Evolution of the Muyan Low-Code Platform

Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) is an easy-to-use, highly customizable low-code development platform, and it came about for a particular reason.

Experience Gained at IBM

The story starts with my software delivery work at IBM. Over several years there, I had the chance to take part in many projects for Fortune 500 companies. I gained a lot of experience delivering enterprise applications and ran into many hard problems. Through continuous practice and reflection, I came to a clear and deep understanding of what is really difficult and what really matters in enterprise application delivery.

Along the way, I built deep trust with my clients. They valued the professional skills I showed on projects, my creative approach to solving problems, and my thorough understanding of their business needs. This trust became an important foundation when I later started my own business, and it also provided the first customers and business opportunities.

When I left IBM to start my own company, many Fortune 500 clients chose to keep working with me and entrusted system operations and custom development to my one-person company. This reflected the reputation and credibility I had built in the industry, and it also showed how strongly large enterprises need flexible, efficient and deeply customized development services.

This is the background against which the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) was born.

Early Development

At first, I mainly did custom development based on SpringBoot (opens new window) and Antd (opens new window). During development I ran into many concrete problems: customer requirements changed frequently, deploying and releasing systems was cumbersome, and hand-writing user interfaces took a lot of time and effort. All of this increased development costs and reduced efficiency.

I also came to realize that enterprise application development had long involved a great deal of repetitive work, and that many system patterns and business patterns could be abstracted and reused, including:

• CRUD pages
• Quick search
• Action definitions
• Field linkage
• Lifecycle management
• Scheduled tasks
• Permission control
• Multi-step forms
• Dynamic fields
• Dashboards, and more

Inspired by this, I decided to build, from scratch, a low-code development platform that could flexibly customize all of the above. I envisioned a platform with a modern interface, strong customization capabilities, a metadata-driven architecture and many other features, solving the pain points of the traditional development model.

The First Version

After more than half a year of development, the first version of the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) was completed at the end of 2020. The platform greatly improved development efficiency, cutting development time to between 1/5 and 1/10 of what it had been.

When the first project built on the platform went live at a large multinational client, its IT department was surprised by our development speed and customization capabilities, and even considered the platform comparable to Microsoft Power Apps.

Thanks to the strong delivery and the trust built with this client, we went on to take on application development projects for many of the group's business units.

Introducing AI

In 2023, as GPT took off, we realized that a low-code platform had to treat large AI models as infrastructure to stay competitive. So we brought AI capabilities into the platform at that time, making it possible to use large language models directly in custom logic.

Our AI capabilities were not only meant to improve development efficiency, but also to empower end users. End users of applications built on the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) could benefit from AI directly, and the AI capabilities were completely transparent to them. They did not need to understand the details of AI technology or learn to write complex prompts; they could get the efficiency gains of AI simply by working in the application interface they already knew.

At that time we implemented several AI scenarios, such as generating model and Action definitions from a description, generating the CSV description files of form definitions, and translating interface labels automatically. These scenarios greatly improved development efficiency and laid the foundation for end users to use AI directly in applications.

We will keep exploring how AI can be applied to low-code development and enterprise applications, to bring more value to customers and end users.

Changes in version 1.0

The above describes the history of the 0.x versions. Starting with version 1.0, all built-in AI features of the platform (the LLM_ENGINE logic engine, the smart assistant, automatic generation of models and form definitions, automatic label translation, and AI configuration such as OpenAI / Anthropic) have been removed. When you need a large language model, call its HTTP API directly from the Groovy code of dynamic logic or from a plugin. See Upgrade Notes for details.

Web-Based Business Modeling

In 2024, we introduced the ability to do business modeling directly in the web interface. Business modeling means defining business entities, attributes and relationships visually during development, and it is an important tool for understanding and describing a business.

With web-based business modeling, users can create business models and their fields, including entities, attributes and relationships, directly in the interface. On the backend side, this means that everything from defining business models to developing entire business processes can now be done in the web interface, which greatly lowers the barrier for business people to take part in application development and improves development efficiency.

Dynamic Plugin Mechanism

In the same year, we also added dynamic plugins. Data-driven management means defining and storing every element of an application, including interfaces, logic and data models, as data. Hot loading and hot deployment mean loading and deploying new features dynamically without stopping the running application.

This feature lets developers build business logic on the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) the traditional Java way. With the platform's data-driven management, hot loading and hot deployment, developers get the flexibility of traditional development together with the convenience of low-code and no-code development.

More importantly, this feature helps enterprises bring their existing business code and accumulated business know-how into the low-code platform quickly, greatly reducing the cost and risk of migrating traditional systems. Enterprises can keep their existing investment while moving smoothly to a more agile and efficient low-code development model.

With this feature, the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) serves both professional developers and business users, which greatly broadens the range of scenarios it fits.

Platform Features

The backend of the current version (1.0) of the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) is based on Grails 7.0.8 and Java 25 (the runtime image is amazoncorretto:25), the database is PostgreSQL 17 + pgvector, caching uses Redis, and the frontend is based on React.

The platform's most notable features are:

• Ultra-low-cost private deployment, keeping sensitive data secure and compliant.
• Strong customization support, with a large number of hooks that make almost any business logic possible.
• A highly abstract, self-bootstrapping architecture where everything is data, including code logic and metadata; the platform itself is bootstrapped on this architecture.
• No built-in AI features, but dynamic logic and plugins can call LLM APIs over HTTP when developing business logic.
• Web-based business modeling, so that everything from defining business models to developing business processes is done in the web interface.
• A dynamic plugin mechanism that supports traditional Java development while offering the convenience of low-code and no-code development, and lets you bring in existing business code and accumulated business know-how quickly.

With these features, the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) can build feature-rich, highly customized enterprise applications at far lower manpower and time costs than the traditional development model.

Applicable Scenarios

• Internal management systems for enterprises of all sizes

The Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) is especially well suited to developing internal management systems for large enterprises. Large enterprises usually have stricter data security and compliance requirements, which our ultra-low-cost private deployment meets fully. Large enterprises also tend to have more customization needs, and our strong customization support ensures that their unique requirements can be met.

• Vertical industry solutions

For teams with business resources, developing vertical industry solutions on the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) is a very attractive option. The platform greatly reduces development cost and time, so teams can quickly launch solutions for specific industries, such as ERP for the beauty industry, Web3 privacy-preserving matching, or MES for production line control. Our strong customization capabilities ensure that these solutions fit the industry's needs closely.

• Individuals or small teams doing custom development for enterprises

For individual developers and small teams, the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) is a powerful tool for taking on enterprise custom development projects. With the platform's very high development efficiency and strong customization capabilities, even a small team can take on custom development for large enterprises and win their trust with high delivery quality and speed.

• Quickly building backends for ToC applications

For consumer-facing applications, fast iteration and launch are often the key to success. The Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) helps developers build a complete application backend, including user management, data storage and business logic, in a very short time. Our FAAS capability also exposes backend functions as APIs that can be called at any time, which greatly simplifies frontend-backend interaction. This lets developers spend more time and effort on optimizing and innovating the product itself.

That is how the Muyan Low-Code Platform (opens new window) went from idea to reality, along with its main features and applicable scenarios. As a low-code platform that keeps up with the times and grew out of hands-on insight, we will keep evolving the product based on customer needs, keep pace with the times by adopting cutting-edge technology, and strive to support digital transformation across industries with lower cost, higher efficiency and stronger customization.