Re: Modeler (modest) ambition

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Sounds great, I love these ideas!

On Mon, Apr 20, 2026 at 9:24=E2=80=AFAM Andrus Adamchik <[email protected]=
m> wrote:

> So I feel like the advent of agentic coding opens up new possibilities fo=
r
> CayenneModeler. While some want you to think you can simply prompt Claude
> to "Rewrite CayenneModeler in JavaFX" (or Electron or JetBrains Compose
> Multiplatform), still with our limited resources, building and supporting
> an entirely new thing is realistically out of reach.
>
> But I think we can take the current Swing app to a new level by augmentin=
g
> our rusty Swing skills with AI. A few of my experiments adding this or th=
at
> UI piece were mostly successful. A few idea on top of my mind:
>
> 1. A built-in MCP server for DB Import and CGen. This is to close the loo=
p
> on agentic coding, allowing to use both of these tools from an agent CLI.
> (The MCP idea was what prompted me to look into this to begin with)
> 2. Fix table editors UX (selections conflicting with cell editors)
> 3. Write unit tests
> 4. Modernizing L&F. Not sure how far we can get while staying in Swing,
> but worth a try. Looking at FlatLaf lib, which is a successor of JGoodies
> that we already use
> 5. Implement dozens of small usability features (such as showing currentl=
y
> selected Obj|DbEntity in tab view headers, etc.)
>
> My first pass (about 70% done) was not anything visual, but rather
> refactoring the existing messy code to rid it of various architectural
> experiments accumulated over the years (such as auto-bindings) and unifyi=
ng
> the MVC structure to be as close as possible to vanilla Swing. Ironically=
,
> Claude was not that helpful in this process. It was good old IDE
> refactoring, manually going through hundreds of files chasing dead code a=
nd
> inconsistencies.
>
> Anyways, just putting this on the radar.
>
> Andrus

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