Show HN: 500 clocks in one 6.3 MB HTML file by Opus 5.5

Posted by tkgally 4 days ago

Lately I've been testing frontier models by having them create self-contained web pages that display clocks--sort of my personal version of Simon Willison’s pelican-on-a-bicycle metric.

I have been particularly impressed by the variety, interest, and quality of the clocks created by Claude Opus 5.5. Over the course of several sessions in the Claude chat interface, I had it build a total of 500 clocks.

Claude’s summary of the prompting process and page design is here:

https://github.com/tkgally/500-clocks/tree/main

Comments

Comment by WheelsAtLarge 3 days ago

Recently, I asked Gemini to create a nightstand clock app for a spare phone I have by giving it a picture and a quick prompt of what I wanted, and that was all. It did a pretty good job. I was amazed. The phone clock is on my nightstand right now. I look at your page and am blown away by what’s possible. It makes me think that, at this point, we are limited only by our imagination when it comes to what AI can do. Thanks for posting.

Comment by vunderba 4 days ago

Nice job. The Pong one was a nice touch where the ball traveled within a second from each paddle. I also enjoyed the interactive fiction game clock. It doesn’t really have much to do with time, but I still appreciated how the little descriptions changed over time.

Looking through all of these, you can definitely start to see patterns in themes. For example, it’s a clock but in a different language. Or it’s a clock but wrapped around a classic game - I think I saw Nine Men's Morris, Mancala and Scrabble among others.

I made the Chamber of Clocks [1] about half a year back which is a set of 12 different clockwork visualizations that I came up with so I was curious (and a bit trepidatious) when I saw this post. I was rather relieved to see that Opus 5.5 left to its own devices didn't create a single thing that resembled any of the ones I came up with.

The closest might be the Ctesibian water clock, but mine is significantly more elaborate, modeled as a 3D physical water wheel.

There’s another one I’ve seen floating around on HN — the Triclock [2] — which is particularly nice as well and worth checking out!

[1] - https://clocks.specr.net

[2] - https://triclock.franzai.com

Comment by tkgally 4 days ago

Very nice! I particularly like that pi clock.

I agree that Claude did tend to repeat certain themes. If someone wanted to extend the gallery to the thousands of clocks while maintaining the variety, they would probably need to seed the model with some original ideas. (Whether those ideas could come from a model or would need human taste is an interesting question.)

Also, Claude’s realizations of some of its ideas are a bit rough. If I wanted to create a standalone widget for a clock I particularly liked, I would spend more time with Claude (or another model) refining and polishing it first.

Nevertheless, considering that nearly all the ideas came from Opus and all the graphics are created with pure code, I remain impressed with what it was able to do.

Comment by vunderba 3 days ago

> Nevertheless, considering that nearly all the ideas came from Opus and all the graphics are created with pure code, I remain impressed with what it was able to do.

I know a lot of people who are even switching over from using more traditional GenAI (NB / gpt-image / etc.) in favor of driving entire mockups with Opus 5.5. If you give it tool usage like the Blender MCP it gets even more impressive... though in my personal tests the resulting topology can be kind of hit or miss.

Comment by sara_kumodeck 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by pradn 3 days ago

There was a time when coming up with a new JS clock, at least a novel one, would be fun to look into. When confronted with 500 of these, the inclination to care about this problem at all vanishes.

Comment by ch_sm 2 days ago

A pervasive feeling at this moment in time for me.

Comment by msikora 1 day ago

Think bigger, think on another level of abstraction. This is like going from punch cards to C.

Comment by elxr 4 days ago

80% of these are hideous. Why choose 500 instead of whittling it down a bit but having the quality bar a bit higher?

Comment by Haven880 4 days ago

Your 20% will be different to each of our 20%. So the OP did the right thing, freedom of choice by 500.

Comment by xnx 3 days ago

Nah. If it wasn't even worth OPs time to look at them all, it's not worth mine.

Comment by WheelsAtLarge 3 days ago

I have to disagree. I don't necessarily like all of them, but I found them all interesting in some way. I particularly liked the Brick Breaker one. It would have been a shame if that had been one of the 80% that would not have made it to the page in your scenario.

Comment by deterministic 2 days ago

There is no such thing as objective taste or an objective quality bar.

What you like will not be what I like.

Comment by sublinear 4 days ago

There really is a cheapness to the designs I can't quite put my finger on. Even if you had told me a human made them, I'd still assume the designs are knockoffs of something better.

Comment by tkgally 4 days ago

That “cheapness” is because the designs are created programmatically in JavaScript, with no image files used.

Comment by sublinear 4 days ago

Many (most?) things are rendered without image files.

I think it's the overall flattened look, use of overly simplistic gradients, bland fonts, animations that feel dead, etc. The lack of details all adds up to feeling cheap. It's not any one of them in particular, nor something I'd be able to advise on. That needs a human designer. It doesn't take much sophistication to notice it, though.

Comment by tkgally 4 days ago

I was interested in seeing how many different ideas Opus could come up with with minimal direction from me. I don’t plan to use any of those clocks myself.

Comment by deterministic 2 days ago

I absolutely love this, especially the detailed explanation of how it was created using Opus 5.5.

I wish there were more posts like this on HN showcasing the creative possibilities of AI.

Comment by tamimio 4 days ago

It’s cool, but i think the actual use case of this, if someone is wasting your time you can share the 500 clocks and they can choose whatever they like to understand how important time is.

Comment by userbinator 4 days ago

Claude’s summary of the prompting process and page design is here:

Was the README written by Claude too? I was expecting the usual Claudish, but it looks far more like normal human English.

and a helper library U

Perhaps Utility library would fit the name better.

Comment by tkgally 4 days ago

Yes, I as noted at the top of the README, Claude wrote it all. Excerpts from my prompt to it: “Please compose a markdown file that I can put in the README.md for the repository explaining how this page was created and how it is structured (including how the images are generated).... Be clear that all of the coding and writing was done by Claude Opus 5.5.... Make the explanations plain and straightforward, with no boosting or bragging.”

Comment by technocat79 3 days ago

Overall, this looks great! I'm trying (like you) to be as ambitious as possible with pushing Opus 5.5 to do interesting things. Thanks for some inspiration.

Comment by Benjaminsen 3 days ago

Really cool result, in your own assessment how much will you say you as a human provided the creative direction?

Comment by tkgally 3 days ago

Almost nothing.

The original idea to ask for clocks came from Claude itself. After Opus 5.5 was released, I asked it for ideas for interesting projects to try, and clocks was one of its suggestions. Some of the later prompts included suggested themes, but those came from Opus, too.

The only instructions that originated with me were striving for variety, making the page self-contained, randomizing the display sequence, and putting the clock names and explanations behind mouseovers/clicks. Even the controls at the top of the page were added by Opus on its own initiative.

Comment by gavmor 4 days ago

Gosh, these are so enticing yet such a let down.

For example, the Lorenz Attractor which, apparently, doesn't have anything to do with the clock.

Comment by ozanbora 4 days ago

490,000–670,000 tokens each session a bit much, no?

Comment by tkgally 4 days ago

Yes, I got carried away. It used a big chunk of my Max subscription tokens for this week.

Comment by brador 4 days ago

“Some die of thirst while others drown“ - MM

Comment by BorisMelnik 3 days ago

tell your AI they did a good job!

Comment by ksimukka 4 days ago

Amazing. Thanks for sharing.

Comment by kromokromo 4 days ago

Once again, impressed by Opus 5.5 for a job well done. How much did this cost you?

Comment by tkgally 4 days ago

A significant proportion of my Max subscription for this week. In the README, Claude estimates a total of about 15 million tokens.