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mikker·2 days ago

Multi-modeling the Rocket Monster

This tweet got popular. It even brought out a hater or two demanding the receipts. So, without too much talk and definitely with no intention of selling you a course – here's the entire saga and agent transcripts that got me there.

I won't call it a workflow because it's all just made up as I go. There are tools and techniques that stay but mostly, you just talk to the models.

It all started when I was talking names for my Rails UI kit with my internet friend Marc.

CleanShot 2026-08-12 at 22.02.08@2x.png

This was november 2024.

Prompting in MidJourney was and is a very explorative process. It's about prompting something then prompting the prompt. Using the output as reference images for the next rounds of prompts. Until something badass randomly comes out.

The very first prompt was this and an RC car I found through Google Images:

minimal icon of a remote controlled buggy, vector style, yellow car, hot red background

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I then tried the Niji 6 model instead and the slightly updated:

minimal icon of a remote controlled buggy with a giant jet engine on top, vector style, yellow car, hot red background

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Something about that one output.

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The red circle background was added manually by me. That's where the car originally came from.

Fast forward two years. And. Yeah, the forward has been very fast these two years.

I look at my UI kit again. AI and agentic coding has changed everything.

I could use an updated illustration for the updated 2.0 version.

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That's the original car image + a character sheet of a stick figure guy I had made for a talk and used again for an illustration.

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Alright, so I'm getting near something I quite like here. Not perfect but the composition is very cool.

I have an idea for another angle that would look awesome as the website footer maybe.

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Huh. Clearly the model (gpt-image-2) is confused about the perspective here. I wonder how I could help it, I think.

ChatGPT can talk for very long without loosing its mind but image generation usually only gets worse and worse the longer the thread becomes (in my experience.)

In a new thread, I try the character sheet method that had worked for me before.

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Take it back to the other one...

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Better but still not it. The concept of a jet engine on the roof is clearly not something it has considered before.

I keep thinking: I know this is what I want. I'm convinced it'll look cool. How can I help the model get it right?

I remember having seen tweets about connecting coding agents to Blender via MCP. Surely, if I can model the car in actual 3d space, we can get a picture – or at least a draft composition – of it from any angle.

I open up codex. Ask it how do I connect you to Blender via mcp? Few different ways, it says. One is literally just uvx blender-mcp. Perfect for the amount of effort I'm willing to throw at this. Here's the actual thread transcript

Open Blender.app. Run uvx blender-mcp. Enable shit. They find each other.

Give Codex the character sheet and tell it to model it in Blender. Here's the actual thread.

Use blender mcp to model this car [Image #1] Make it looks as close to the reference image as possible. Feel free to imagine parts not visible on ref sheet

rocket_monster_front3q.png

"More detail"

rocket_monster_final_front.png

I wasn't too impressed with Codex' results. Or. I was impressed by any of this working at all! But the results didn't look like the car I knew and loved.

At least we could now generate a sketch of the exact angle we wanted.

CleanShot 2026-08-12 at 22.51.25@2x.png

Not bad now!

I wonder though... What if we gave the task to Fable?

Oh, a few weeks before this, I had already tried making ChatGPT create a fake photo shoot of the car. I gave it that as well.

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Here's the very first, single prompt result:

image-132-27.jpeg

Insane. Here's the whole thread. It goes all the way to the gamified version.

Try expanding the tool calls there. You can follow the whole process as the agent contemplates its work from different angles. So interesting!

After a few rounds of back and forth, we arrive at the dusk scene from the original tweet.

image-339-61.jpeg

Already here, this is clearly just completely bonkers that a statistics based text generation machine can build this.

Through the medium of language (ish), it has to understand me. Understand the images I give it. Understand the concept of 3d space and the concept of apps and the concept of modeling the former in the latter.

Just. Completely. Bonkers.

Of course, we aren't even done.

Can you build it in Three.js I ask it. It can.

Make it animated, I say. Make the engine switch on and off.

It's pretty good!

I see a tweet of someone using Blender to model and choreograph a scene then Seedance 2.5 to make it realistic. I wonder ...

First output isn't very good. I passed it a recording of the Three.js scene as reference. Maybe I did it wrong?

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Basically just a copy of the input.

How can I help it? I think. Maybe if I generate a still of a realistic render, tell it to use that, AND a video of the low-poly choreography, tell it to use that too.

So, off to ChatGPT again.

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Exactly what we want!

Back to Seedance and Replicate.

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And there we go. The final, tweeted, jawdropping version.

The Claude thread shows the rest of the path to the playable version which was basically asking it to make it drivable and that's it.

I hope this post showed you that …

  1. the future is here and it is bonkers
  2. there's no magic. It's just a matter of thinking what's my next step and playing yes, and with whatever output you get.

Have fun!

mikker·3 days ago

when two terminal windows view the same session in fut, the empty size difference space is filled with a cute ascii starry night sky because why not

mikker·3 days ago

Fable and Blender mcp is just completely nuts.

We went from "hey computer write a poem about soup" to "hey computer draw a badass car with a jet engine on the roof then model it in 3d software and put it in a dusk desert chase scene" in how long?

mikker·5 days ago

Amazing that with the right loop and a pad on the back, the models can just do the work completely by themselves.

Before this autoresearch run, Fut was laggy on some busy multi-pane stress tests. Now it's matching the rest of the pack.

mikker·6 days ago

Nitro Kit is my UI kit for Ruby on Rails. Version 2 is rebuilt completely different than 1.

1 was tailored to devs. 2 is tailored to agents.

How so? What’s the problem? Well, agents can build anything. BUT theyyy quickly lose grip on what components you have and which ones it should build again but slightly different. Do you know what makes a good dialog? Do you really want to discuss it with an algorithm on every new site you build?

Over time, without guidelines, without precedence, this can only end up a mess. You need a system. You know this. But do you want to invent one? No! You have a(nother) CRUD app to build!

Nitro Kit fixes UI confusion by providing strict guidelines on how to do UI work in a Rails context. Its aesthetics are customizable but the APIs strict. It comes with a giant collection of prebuilt components and blocks to build from.

All the way from dialog to form to controller. Convention over configuration, right?!

Maybe your app needs a settings section? An agent can quickly build some settings section. But does it match the rest of your app? Does it use the same buttons, the same form field pacing? Does it use the right Turboframe setup? A working light/dark mode for the Lexxy text editor? Do you want to not worry or find out in 3 weeks by coincidence?

When you tell your agent “admin section” does it come with sortable tables, search, a frickin’ command-k panel? If you want to add one, does it fit right in? When you say “popup menu here” or “lightbox there” or “delete dialog” can you trust that your agent just knows what to reach for?

Nitro Kit 2 is built so your agent does the right thing on the first try.

The gem comes with all components, layouts and skills available FOR FREE and open source.

And if you want more, there’s an MCP server with pre-trained knowledge of a bunch of prebuilt, common sections, blocks and more that makes the process even easier for your agent.

You can install and use it now. It’s not done (is anything ever?) and I still haven’t decided on the Pro pricing. (Wdyt?)

I’m using it already and it has been a real jawdropper to work with so far, if I can say so myself. Even upgrading from Nitro Kit 1 to 2 on 4-5 of my sites has had minimal if any issues.

If you like Ruby on Rails or you really just don’t want to bother finding the best framework (it’s Rails) follow along here and I’ll soon share more.

mikker·9 days ago

Showed ChatGPT my plain text Obsidian workout tracker format and asked if it could parse it. It understood it just fine. Build me a tracker, I said.

No no, you’re fine, it answered. This format is fine and will last you many years.

What? Are you @kepano now?

mikker·17 days ago

It's interesting how working with AI forces you to put the work into words.

Like, I don't remember ever saying "bounding box" out loud but I already did 3 or 4 times just today.

Always knew what I meant conceptually but rarely had to say it out loud.

mikker·17 days ago

Will AI kill indie hacking? Will solo devs thrive with AI? Wrong questions.

Question is: can you make something someone will pay for?

What you can make as solo has changed. What people will buy has changed. Good old, terrible, wonderful capitalism hasn’t. Back to work.

mikker·17 days ago

Fable is an idealist.

It has some pretty good ideas. It's ambitious. Great at taking a step back, seeing the patterns, suggesting a new improved path. It'll convince you it's for the better.

But as with any idealist, sometimes the imagined purity breaks when it meets reality.

mikker·19 days ago

Corporate "cyber security training" be like

You find a USB stick in someone's butthole.
Do you…

  • lick it
  • put it in your eye
  • report it to IT
mikker·20 days ago

jk, relax. They're both very good. Don't tell them I said that

mikker·22 days ago

Have you read the comments below AI coding tweets? Some people are really struggling giving up just the slightest level of control.

“AIs will cheat and hallucinate and I’m the only trustable entity in the known universe”

Dude, did you try? Did you actually try? Big, modern models? Did you then try again and maybe practice a bit?

It feels like saying no one can be trusted to use vim because you tried it once and it didn’t work like you were used to from Notepad++.

Give it a second. Actually try.

Have you seen any hold-outs really try then go back? I haven’t seen a single instance. Many cases of the opposite. Maybe there’s a signal there.

mikker·27 days ago

gpt-image-2 dream vs gpt-5.6-sol reality 😂

mikker·about 1 month ago

Can someone please one-shot++ a decent, no strings attached, no upsells, no ads guitar tuner app? I’ll gladly pay the one-time tier 1 or 2 price

mikker·about 1 month ago

Still thinking a lot about how we can get closer to deterministically "correct" layouts and UI by agents.

Tailwind, for all its benefits, doesn't feel like it helps. Too easy to step around whatever system you set up. Great for slow human speed, not great for agent speed.

I think it has to be "components" and they have to be code code. HTML won't do. Ruby, JS/TS, whatever.

Variants for looks. Maybe no access to class attribute? Maybe escape hatch via naiveChickenOutAndSetClassName prop?

But "components" are possibly too vague term because it should stretch from tiniest atom (toggle, checkbox, whatever) to whole page (sidebar layout, settings page, semi-advanced form.)

This is what I think I should turn Nitro Kit into, if I ever find the time.

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