario - but we give you control over that. We want to provide visibility, so everything that's exposed on the workflow canvas is exactly what's being executed in the background. Also, we think it's faster and more intuitive to get your workflow up and running in Sim Studio. I'd love your feedback, though! What do you think?
If I run Sim Studio with docker compose, how do I point it to the existing `ollama serve` instance running on the host?
I looked in settings (in the workspace UI) but don't see anywhere to configure the ollama endpoint.
for ollama running on your host machine, you'll need to modify the docker configuration since by default it's looking at http://localhost:11434 which points to localhost inside the container, not your host. you can either add `extra_hosts` as `host.docker.internal:host-gateway` to your docker compose and set the OLLAMA_HOST envvar to `OLLAMA_HOST=http://host.docker.internal:11434`, or just run `docker compose up --profile local-cpu -d --build --network=host` when running the compose command.
will add this to the readme and add in some UI locally so its easily configurable! let me know if you have any issues
...
services:
simstudio:
build:
context: .
dockerfile: Dockerfile
ports:
- "3000:3000"
volumes:
- ./sim:/app
- /app/node_modules
- /app/.next
extra_hosts:
- "host.docker.internal:host-gateway"
environment:
- OLLAMA_HOST=http://host.docker.internal:11434
- NODE_ENV=development
- DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:postgres@db:5432/simstudio
...
Then I went to localhost:3000/w/
Then I added an Agent block. I expected ollama (or my ollama models) to show up in the drop-down, but I only see the hosted models.
I even tried editing `sim/providers/ollama/index.ts`:
const OLLAMA_HOST = 'http://host.docker.internal:11434'
(BTW I did NOT run `--profile local-cpu` because I didn't want to run ollama in a docker container, as it's already running on the host.)
simstudio-1 | [2025-04-29T03:41:12.195Z] [INFO] [OllamaStore] Updating Ollama models {
simstudio-1 | "models": [
simstudio-1 | "hf.co/bartowski/Qwen_Qwen3-32B-GGUF:latest",
simstudio-1 | "qwen3:30b-a3b-q4_K_M",
simstudio-1 | "gemma3:12b-it-qat",
simstudio-1 | "gemma3:4b-it-q4_K_M",
simstudio-1 | "nomic-embed-text:latest"
simstudio-1 | ]
simstudio-1 | }
simstudio-1 | [2025-04-29T03:41:12.195Z] [INFO] [ProviderUtils] Updated Ollama provider models {
simstudio-1 | "models": [
simstudio-1 | "hf.co/bartowski/Qwen_Qwen3-32B-GGUF:latest",
simstudio-1 | "qwen3:30b-a3b-q4_K_M",
simstudio-1 | "gemma3:12b-it-qat",
simstudio-1 | "gemma3:4b-it-q4_K_M",
simstudio-1 | "nomic-embed-text:latest"
simstudio-1 | ]
simstudio-1 | }
- the models from my local ollama show up in the logs, and
- the models don't show up in the model drop-down in the Agent block.
AFAICT the only impact of `--profile local-cpu` is starting a docker container with ollama running.
Quick glance at GitHub suggests that GitHub package for the Docker image is missing, let me know if you need help with that — happy to contribute!
I’m conflicted because n8n does feel like the right level of abstraction but the UI and dated JS runtime environment are horrible. I don’t really want to write my own memory functionality for my AI agents but wondering if it’s worth it just to have a nicer UI and more modern JS env.
This space is REALLY struggling to graduate from Gradio-like design sensibilities.
That being said, I'm looking forward to playing with this, congrats on the launch!
I have been looking for a good solution in this increasingly crowded space and if I could offer a word of unsolicited advice it would be to ensure documentation is top notch, truthful (some competitors mention non-existent features in their docs), and includes a relatively detailed roadmap.
Good luck with Sim Studio. I may try it out in a few weeks!
Right now my solution is to build extensions that I can manually start on my browser. But using extensions to gather and export data + maintaining them is a bit of a pain