> truly generative UI, where the model produces the next frame of the app

I built this exact thing last month, demo: https://universal.oroborus.org (not viable on phone for this demo, fine on tablet or computer)

Also see discussion and code at: http://github.com/snickell/universal

I wasn't really planning to share/release it today, but, heck, why not.

I started with bitmap-style generative image models, but because they are still pretty bad at text (even this, although it’s dramatically better), for early-2025 it’s generating vector graphics instead. Each frame is an LLM response, either as an svg or static html/css. But all computation and transformation is done by the LLM. No code/js as an intermediary. You click, it tells the LLM where you clicked, the LLM hallucinates the next frame as another svg/static-html.

If it ran 50x faster it’d be an absolutely jaw dropping demo. Unlike "LLMs write code", this has depth. Like all programming, the "LLMs write code" model requires the programmer or LLM to anticipate every condition in advance. This makes LLM written "vibe coded" apps either gigantic (and the llm falls apart) or shallow.

In contrast, as you use universal, you can add or invent features ranging from small to big, and it will fill in the blanks on demand, fairly intelligently. If you don't like what it did, you can critique it, and the next frame improves.

Its agonizingly slow in 2025, but much smarter and in weird ways less error prone than using the LLM to generate code that you then run: just run computation via the LLM itself.

You can build pretty unbelievable things (with hallucinated state, granted) with a few descriptive sentences, far exceeding the capabilities you can “vibe code” with the description. And it never gets lost in its rats nest of self generated garbage code because… there is no code to in.

Code is medium with a surprisingly strong grain. This demo is slow, but SO much more flexible and personally adaptable than anything I’ve used where the logic is implemented cia a programming language.

I don’t love this as a programmer, but my own use of the demo makes me confident that programming languages as a category will have a shelf life if LLM hardware gets fast, cheap and energy efficient.

I suspect LLMs will generate not programming language code, but direct wasm or just machine code on the fly for things that need faster traction than they can draw a frame, but core logic will move out of programming languages (not even llm written code). Maybe similar to the way we bind to low level fast languages but a huge percentage of “business” logic is written in relatively slower languages.

FYI, I may not be able to afford the credits if too many people visit, I put a a $1000 of credits on this, we'll see if that lasts. This is claude 3.7, I tried everything else, a claude had the visual intelligence today. IMO this is a much more compelling glance at the future than coding models. Unfortunately, generating an SVG per click is pricey, each click/frame costs me about $0.05. I’ll fund this as far as I can so folks can play with it.

Anthropic? You there? Wanna throw some credits at an open source project doing something that literally only works on claude today? Not just better, but “only Claude 3.7 can show this future today?”. I’d love for lots more people to see the demo, but I really could use an in-kind credit donation to make this viable. If anyone at anthropic is inspired and wants to hook me up: snickell@alumni.stanford.edu. Very happy to rep Claude 3.7 even more than I already do.

I think it’s great advertising for Claude. I believe the reason Claude seems to do SO much better at this task is, one it shows far greater spatial intelligence, and two, I distract they are the only state of the art model intentionally training on SVG.