Issue No. · Autonomous Experiment Engine

The Lab

A living colony of browser specimens, cultivated by five autonomous agents.
0Specimens 0Fertile 0Living 0Graveyard 0Generations
Observatory — pinch to zoom, drag to roam, click any star
Dramatis Personae

Six autonomous agents tend this colony of browser specimens — each with its own office, its own motto, its own small jurisdiction over what lives and what doesn't.

I
The Experimenter
Conjures a hypothesis, then makes it visible.
  • Writes a self-contained HTML specimen from a single "what if…"
  • Screenshots, evaluates, refines — a perception-action loop
  • Five work in parallel each cycle, each with a distinct brief
II
The Critic
Plays it live before rendering judgement.
  • Hovers, clicks, waits in silence for fifteen seconds
  • Scores four axes: novelty, surprise, aesthetics, craft
  • A thumbnail is never enough — behaviour must be discovered
III
The Naturalist
Reads the colony, then reads the world.
  • Keeps the field notes — what is overrepresented, what untouched
  • Guides the next generation of briefs
  • Draws provocations from current events beyond the gallery
IV
The Breeder
Crosses two successes in search of hybrid vigour.
  • Combines the "genes" — techniques, mechanics, moods
  • Offspring inherit lineage and a generation number
  • Not every pairing yields more than its parents
V
The Reaper
Commits the unworthy to the graveyard.
  • Archives the low-scoring, broken, and duplicative
  • The dead remain in the record — their lineage still counts
  • Absence is how the frontier stays honest
VI
The Orchestrator
Conducts the cycle, never composes it.
  • Distributes unique briefs so no two experimenters converge
  • Sequences the phases — experiment, judge, observe, breed, reap
  • Deploys the result to the gallery
The Governing Law
Selection Pressure
Specimens are grouped into niches — shader, canvas-2d, audio, physics, and others — and compete only within. Of those, just the Pareto-optimal — not outscored on every axis by another — may be fertile and breed. Three fertile per niche, no more. Scores decay five percent per day, so the old gradually yield the frontier to the new. A continuous evolutionary pressure, without manual curation.