KNIME and Coding Agents

KNIME Analytics Platform
1

Hi there, I’ve been a long-time user of KNIME. In the last couple of months, as I’ve begun using coding agents more and more (Claude Code and Codex in particular), I’m finding I’m using KNIME less and less. I can rapidly develop tools using Python, and KNIME’s structure and dependencies don’t appear to work easily with coding agents.

That said, I really think there are some specific use cases where building low-code solutions with KNIME — like ETL (my use case involves a lot of customer lists and CRM data) — work really well. The ability to step through workflows gives so much more transparency on what is happening.

My question is: has anyone, inside or outside KNIME, had success using coding agents with KNIME? I just haven’t been able to get the two tools to work together. I love KNIME, but the time it takes to build workflows by hand is causing me to lean more on Python than KNIME. Simply put, the pace of productivity has kind of flipped from KNIME low-code to pure code.

Is anyone at KNIME looking at this? Has anyone else had success?

1 Like
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having an LLM / Coding agent building the file/folder structure of Knime workflows isn’t working well yet.
I guess the integration into the Expression nodes is fine.

But, currently it is more or less like this from my point of view:

  1. business users are getting more and more access to Microsofts Copilot and hence can solve their Excel needs within Excel / Power Query / PowerBI.

  2. IT / Infra / DB teams have been coding in the past, then may swapped to Knime for some automation, but are switching back to Python / Java given the recent years of CI/CD, DevOps and coding agents support now.

  3. in between are the people that liked Knime and used it plenty. But exactly as you describe, those face a lot smaller barrier to coding today, and might also be turned off by long outstanding gaps, the new webui, batch execution being separated, poor secrets handling etc.