Explore LangFlow - Low Code AI Agents

LangFlow is a low-code AI agent builder that allows you to create AI agents with ease. It's a powerful tool that allows you to create AI agents with ease.

Quick Start

There's two options to start with LangFlow. First is to self-host LangFlow on your own server or local machine. The second is to use the hosted version of LangFlow. We'll go through both options in this guide.

Self-hosting LangFlow

To self-host LangFlow, you can follow the instructions on the LangFlow Documentation (opens in a new tab). It's pretty straightforward and you can have LangFlow running in minutes. You just need to:

1. Install LangFlow with uv

uv pip install langflow

2. Run LangFlow with uv

uv run langflow run

You can now access LangFlow at http://127.0.0.1:7860. There's also another way to install LangFlow that you can check in the LangFlow Documentation (opens in a new tab).

Using the hosted version of LangFlow

To use the hosted version of LangFlow, you can go to the LangFlow website (opens in a new tab) and sign up for an account.

Explore LangFlow Features

I have no idea what features are available in LangFlow, I just know that LangFlow is a low-code AI agent builder. That's it! And this is my first experience to try AI agent builder.

I'm going to try to explore the features of LangFlow and see how it works.

Create "Flow"

Flow is the main concept in LangFlow. It's a collection of nodes that are connected together to form a flow. You can create a flow by clicking on the "Create Flow" button in the LangFlow dashboard. There's plenty of templates to choose from and you can also create your own flow from scratch.

For now, I'm going to use "Blog Writer" template.

While looking at the "Flow", it's similar to automation tools like Zapier (opens in a new tab) or Make (opens in a new tab). You can create a flow by connecting nodes together, but the difference is that LangFlow uses AI to generate the code for you.

Modifying the Flow

Components are nodes in the flow. There are default components that are already created for you, also there are third-party components called "bundles". I tried to change OpenAI component to DeepSeek component. It's pretty easy to do, but finding what the platform could do it took me about 10 minutes.

Run the Flow

After modifying the flow, I tried to run the flow. However, coindentaly the DeepSeek is currently down.

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I wonder there's a way in the LangFlow to handle this situation, like having a fallback to another provider or something. If I tried to run the flow, the platform is always stuck at "Running" state.

Then, I changed the model to Anthropic, and it's working.

The flow is generating the blog post, the quality is the same as the model did it as usual. The only difference is the LangFlow is giving the refernce from the article we gave.

Try advanced use case: Writing a blog post with Twitter/X reference

Now, I'm going to try to use the LangFlow to generate a blog post with a specific topic. I'm going to use the "Blog Writer" template again but now the refernce is coming from Twitter/X. Twitter/X is hard to scrape, so I want to know if LangFlow can handle this.

Then, here's what happened when I tried to run the flow.

LangFlow is not able to generate the blog post from Twitter/X. Scraping Twitter/X is hard, do it manually is a pain in the ass. Won't be surprised if LangFlow can not do it.

Try advanced use case: Analyzing an email and generating a summary

Previously, I have tried to build a tool to analyze an email and generate a summary without low-code AI agent builder. It's struggled to auth the email. I hope LangFlow can do it better.

After 1 hour of trying, it's difficult to get the email working. I hard to understand how to use the Gmail Loader component. There's no documentation that I can follow.

Manage-hosted LangFlow (DataStax) Limitations

While trying the manage-hosted LangFlow (DataStax), I found some limitations.

1. Some components are not available. While I was trying to change the OpenAI component to DeepSeek component, I found that DeepSeek component is not available, but it's available in the self-hosted version of LangFlow.

Conclusion

LangFlow is not perfect & fit for everyone. It's a low-code AI agent builder, but it's not easy to use even for me who already have experience with coding.

I'm not sure if LangFlow is a good fit for you, but it's worth to try it out.