Sim Studio Open-Sourced: Visual AI Agent Workflow Builder

By simstudioai

68AI Score

Executive Summary

Sim Studio has open-sourced its core codebase, offering a unified platform to build, deploy, and manage AI agents and workflows. The tool supports over 1,000 integrations and major LLMs, enabling agent creation via visual interfaces, conversation, or code, with built-in monitoring and knowledge base management.

SOURCE COVERAGEOriginal coverage

Contents10 sections

A workspace to build, deploy and manage AI agents and workflows.

Quickstart

Cloud-hosted: sim.ai

Self-hosted

BASH

npx sim-setup

Desktop: macOS

macOS 12+, Apple Silicon and Intel. See the desktop docs to point it at a self-hosted deployment.

Capabilities

Connect 1,000+ integrations and every major LLM
Add Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Salesforce, databases, and more
Build agents visually, conversationally, or with code
Ingest files, knowledge bases, and structured table data
Monitor runs, logs, schedules, and workflow activity

One workspace, every surface

Chat and workflows are just the start — tables, files, and knowledge all live in the same workspace, in the browser or on your desktop.

Tables — a database, built in

</td> <td width="50%" valign="top"> <img src="apps/sim/public/static/readme-files.png" alt="Files in Sim — documents for your team and every agent" width="100%"/>

Files — one store for your team and every agent

</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="50%" valign="top"> <img src="apps/sim/public/static/readme-knowledge.png" alt="Knowledge bases in Sim — synced docs your agents can search" width="100%"/>

Knowledge — your agents' memory

</td> <td width="50%" valign="top"> <img src="apps/sim/public/static/readme-desktop.png" alt="Sim Desktop — Chat on the left, the built-in browser on the right" width="100%"/>

Desktop — Sim on your Mac, browser and terminal included

</td> </tr> </table>

Self-hosting

Requirements: Node.js 20+ and Docker.

npx sim-setup is an interactive wizard that creates a small sim/ deployment directory, provisions the database, generates secrets, writes .env, connects a Chat API key, and starts the published Sim images with Docker Compose. It does not clone the repository.

When it finishes, open http://localhost.

Inside a cloned Sim repository, run bun run sim-setup to unlock the source-only local development and Kubernetes modes.

Reconfigure an optional capability without rerunning the full wizard:

BASH

npx sim-setup config
npx sim-setup add email
npx sim-setup add storage
npx sim-setup add sandbox
npx sim-setup add jobs
npx sim-setup add cache
npx sim-setup add knowledge
npx sim-setup add chat
npx sim-setup add llm
npx sim-setup add integration slack

npx sim-setup config detects the effective local-dev, Docker Compose, or current-context Helm configuration and reports configured, missing, or invalid capabilities and OAuth integrations without printing credential values. This is separate from npx sim-setup status, which reports whether installed services are running and healthy.

Manage your install from its directory:

BASH

npx sim-setup start | stop | restart   # bring your install up / down / cycle
npx sim-setup update                   # pull and apply Compose images
npx sim-setup status                   # what's installed and healthy
npx sim-setup logs                     # follow logs
npx sim-setup doctor                   # diagnose configuration problems
npx sim-setup down                     # remove containers (data kept)
npx sim-setup reset                    # archive .env and wipe managed data

The setup package detects how you're running and acts accordingly. Use --dir <path> to create or manage a deployment somewhere other than ./sim.

Sim also supports local models via Ollama and vLLM. See the self-hosting docs for details.

Chat API Keys

Chat is a Sim-managed service. npx sim-setup connects a Chat API key for you — sign in when it opens your browser and the key is stored automatically. To view, create, or revoke keys later, go to sim.ai/selfhost/settings/chat-keys.

Environment Variables

See the environment variables reference for the full list, or apps/sim/.env.example for defaults.

Tech Stack

<details> <summary>Next.js · Bun · PostgreSQL · Drizzle · Better Auth · Tailwind — and the rest of the stack</summary>

Framework: Next.js (App Router)
Runtime: Bun
Database: PostgreSQL with Drizzle ORM
Authentication: Better Auth
Schema Validation: Zod
UI: Shadcn, Tailwind CSS
Streaming Markdown: Streamdown
State Management: Zustand, TanStack Query
Flow Editor: ReactFlow
Docs: Fumadocs
Monorepo: Turborepo
Realtime: Socket.io
Background Jobs: Trigger.dev
Remote Code Execution: E2B
Isolated Code Execution: isolated-vm

</details>