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oveja 11 hours ago [-]
For those confused like I was, RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation.
polonbike 15 hours ago [-]
Congrats on the launch. One complaint: RPA this, non-RPA that, but you never explain what it means. I would write down the acronym fully once at the first mention on the landing page.
sheepscreek 6 hours ago [-]
I think their target audience is medium to large enterprises. The biggest tell tale sign of that is a missing Pricing page.
Most of these customers would already know the meaning of RPA, if they are researching companies for it. In a way, it self qualifies their leads into higher quality ones, that are more likely to convert.
vasco 2 hours ago [-]
Their target audience here is random HN readers though.
fchishtie 15 hours ago [-]
Thank you!! Yeah that's a good point - it's been so engrained in our brains, appreciate the feedback
ai_slop_hater 4 hours ago [-]
It sounds like they are automating clicking through Windows GUI applications. Pretty pathetic.
absk82 8 hours ago [-]
The underlying mechanism is different from something like computer use? Where can I find more details about how it works ?
fchishtie 6 hours ago [-]
the underlying automations that are running on the Windows computers are just python scripts actually!
throw03172019 13 hours ago [-]
Biggest question is how much of this can be stored / processed on our own infra and with our own lifecycle rules? For example, this can touch a lot of PHI. Screenshots, videos, JSON inputs/outputs etc.
fchishtie 13 hours ago [-]
logs get written in our customers' premises on a bucket of their choosing (: so PHI doesn't leave their VPC
throw03172019 13 hours ago [-]
That’s perfect. Is this documented somewhere? Would love a deep dive on security / setup tweaks for data.
fchishtie 12 hours ago [-]
happy to share more over email! you can reach me at faiz@minicor.com
throw03172019 13 hours ago [-]
Does this only revert back to LLM Vision when it catches an error? I.e once the RPA / workflow is built once, it’s efficient for running multiple times (until it catches an error state)?
fchishtie 13 hours ago [-]
yes effectively, but we use LLM vision in multiple places - for context, there are multiple ways an RPA can fail:
1. RPA code breaks (ex: throws an exception if a window does not exist)
2. RPA reports success but was clicking / typing in the wrong place
3. Underlying system breaks (virtual machine / legacy software)
the skill we have in our MCP is to build the RPA code to throw exceptions where possible so an LLM can understand the context and recover
to avoid false success states we add LLM vision steps in the workflow itself to error out if it sees that the system is in the wrong state
and for the underlying system breaking it can be as simple as having a CRON job that checks the status of the process / the health of the VM and running a script to reboot the system
it depends on the system but the pattern we've seen with RPAs is you can catch maybe 80% of the edge cases in the first week it's been rolled out
dragonsenseiguy 14 hours ago [-]
Small website nitpick: I feel like the "In production with" section's companies logos should be a bit darker, I could barely tell there was something there.
fchishtie 14 hours ago [-]
yes good call out - that customer wheel is so overdue for an update
nthdesign 11 hours ago [-]
Can you compare Minicor to Convey? They seem very similar. We had a product demo of Convey wherein they showed us how you could train the agent to use legacy software using a simple shared screen capture and verbal instructions.
fchishtie 10 hours ago [-]
great question - Minicor doesn’t offer any agents for performing the automation - we focus exclusively on connecting coding agents to the legacy system and using our MCP to build code based automations for doing so at scale - trying to solve the 30% error rate in robotic process automations
mayanksingh09 3 hours ago [-]
Congrats on the launch!
a-dub 14 hours ago [-]
i'm curious: how does the steady state error rate of a stochastic automated system like this compare with the downtime and errors that come from a (brittle) deterministic bridge that can fail with upgrades? what does the observability look like? (i'm guessing one feature is that the execution log including images/screenshots for each transaction gets saved, which is probably a huge improvement.)
fchishtie 13 hours ago [-]
it’s a good q - we experimented a lot with computer use / agentic automation and found that at scale a hybrid solution where the automations run as deterministic code with agents for recovery is the best - running automations as code is faster & cheaper & when you’re doing critical tasks (like updating patient records) you don’t want an agent to potentially mess something up.
previously writing RPA code used to take a long time - using AI (and its infinite patience) we can write more durable code that covers more edge cases
And since they’re code based it’s pretty straightforward to an agents monitor them and update their code when upgrades to the underlying system happen etc…
for observability - we have workflow execution logs that store text, videos and screenshots so an agent or a human can debug them - lots and lots of webhooks when things break ! (:
_crowecawcaw 2 hours ago [-]
I also experimented with vision/screenshot based computer use tools for similar use cases but had inconsistent results. LLMs had trouble getting precise pixel coordinates from a screenshot to move a mouse. And the screenshots took extra tokens. I had a lot more success using accessibility APIs to replace screenshots + input simulation since accessibility data is easier for LLMs to process. The accessibility functionality is now released as a separate library for building automation tooling: https://xa11y.dev/
theaniketmaurya 15 hours ago [-]
Congrats on the launch! Legacy system users are also one of the slowest to adopt AI. How do you navigate that?
mediaman 12 hours ago [-]
I've found that legacy system users (or at least the execs) are pretty excited about AI because they hate their legacy systems but can't really do anything about it (ERP changes are an extreme nightmare, and often no better system exists with all the capability they need). They want to wrap it in AI to automate stuff without changing out the core system.
This seems like a good approach to me, I work with a lot of legacy ERP-using companies in the manufacturing sector and can immediately see how we could put this to use for our customers.
I especially like that it's not doing computer use for everything which so far doesn't really seem to be working, especially outside the browser.
fchishtie 12 hours ago [-]
yeah those core systems of record are so locked in place - I can't even imagine the change management
debarshri 14 hours ago [-]
Legacy system users are also the one who pays the most for tools and services. We sell to enterprise, I can attest to that. If it is relevant usecase and positioning for the market, it should be fine.
fchishtie 14 hours ago [-]
yeah it’s been interesting to watch, we were surprised initially at how much legacy users actually wanted to adopt AI - I think it’s because of how awful the old software can be to interact with
fchishtie 14 hours ago [-]
100% right - we support the AI companies who are selling to the legacy end users - for ex: we don’t sell directly to hospitals, but an AI scribe for doctors that already has a hospital as a customer, we help them integrate to the hospital’s EMR
mingabunga 16 hours ago [-]
Could you use this to test new releases of software for bugs? A bit like TDD but for GUI interactions
fchishtie 15 hours ago [-]
Yes! we have customers doing that
furyman 4 hours ago [-]
Just 1 day ago a person reached out to me making exactly same product. Exactly the same. They were based out of Europe. But it's good to see you got into YC. Congratulations.
fchishtie 4 hours ago [-]
thank you! it’s a cool problem space (:
throw03172019 14 hours ago [-]
So AI companies would install this on their customer (practices) computers?
fchishtie 14 hours ago [-]
Yes, more likely on a virtual machine running the legacy software
throw03172019 14 hours ago [-]
Thanks. Most practices are not tech savvy. So how would the VM setup work in their own network / machines?
fchishtie 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah that’s true - in those cases we’ve either worked with their outsourced IT provider to spin up VMs for us or have had to spin up our own VM and connect through a VPN - IT can be very fun…
ilundin 13 hours ago [-]
Is the cloud LLM the judge based on screenshots with patient/customer data included ? That seems like a no-go for many countries given privacy concerns ?
fchishtie 13 hours ago [-]
No patient/customer data included in the screenshots - in production we’d basically find some “region” of the screen to screenshot that would help an LLM say yes/no to - ex: “is the nav bar green and does it say Insert Note”
ilundin 13 hours ago [-]
Ok, that seems doable if working perfect, but what is the tool output "i can see the patient list with search functionality and 30 patients" thing in the demo ? Is this not vision detected ? Or are you digging into windows api (making non standard windows components/widgets non working)?
fchishtie 12 hours ago [-]
ah for the fake EMR demo I was a bit less strict with claude, it was vision detected likely - our MCP has tools for taking screenshots of the screen and inspecting the windows accessibility tree etc
throw03172019 13 hours ago [-]
How does this compare with CyberDesk (also YC)?
fchishtie 13 hours ago [-]
We think CyberDesk is great - our main difference is I believe the primary driver for their automations is computer use / agent based - whereas our automations use agents to create/maintain/support python code
throw03172019 15 hours ago [-]
Please make your trust center public if you are focusing on healthcare AI companies…the footer link is dead.
fchishtie 14 hours ago [-]
Thanks for flagging this!
snozolli 14 hours ago [-]
Computer use agents that run on Windows VMs or in the browser. On-premise, cloud
I’ve never heard a customer say “on-premises” when talking about servers they run. On-premise is usually the term regardless if it is “correct”.
snozolli 13 hours ago [-]
54% of Americans read below a 6th grade level. People word-mash "alot", "atleast", and now "eachother" all the time. Sports commentators use verse when they mean versus.
I'm not suggesting that you correct your customers, but there's no reason to sink to the lowest common denominator when writing.
fchishtie 14 hours ago [-]
thank you - good catch (:
kul 11 hours ago [-]
congrats on launch!
fchishtie 11 hours ago [-]
thank you!
Boussettah 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
alexschose 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Boxxed 16 hours ago [-]
What the deuce is an "RPA"?
sakin 15 hours ago [-]
Its an acronym for Robotic Process Automation.
It usually means triggering mouse clicks and key stokes to perform tasks
fchishtie 16 hours ago [-]
It's a script that simulates clicks/keystrokes on Desktop/Web
Most of these customers would already know the meaning of RPA, if they are researching companies for it. In a way, it self qualifies their leads into higher quality ones, that are more likely to convert.
1. RPA code breaks (ex: throws an exception if a window does not exist) 2. RPA reports success but was clicking / typing in the wrong place 3. Underlying system breaks (virtual machine / legacy software)
the skill we have in our MCP is to build the RPA code to throw exceptions where possible so an LLM can understand the context and recover
to avoid false success states we add LLM vision steps in the workflow itself to error out if it sees that the system is in the wrong state
and for the underlying system breaking it can be as simple as having a CRON job that checks the status of the process / the health of the VM and running a script to reboot the system
it depends on the system but the pattern we've seen with RPAs is you can catch maybe 80% of the edge cases in the first week it's been rolled out
previously writing RPA code used to take a long time - using AI (and its infinite patience) we can write more durable code that covers more edge cases
And since they’re code based it’s pretty straightforward to an agents monitor them and update their code when upgrades to the underlying system happen etc…
for observability - we have workflow execution logs that store text, videos and screenshots so an agent or a human can debug them - lots and lots of webhooks when things break ! (:
This seems like a good approach to me, I work with a lot of legacy ERP-using companies in the manufacturing sector and can immediately see how we could put this to use for our customers.
I especially like that it's not doing computer use for everything which so far doesn't really seem to be working, especially outside the browser.
I think you meant premises.
https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/30/premise-premises/
I'm not suggesting that you correct your customers, but there's no reason to sink to the lowest common denominator when writing.