Vendo: Custom Features Within Your SaaS

Vendo is an open-source framework that allows users to create custom features, dashboards, and automated workflows directly within existing SaaS applications. Launched by Yousef and Nour, it aims to address the common problem of diverse customer needs that standard product roadmaps struggle to accommodate.

The system integrates by reading a host product's API surface, theme, and routes, enabling Vendo-generated applications to appear native and interact with existing data and functionalities. When a user describes a desired feature, Vendo’s custom harness generates a React component. This component is then compiled, type-checked, and rendered against real API responses.

A core technical distinction lies in Vendo's sandboxing mechanism. It uses QuickJS to run generated components in a virtual machine, isolated from the host product’s DOM, network, and clock. This setup ensures security and stability, returning a UI tree that the host renders using its own registered components.

Unlike other generative UI solutions that often confine components to chat interfaces or render apps within external assistants, Vendo creates durable, in-product applications. These custom features can be pinned, run on triggers, and shared across an organization, providing a more permanent extension to the core software.

"Vendo lives in your product and acts through your API as the signed-in user, so what it makes is durable: real apps users keep, pin, and run on triggers while they're away."

Current applications include users building tailored dashboards and reports, setting up recurring automations that can connect to external services, and B2B customers implementing specific business logic, such as adding extra fields to forms. The framework is entirely open-source under the Apache-2.0 license and can be self-hosted, with documentation available for those looking to embed it.

For a Tokyo-based professional, Vendo offers a means to personalize their core software tools. If their company's SaaS vendor were to integrate Vendo, it could mean custom reports in their CRM, unique automation sequences in their project management tool, or bespoke data visualizations, all without needing to export data or rely on external scripting. This shifts the power of customization from the vendor's roadmap to the end-user's immediate needs.