Life with AI: a free GPU-glow Life player in the browser (first post, feedback welcome)

[shanepkearney]

Hi all, first post here.

I built a Life player as a coding-challenge project, and it has grown into something I'd love this community's eyes on:
https://shanepkearney.github.io/life-with-ai/

What might interest you:
- Three engines you can switch mid-run: a CPU stepper, a GPU fragment shader, and HashLife (Gosper's algorithm). I test them cell for cell against each other across six rules.
- Patterns too big for any board run on an endless plane under HashLife. Paul Rendell's Turing machine RLE pastes in and runs.
- Eleven Life-like rules besides B3/S23 (HighLife, Day & Night, Seeds, Replicator, Morley, Diamoeba, and more), credited to the people who found them.
- Standard RLE in and out, so anything you make opens in Golly or LifeViewer. Community patterns are plain .rle files in the repo, added by pull request, with credit to their discoverers.

It also has an optional assistant (Claude) that designs seeds from a description and checks them by actually running them, but everything above works without it.

Current limits: B/S rules only (no isotropic non-totalistic rules yet) and no macrocell support, both on my list.

I'm new to the deeper end of Life, so I'd really value corrections: anything I've got wrong, rules or patterns that deserve a place, or ways it falls short of what you'd expect from a proper Life program.

Source: https://github.com/shanepkearney/life-with-ai

[SecondTypist]

It’s alright. Its plain controls seem easier to use to create aesthetic with than to create something useful though. If wanted to create something in life I would rather input it myself than pay $10 for it to evaporate water and get an incorrect pattern, as LLMs are infamously bad at cellular automata, which is even demonstrated in the “Four Arms” pattern on the community tab. LLMs are not really that compatible with cellular automata in my opinion, as I see the word “Language” in their name and nothing about arrangement of cells. It would be interesting if an AI were actually created with the express purpose of cellular automata, rather than being readapted from an LLM. I wonder how much extra energy is being used jumping through the unnecessary hoops created by repurposing it in this way.
Also, I find it interesting that you label it as “Life with AI”, yet the AI was not even created by you. I would expect that an element within the title of a work would created by the author of the work.
Anyways, here is the “Four Arms” pattern that I mentioned. Its description contradicts itself. (Edit: the file provided in the GitHub repository for this pattern is wrong, I am still going to keep it for the description though, you can check it out on the site)

Code: Select all

 #N Four Arms
#O shanepkearney
#C A four-armed "X" of glider streams (from corner guns) converges on a
#C dense central mandala built from a pulsar, four pentadecathlons, and a
#C ring of eight methuselahs (r-pentomino, acorn, diehard, pi-heptomino,
#C thunderbird). The core churns chaotically and keeps reshaping while
#C the four glider trails streak diagonally across the whole board, never
#C settling into a repeat.
#C Prompt: build something new that we have never known before.
#C Added: 2026-09-25 by @shanepkearney
#CXRLE Pos=30,30
x = 446, y = 323, rule = B3/S23:T512,384
24bo398b2o$22bobo398b2o$12b2o6b2o12b2o$11bo3bo4b2o12b2o$2o8bo5bo3b2o$
2o8bo3bob2o4bobo$10bo5bo7bo$11bo3bo$12b2o2$422b3o$421bo3bo$420bo5bo$
420bo5bo$423bo$421bo3bo$422b3o$423bo3$424b3o$424b3o$423bo3bo2$422b2o3b
2o10$425b2o$425b2o36$224bo$226bo$223b2o2b3o24$162b2o128bo$161b2o123b2o
$162bo124bo3b3o31$226bo$226bo$225bobo$226bo$226bo$226bo$226bo$225bobo$
226bo$226bo17$222b3o3b3o2$220bo4bobo4bo$220bo4bobo4bo$135b3o49bo4bo27b
o4bobo4bo9bo4bo$185b2ob4ob2o27b3o3b3o9b2ob4ob2o66b2o$136bo50bo4bo49bo
4bo67b2o$136bo85b3o3b3o85bo$136bo83bo4bobo4bo$220bo4bobo4bo$220bo4bobo
4bo2$222b3o3b3o12$226bo$226bo$225bobo$226bo$226bo$226bo$226bo$225bobo$
226bo$226bo36$161b3o124bo$161bobo126bo$161bobo123b2o2b3o24$228bo$222b
2o$223bo3b3o17$12b2o$12b2o10$10b2o3b2o2$11bo3bo$12b3o$12b3o3$15bo$14b
3o$13bo3bo414b2o$15bo414bo3bo$12bo5bo402bo7bo5bo$12bo5bo402bobo4b2obo
3bo8b2o$13bo3bo406b2o3bo5bo8b2o$14b3o393b2o12b2o4bo3bo$410b2o12b2o6b2o
$421bobo$421bo6$14b2o$14b2o13$224b3obo$224bo$227b2o$225b2obo$224bobobo
!

Also I find it interesting that the site heavily resembles something that is vibe-coded. I can’t help but notice that you say something that seems to contradict this, even though nowadays the notion of creation has changed.

[…]
I built a Life player as a coding-challenge project, and it has grown into something I'd love this community's eyes on:
[…]

[shanepkearney]

Thank you for taking the time to try it and write all this up. As someone new here, this is exactly the kind of honest feedback I was hoping for.

You're right about Four Arms. Its description promises more than the pattern delivers, and it's a fair example of the point you're making: an LLM is good at describing a pattern confidently and much less good at making the pattern match the description. I'll rewrite it to describe what it actually does, and I'll look into the repository copy you flagged.

I also think you're right that a language model isn't the natural tool for cellular automata. That's why I kept the assistant optional and made it test its seeds by actually running them. Even so, "runs without crashing" is a long way from "does what it claims", as Four Arms shows. A model built specifically for CA would be far more interesting. The cost and energy point is fair too. For anything precise, drawing it yourself is quicker, cheaper and more likely to be right, and that's what I'd like the editor to be good at.

On the name and the "vibe-coded" feel, that's fair too. I wrote much of it with the help of an AI coding assistant (Claude Code), and I should have said so up front rather than just "I built". The name comes from the coding challenge it started as, but I understand why it reads oddly when the AI isn't mine.

I'd really value your view on one thing: what would make it useful rather than just nice to look at? For example: selection with copy, paste and rotate; stamping known objects from a catalogue; detecting oscillators and spaceships and reporting their periods; apgcodes; or something I haven't thought of. You clearly know what a working Life tool needs far better than I do, so I'd happily build toward whatever would make you reach for it.

Thanks again for your time.

[Disaster16439]

Actually, I think the 4 arms pattern is really impressive for an AI. I mean, it got all the patterns in correctly, except for a 6x6 soup at the bottom which it seems to have forgotten to add

Code: Select all

  #N Four Arms
#O shanepkearney
#C A four-armed "X" of glider streams (from corner guns) converges on a
#C dense central mandala built from a pulsar, four pentadecathlons, and a
#C ring of eight methuselahs (r-pentomino, acorn, diehard, pi-heptomino,
#C thunderbird). The core churns chaotically and keeps reshaping while
#C the four glider trails streak diagonally across the whole board, never
#C settling into a repeat.
#C Prompt: build something new that we have never known before.
#C Added: 2026-09-25 by @shanepkearney
#CXRLE Pos=30,30
x = 446, y = 323, rule = B3/S23
24bo398b2o$22bobo398b2o$12b2o6b2o12b2o$11bo3bo4b2o12b2o$2o8bo5bo3b2o$
2o8bo3bob2o4bobo$10bo5bo7bo$11bo3bo$12b2o2$422b3o$421bo3bo$420bo5bo$
420bo5bo$423bo$421bo3bo$422b3o$423bo3$424b3o$424b3o$423bo3bo2$422b2o3b
2o10$425b2o$425b2o36$224bo$226bo$223b2o2b3o24$162b2o128bo$161b2o123b2o
$162bo124bo3b3o31$226bo$226bo$225bobo$226bo$226bo$226bo$226bo$225bobo$
226bo$226bo17$222b3o3b3o2$220bo4bobo4bo$220bo4bobo4bo$135b3o49bo4bo27b
o4bobo4bo9bo4bo$185b2ob4ob2o27b3o3b3o9b2ob4ob2o66b2o$136bo50bo4bo49bo
4bo67b2o$136bo85b3o3b3o85bo$136bo83bo4bobo4bo$220bo4bobo4bo$220bo4bobo
4bo2$222b3o3b3o12$226bo$226bo$225bobo$226bo$226bo$226bo$226bo$225bobo$
226bo$226bo36$161b3o124bo$161bobo126bo$161bobo123b2o2b3o24$228bo$222b
2o$223bo3b3o17$12b2o$12b2o10$10b2o3b2o2$11bo3bo$12b3o$12b3o3$15bo$14b
3o$13bo3bo414b2o$15bo414bo3bo$12bo5bo402bo7bo5bo$12bo5bo402bobo4b2obo
3bo8b2o$13bo3bo406b2o3bo5bo8b2o$14b3o393b2o12b2o4bo3bo$410b2o12b2o6b2o
$421bobo$421bo6$14b2o$14b2o13$224b3obo$224bo$227b2o$225b2obo$224bobobo
!

Although, the reshaping and “never settling into a repeat” part was stretching it. But well, I think the L.L.M. was being poetic and it went off track.

I feel like we SHOULD make a forum mirror without cloudflare, considering that AI is pretty good at CA, actually, but a lot of it is under cloudflare so it’ll not be accesible, so AI may not have heard of say, the p14 glider gun and hallucinated a random thing.

[Brian Crowley]

This is a really interesting project for anyone who enjoys Conway’s Game of Life and browser-based experimentation. A GPU-accelerated Life player sounds particularly useful for exploring larger or more complex patterns while keeping the experience accessible directly in a browser. I also like that the author is actively asking for feedback, since community testing can reveal practical improvements that might not be obvious during development. Projects like this show how a classic cellular automaton can still inspire new technical experiments decades after its creation. After exploring the project, a quick round of geometry dash sounds like a fun way to switch gears.

removed link over words "geometry dash" just in case --hotdogPi