A native simulation and render engine: generate, critique, refine, and keep the scene.

Studio Engine generates shaders, sound, and motion as replayable creative worlds. A single expression algebra drives everything: each field ships as a WebGL fragment shader for the eye, a portable Web-Audio synth graph for the ear, and a motion timeline with time as a first-class axis. It runs on Python 3.10+ with zero third-party dependencies, exposing a CLI, a local HTTP API, and a reference browser chamber that compiles the shipped GLSL live. Every world writes a receipt you can re-check.

Highlights

• One algebra, every backend. Each generator is a single strand expression. The engine emits it as a WebGL fragment shader, samples it to score criteria, sweeps it over time for motion, and grounds a Web-Audio synth graph against a baked WAV. The chamber renders the exact math the engine checked, not a re-implementation.
• Real pixels without a GPU. --render-frames drives a zero-dependency software rasterizer over the emitted program and writes deterministic PNG frames to disk, a strip across the loop period for animatable fields.
• Watch it think, live. handoff/watch-it-think.html streams the refine loop over Server-Sent Events and plots per-axis margins as they converge, with bounds-clamped sliders that steer parameters mid-run. Rejected steers are shown, never silently applied.
• 10 generators, one line each to extend. phyllotaxis, gyroid, quasicrystal, attractor, harmonograph, flowfield, metaballs, turbulence, rings, moire. Field generators are one expression plus a criterion; rings and moire are each one line of algebra.
• A compositor. POST /compose layers multiple organs into one world under a shared composition criterion, with OKLab/OKLCh perceptual palettes across layers.
• Motion as a first-class axis. Every animatable world carries a Timeline with a witnessed verdict that the loop is seamless at the wrap point and stays legible across the period.
• Interactive sessions. Create a session over HTTP, inject parameter changes, and get the updated render program back each step. An optional bridge to a native C++ renderer reports honestly when the binary is not built.
• Zero third-party dependencies. The core engine is Python stdlib only. No pip install is needed to run it from a checkout.

Try it

No install required from a clone:

python -m studio_engine 7 gyroid

Expected output (ids vary with the novelty corpus):

world e97b2c91d927bcaa | 'Gyroid #7'
  steps=7 converged=False final_score=0.0649
  render=glsl-fragment expr_sha=8a94af6a2eba5cb6
  timeline period=0.707566 continuity=verified
  palette=['#7375cb', '#8e7fd8', ...]
  wrote studio-out/world-7.json (+ svg preview + render program)

Or install the package, which adds a studio-engine command that starts the API server:

python -m pip install -e .
studio-engine

Start the API directly and open the reference chamber:

python -m studio_engine.server 8777

Then open handoff/reference-chamber.html in a browser. It compiles the shipped GLSL live, runs point recipes, stacks composites, and plays the synth graph. For live convergence plots and parameter steering, open handoff/watch-it-think.html instead.

Worked example: from seed to PNG frames

python -m studio_engine --render-frames 7 gyroid

This runs the full loop, then rasterizes the emitted render program headlessly:

  rendered 8 PNG frame(s) -> studio-out/frames-7/ (+ frames.json)

studio-out/ now holds the world JSON, an SVG preview, the GLSL render program as text, eight PNG frames sweeping the loop period, and a frames.json manifest binding each frame's sha256 to the program's expr_sha256. Before rendering, the rasterizer reconstructs the expression from the shipped AST, re-hashes it, and refuses to render on a hash mismatch. Open the PNGs in any viewer; the frames tile seamlessly across the period because the timeline verdict says they do.

HTTP API

python -m studio_engine.server [port] serves on 127.0.0.1 (default port 8777, CORS open):

Route	What it does
POST /simulate	run the loop, return a World
GET /simulate/stream	SSE: per-step events, then the world
POST /compose	layered composite World
GET /generators, /library, /gallery	discovery: generators, organs, pre-built scenes
GET /scene/{id}, /scene/{id}/program, /scene/{id}/filmstrip	cached worlds, drop-in render programs, per-step replay
GET /audio/{id}.wav	baked sonification
POST /session, /session/{id}/inject, /session/{id}/render	interactive steering and re-render
POST /native/render	direct native render bridge (reports honestly if the binary is absent)

The handoff/ directory is the frontend integration package: INTEGRATION.md, types.ts, openapi.json, ENDPOINTS.md, examples, and both runnable chambers.

Generators

Generator	Channel	Criterion (it did not author)
phyllotaxis	points	golden-angle packing
gyroid	field	clean tiling (integer frequency)
quasicrystal	field	5-fold aperiodic order
attractor, harmonograph	points	balance / coverage / complexity
flowfield, metaballs, turbulence, rings, moire	field	contrast / complexity

Each entry in the registry is a declarative binding: parameter seed and bounds, criteria axes, a preview render, and a strand expression (fields) or a point recipe (points). Adding a generator means writing one expression.

The strand substrate

The shader the browser compiles is not hand-written. The engine holds each field as a frozen AST, emits the GLSL field() body from it, and proves the round trip GPU-free: emit GLSL, parse it back, and check that the reparsed AST eval-matches the original to 1e-6 across every generator. The same AST is sampled on CPU to compute the features the criteria judge, and swept over t to build the motion timeline. One source of truth, four consumers.

What's in the box

studio_engine/            the engine (stdlib only)
  strand/                 expr.py (frozen AST), glsl.py (emit + parse-back proof)
                          recipe.py (point recipes), webaudio.py (synth graph)
  model.py                the contract: World / Layer / RenderProgram / AudioProgram / Timeline
  engine.py               the loop          registry.py    the 10-generator data table
  compose.py              the compositor    temporal.py    the witnessed motion timeline
  criteria.py             composable criteria + cohesion   corpus.py   novelty grounding
  raster_renderer.py      headless software rasterizer (PNG frames)
  native_render.py        bridge to the optional native C++ renderer
  certify.py              external structural-fitness oracle (coherence-membrane)
  session.py              interactive steering              server.py   the HTTP API
  organs/                 generators, OKLab palettes, sonify, raster
handoff/                  frontend package: INTEGRATION.md, types.ts, openapi.json,
                          reference-chamber.html, watch-it-think.html, examples/
showcase/                 static showcase with its own fixtures and Node tests

Why it matters

Generated art is usually a dead end: pixels with no structure a person or a later program can inspect. Studio Engine keeps the shader program, sound graph, motion timeline, criteria, and receipt together, so a generated world can be re-rendered, steered, and checked instead of admired once and lost.

(seed, generator, scheme) determines a world for a fixed novelty corpus: same input, same id and sha256s. Every world carries its full refine trajectory, the criteria it was judged against, and a receipt whose artifact hashes cover the JSON, the audio, and any rendered frames, so an experience can be replayed and re-checked later.

Scope and maturity

This is a 0.2.0 engine, not a finished product. It emits render programs and evidence packets; browsers, GPUs, and audio hosts realize them. The immersive chamber is the frontend's build, from handoff/. The dependency-free native GPU renderer is a separate project that this engine bridges to optionally. APIs may still move before 1.0.

Docs and related projects

• USAGE.md: the full local workflow, including the showcase.
• docs/INTRODUCTION.md: concepts and a first-ten-minutes walkthrough.
• handoff/INTEGRATION.md: build a frontend against the API.
• docs/design/SUBSTRATE-MAP.md: the strand substrate design.
• Peers: forum (multi-agent orchestration), accountable-surface (live perceive/gate/actuate surface).

For developers

python -m pip install -e .
python -m unittest discover -s tests        # 169 tests
node --test showcase/tests/*.test.mjs
python test_forward_delivery_contract.py

See AGENTS.md for the repo operating boundary and CHANGELOG.md for delivery history.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later, dual-license ready: the author retains copyright and commercial licenses are available.

Zain Dana Harper, small tools with explicit edges. Built with Claude Code; reviewed, tested, owned.