As developers, we live and breathe code. We thrive on elegant APIs, robust version control with Git, and CI/CD pipelines that bring our creations to life. So when the business comes knocking with a "Robotic Process Automation" (RPA) initiative, our initial curiosity can quickly turn to frustration.
Why? Because traditional RPA platforms were not built for us. They were built to abstract away code with complex visual designers, drag-and-drop interfaces, and a reliance on fragile screen scraping. The result? Brittle UI bots that break with the slightest interface change, a maintenance nightmare, and workflows that are impossible to version control effectively.
What if we could reclaim automation with the tools and principles we already trust? What if we could define, deploy, and manage intelligent software robots as simple, reliable code?
This is the promise of rpa.do—an API-driven, developer-first platform for Robotic Process Automation, Executed as Code.
The fundamental divide between rpa.do and traditional RPA lies in their core philosophy.
Traditional RPA is built on a "low-code/no-code" premise. It uses visual workflow designers that record user actions—clicks, keystrokes, and mouse movements. While this lowers the entry barrier for non-technical users, it creates a house of cards for developers. These automations are:
rpa.do champions a "Business-as-Code" approach. It treats automation workflows as first-class software artifacts. You use a clean SDK and simple API calls to define your processes.
Take a look at how simple it is to define an invoice processing agent:
import { Agent } from '@do/rpa';
// Create an RPA agent to handle invoice processing
const invoiceAgent = new Agent('invoice-processor-agent');
// Define and run the automation workflow via a simple API call
async function runInvoiceProcessing() {
const result = await invoiceAgent.run({
workflow: 'process_new_invoices',
source: {
type: 'email_inbox',
id: 'invoices@company.com'
},
destination: {
type: 'quickbooks_api',
action: 'create_bill'
}
});
console.log(`Automation complete. ${result.processed} invoices processed.`);
}
runInvoiceProcessing();
This isn't just a different interface; it's a paradigm shift. Your automation is now:
Traditional bots are masters of repetition, but not of comprehension. They follow a rigid, pre-defined script. If they encounter an invoice in a slightly different format or an email with an unusual subject line, they fail.
rpa.do agents are AI-native. They are designed from the ground up to be enhanced with Large Language Models (LLMs). This means your agent can:
This is the leap from simple mimicry to intelligent workflow automation.
Scaling a traditional RPA deployment often means provisioning and managing a fleet of virtual desktops, each one running a bot that mimics a human user. It's expensive, clunky, and slow to scale.
rpa.do is an Intelligent Automation API. Your agents are cloud-native services. Need to process 10,000 invoices instead of 100? You don't need to spin up more virtual desktops. You simply make more API calls. This "Services-as-Software" model is infinitely more scalable, resilient, and cost-effective, fitting perfectly into modern cloud architectures.
rpa.do is an AI-powered platform for executing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as code. Instead of using complex visual designers, you use simple APIs and SDKs to build, deploy, and manage resilient software agents that automate your business processes.
Traditional RPA relies on fragile screen scraping and UI interactions. rpa.do uses a robust, API-first 'Business-as-Code' approach. This makes your automations more reliable, scalable, and easier to maintain and version control, just like modern software.
You can automate a vast range of digital tasks, including invoice and order processing, data entry, report generation, system integrations, data migration, and customer service workflows. If a process is rules-based and repetitive, it can be automated with an rpa.do agent.
Yes. Our agents are AI-native, meaning they can be enhanced with large language models (LLMs) to understand unstructured data, make decisions, and handle exceptions gracefully, far beyond the capabilities of traditional bots.
The rpa.do platform includes a secure, built-in vault for storing API keys, passwords, and other sensitive credentials. Your agents can securely access the secrets they need at runtime without exposing them in your code.
It's time to end the cycle of building and fixing brittle bots. Automation should be a force multiplier for your development team, not a source of technical debt.
By embracing a developer-first, as-code philosophy, rpa.do gives you the power to build intelligent, scalable, and maintainable automation that works with your existing toolchain, not against it.
Ready to stop wrestling with UI bots and start writing intelligent agents? Explore the rpa.do platform today.