Dify is a platform for building AI apps such as chatbots, agents and RAG pipelines on a visual canvas, with a self-hostable community edition and a managed cloud.
In plain words
Building an AI app usually means wiring together a model, your documents, tools and a user interface. Dify puts those parts in one workspace. You draw workflows on a visual canvas, upload documents such as PDFs for retrieval, connect tools or MCP servers, and choose from many models, including any OpenAI-compatible one. The finished app can be published as a web app or called through an API. Its licence is based on Apache 2.0 with extra conditions.
A quick example
Imagine a school that wants a chatbot that answers questions from its handbook. A staff member uploads the handbook PDF to Dify, builds a simple workflow that retrieves the right passage and asks a model to answer, then publishes it as a web app for students.
Where you'll meet it
- Chatbots over company documents.
- Agentic workflows built without much code.
- Self-hosted AI apps on a team's own servers.
Related
Sources
- Docslanggenius/dify, LangGenius (GitHub) · read 29 Sept 2026
- DocsDify Documentation, Dify · read 29 Sept 2026
Checked by WhatIsAI against the sources above · 29 Sept 2026. Spotted an error? Report it.