How We Built a Visual AI Workflow Builder — Lessons from Connecting Gemini, OpenAI, and Grok in One Canvas

We built NODLES -- a visual AI workflow builder where you drag nodes onto a canvas, connect multiple AI providers into a single pipeline, and execute everything with one click. No glue code. No SDK juggling. Just a graph you can see and reason about. This post covers what we learned building it: the architecture decisions that worked, the multi-provider challenges that almost broke us, and why we chose BYOK (Bring Your Own Keys) as our business model instead of charging per generation.