one prompt, 43 minutes, $2.96 – claude fable 5.1 wrote a 1,660-line world

we gave it one job: build a detailed frutiger aero world in a single self-contained html file, with a camera travelling through it for 600 frames

the setup: @threejs 0.169 and nothing else – no images, no downloaded textures, no physics library. every surface drawn in code. the file has to expose reset/step/simstate, render 600 frames and produce the same picture twice. one pass. every number below is ours, measured on the rendered frames

what came back:

• 1,660 lines in one file, 61,363 characters
• 60,000 instanced blades of grass, 500 flowers
• 400 towers, 700 canopy pieces, 90 rocks
• 60 bubbles in the system, 30 on screen at frame 600
• 1.29m triangles at 47 draw calls
• a 132m camera path across 8 control points
• rendered at 2x and downsampled

observations:

• it seeded its generator with 20050607 – june 7, 2005, the year the look it was copying belongs to
• 47 draw calls for 1.29m triangles. it instanced everything that repeats, without being told which
• the brightest frame is 3.6% pure white. the brief capped it at 25%, and this look usually blows out

conclusion: one file, no assets, 1.29m triangles and a camera that walks 132 metres through it, for $2.96!

watch the full video test via link