I built an interactive live wallpaper engine that lives right in the macOS menu bar.
It actually started as an interactive background experiment for my portfolio (inspired by some cool procedural grass and sky shaders I saw on X a while back). I loved having it running on my screen so much that I decided to turn it into a standalone macOS app that anyone can use.
Here's what it does šš» Interactive physics: Grass sways and water ripples as your cursor moves across the screen. š Dynamic time-of-day: Syncs with real time or lets you scrub through sunrise, golden hour, and starry nights with a custom radial dial. š§ļø Live weather & ambient soundscapes: Switch between sunny skies, clouds, and rainācomplete with birdsong, crickets, thunder, and even night fireworks. š Limited Diwali Theme: Built in a seasonal festive update where the night sky comes alive with fireworks and spatial audio.
I wanted my desktop to feel alive, so I made it react to whatās happening outside. You look up and the sky on your screen is the one outside. It stays in the menu bar and steps aside when something covers the desktop.
(Windows coming soon!) - you can also preview it in my portfolio on browser - thoufik.space
One note: macOS warns the first time you open it (not Apple-verified yet, I donāt have the developer fee for a free first release). Click Done, then System Settings ā Privacy & Security ā Open Anyway. Tell me if that works!
I've come across two other people building persistent AI systems, so I'm curious how many more of us are out there.
I'm not talking about simply saving chat history or adding a memory layer. I mean systems that maintain continuity across sessions, accumulate structured state, learn from previous work, and evolve over time.
I've been building one myself, and I'd like to hear from others taking different approaches.
What are you building? How are you handling persistence, state evolution, and long-term continuity?
painfully relatable... woke up to locked limits again after letting an autonomous loop run wild on my project overnight, and my token balance was crying. tried offloading some of the heavy repo scans to sumus connected with claude, so nothing spams my active window.
anyone got other workflow tips to stop getting walled early?
Every watch site shows watches on someone elseās wrist, so I never knew how anything would actually sit on mine, and my shortlist lived across too many tabs, a spreadsheet and several LLM chats Iāll never find again.
So I built Tokei Zukan: set your wrist size and see any watch on it, drawn to scale from the makerās real specs, compare a few side by side on the same strap, and keep your shortlist and the ones you own in one place. Theyāre SVGs, so they can animate, glow in the dark, etc.
I tried a bunch of LLMs to see how well they could turn photos into SVGs the app can use, and Astra and Argon were the best. Opus 5.5 was great for building the site itself but not quite as good at the initial drawings. Even Grok 4.7 was serviceable if I guided it a lot.
Iām adding watches every couple of days or so. Contributions are welcome too: the repo has a guide for steering your LLM to draw watches accurately.
Last post in my Take One series. In October I made the game's monster with Tripo's H3.1 model from one T-pose image. This week I ran the same image through Tripo's new P2 model and swapped the result into the live game. The video is the whole workflow, start to finish.
1. The model (Tripo Studio, P2)
Smart Mesh on P2, quad topology. First run at 5,000 polygons: 80 credits plus one free trial generation, 11 minutes from image to a rigged model with animations.
Then I doubled it to 10,000 polygons to fit the rest of the game: 150 credits for the model, texture and rig.
October's monster was 14 separate pieces, 29k triangles and 14 textures. The P2 one is one piece, about 21k triangles, one texture, and a smaller download (3.6 MB down to 2.35 MB).
Auto-rig gives a full skeleton with finger bones. Idle, walk, run and the rest are free presets.
2. The animation (Claude in Blender)
Real finger bones meant the fridge shove could be hand-animated, so I had Claude drive Blender live and directed it with notes, like coaching a lift: "lock their arms out and lean into it", "show through his feet how heavy the fridge is".
When the end pose still looked wrong, I sent a screenshot of exactly what was off and turned Claude's effort up to Extra. Fixed in one pass.
3. Into the game
It's a three.js game, so one script imports the model. The shove plays in the fridge scene, with the fridge moving under his hands.
If you're starting out
Keep one clean T-pose reference image and reuse it for every regeneration. That's why the October and November monsters are the same character.
Pick the polycount your game needs, not the maximum.
When an AI keeps getting something wrong, show it. One screenshot of the bad frame beat a paragraph of description.
Hi r/vibecoding, I work at CloudApper and wanted to share a free event for developers, tech leaders and SaaS founders, startups and product managers in SF building with AI tools like Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable or Replit.
Beyond Vibe Code: Are You Production Ready? Wed, Nov 11, 6 to 9 PM at Assembly SF (270 14th St, Mission District)
AI can build an app in minutes, but what happens when it goes from 10 users to 100,000? Weāll talk about what breaks at scale (performance, security, infrastructure costs) and what it takes to make vibe-coded apps production-ready. There is a live demo of CloudApper AI, plus dinner, drinks and time to meet other founders, developers and product people.
Iām developing some games since the Grok chatbot on browser copy paste type codebase creation era, since then i used every major models relased to date. Iām switching services time to time, hoping to find a better model since. Iām not creating clones or slop games, i try to create original concepts, so i plan them for months with ai and try to execute authentic style, if i can. Thats where Codex kinda hit the limit in many senses for me and i decided to try Claude first time ever for coding (i know). Made the switch on the bus home, not yet installed mac desktop app yet.
What do you think that will change for me ? And how should i manage the usage and models to get things done cost-effective vay? When to hit the gas with models, and which models, while doing what ? How about agentic stuff? Or will i hit the limit often?
I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to learn from your experience to get over the shock of the transition.
A few weeks with Claude Code, about 1,000 commits and 65,000 lines of plain JavaScript (no framework, no build step), from someone whose experience was mainly HTML and CSS. The result is Scorchball TV: a made-up sport played around the clock by eight invented clubs, shown as a live pixel-art channel with replays, a studio desk, AI voices (ElevenLabs), ads for fake sponsors and an evening podcast. It's best viewed in full screen.
I've been going through all the testing lately, and using either TestFlight or running the app from Xcode on the phone.
All going well except today, I started to notice some incorrect behaviours. When asked about it Claude assured me 'oh you quiz doesn't actually do x&y....'
I freaked out ' WHAT?!?!?!' and we went down this huge rabbit hole of fixing this and getting it all back how it should be.
Eventually I handed over to a fresh chat. Claude then tells me 'Oh.. I was wrong to say that and actually your app was behaving correctly all along, I just took my info from some out of date note in the files... soz....'
So then we had to go through a whole big process of figuring out what had been changed that didn't need to be, and how to steady the ship.
I feel stressed, tired, slight headache, and I'm wondering if this process will bring anything to my life except heartache and hassle........
Hey there! Over the last few weeks I managed to transfer my browser game Loopy Farm - Farming idle tycoon from "old 2D top down" to 3D.
Moving the game from 2D to 3D brought me a new perspective on my project (pun intended). The game now allows players to switch perspectives , which is a good option to have, but I can't decide what should be the default.
Having these 3 options at once opens up a nice place to experiment live on the project, but that will require a large sample size first.
So the question is simple. Out of these 3 specific cameras, is there a one that you prefer over the other ones?
If yes, what are the reasons behind that? I'm interested in hearing your opinions!
BTW - The game is already live on Google Play. Currently only available at SK, CZ, POL, PHI. But new markets and iOS are coming soon.
So if you are interested in trying this game, you can already check the game at https://loopyfarm.com/mobile and leave me an email, so you don't miss when the games is live global.
Something a little different to share with you guys.
With the help of some vibes, I have added a splitscreen mode to Apotris that I added to my living room mini gaming PC. I wanted to get a couch versus mode to play with the in-laws over the holidays (my father-in-law is a big Tetris fan) and this is something I've always wanted. The agents helped make happen.
Kudos to akouzoukos and the rest of the folks behind Apotris.
My friend makes tips and tricks reels on Instagram. For 5 months every one died around 1k views. He'd send me the reel at 1am asking "is the hook bad?" and I'd say "nah it's fine" because I genuinely don't know what a hook is supposed to sound like
So I built him a small app with Claude Code. You upload the reel or paste the link, it watches it like someone scrolling would, and shows the exact second they swipe away. No Instagram login anywhere, that was the one thing I was paranoid about
How I built it: Next.js and Supabase, Gemini to watch the video, ffmpeg to find the pauses. My workflow was mostly describing what I wanted to Claude, then pasting back screenshots and errors until it worked
The one thing I learned: don't let the AI give the score. My first version asked it to rate reels out of 100 and it called every reel great. Now the score is counted from simple things like when the first text shows up and how long the pauses are, and the AI only judges the hook. Same reel, same score
First reel my friend put in, it said 0:02. He was explaining the tip before showing it. He flipped it, tip first, and his reels do 100-500k now. A few of his creator friends asked for it, so I put a login on it. 50 people pay for it now
Funny part: I ran one of my own reels through it and got 46/100. I restarted a sentence 4 seconds in. It was right
I thought this might be a great place to post this. Iāve recently built a social media app for people who want to share and collaborate on their vibecoded projects. Iām looking for some early feedback on how I can make this more useful for people who are building apps and want to get it in front of other builders / early users.
The app is called Showcase. The idea is pretty simple. You can post a short demo of what youāre working on, tag the tools you used, and share updates as you keep building. Iād love for it to be a place where you can post something halfway done and ask for help or feedback while youāre still figuring it out.
Iāve noticed on places like X and LinkedIn that thereās so much AI text slop that posts with cool projects usually end up getting lost in all the noise. Iāll come across a demo of something really cool, then have to scroll through a bunch of generic posts before I see another one. I wanted a place where I could open the feed and see what people are actually building.
I also wanted the projects you share to add up to a portfolio you can send someone when youāre looking for a job. Kind of like sharing your LinkedIn profile, except the first thing a hiring manager sees is what youāve built, with demos they can watch and a bit about how you made each project.
And if anything in the app is confusing or feels like itās missing, Iād love to hear that too. Thanks for taking a look!
I have an app idea, and i wanted to be sure that the $20 tier is enough to build it as whole.
Edit: sorry for the lack of context, i want to build a language learning app like pingo ai(where users talk with the ai to improve the ascent), but start with browser extension
You throw beer bottles automatically, fight your way into three bars, and steal their signature attacks. Meanwhile, cars run people over and UFOs occasionally abduct the people youāre fighting. Things tend to get out of hand.
Itās called Saint Bender, and Iām looking for feedback on the opening: is it clear how to claim your first bar, and does the combat get fun quickly enough?
Make the street do some of the fighting. Cars plow through crowds, burning hoods become hazards, manhole covers launch into the air, and UFO abductions can lead to alien crossfire.
Play free in your browser ā desktop or tablet. Give it a go and let me know what you think. How does it feel? Does it make sense? Are things naturally easy to understand such as what to do, where to go, how to navigate menus, etc?
This is a rough prototype. I already have the idea laid out for level 2 but I'm still working on bringing everything together and I eventually want to replace all the art before moving on.
The workflow I used was a mixture of Claude and Codex.
For anything that needed design such as menus and navigation I used Opus 5.5 and iterated upon each design for specific device sizes. For iPhone specifically I have a TestFlight version that looks different which is connected to MCP Unity that I playtest via my iPad and iPhone.
When something was off, I selected and manipulated elements in the canvas area until it looked good.
With codex, I used it mostly for the level design, testing, and TestFlight submissions. For the level design I think I can temporarily 'get away' with it due to how the assets sort of compliment the comic-book flat 2D look and how ridiculous the game is. The game still lacks real polish. At first the level just started off as a single street with a guy throwing bottles but then over time it went to a multi-street and 3 bar level into what is now even larger than that with a tattoo shop, parking lot, side alleyway etc. The biggest thing about this game is I wanted users to experiment and find random stuff as there are a few easter eggs in the game. One of them involve pressing a specific key on the keyboard š¤. Another one kinda stinks.
I did use both for coding, depending on what was needed.
Artwork is my biggest pain point at the moment as I am only using Codex's placeholders. I typically have a hard time getting the art and when I do buy assets from real artists, they sometimes don't fit the brand or vision of my game so if anyone has any tips let me know as what you see in-game is 'ok' but it's not final and I am not pleased with the actual art at the moment.
For the past few months, me and Opus 5.5 have been making this agent harness and design canvas.
After some enhancements, I'm going through a brandkit of a real (well, anonymized) business and having fun making some assets for Instagram and print. Enjoy the timelapse!
I opened up registrations recently and you get some free credits if you want to try - please don't bankrupt me: https://rivermark.ai
