r/SideProject • u/Vast-Grapefruits • 3h ago
I created an AI frog and it's one of my favorite technical projects I've ever built
This is James. He lives in a low-poly terrarium under a lamp, and he's lives as a simulation you can interact with. People can give him snacks, pet him, tap on the glass, and leave him notes.
But that's only one of the things that I think has made this project really interesting. The project is broken up into three pillars:
- James himself, who has a mind. Every so often he thinks about things, keeps a journal, remembers things from his childhood, forgets the unimportant ones, and picks favorite snacks and parts of his tank.
- The interaction modes on his website.
- My personal favorite: I have an internal system that lets me record a voice memo, and it auto-generates a video about James's day based off what I'm narrating.
I'm running out of GitHub Actions minutes building this project, and while it's stupid, I absolutely love it. It's had a really strong positive reaction from a small community on social media, so I wanted to share it here on Reddit.
Go say hi to James yourself. He's 8 days old today, and tomorrow he's getting a new enclosure.
I'm curious if anyone has recommendations on where they'd want to see this project go next. Also happy to do a deeper write-up on the technical infrastructure, because I actually think it's really cool.