Scanner for cellular automata rule space

Name: Scanner for cellular automata rule space
Availability: InStock
Author: kypaku

by kypaku·Jul 26, 2026·2 points·0 comments

Visit Project View on HN

AI Analysis

●●SolidRabbit HoleNiche Gem

Reverse pattern filtering lets you disqualify rules that produce specific unwanted structures.

Strengths

•Direct PNG encoding bypasses browser canvas limits, enabling massive 10000x10000 pixel exports.
•Custom search works backwards by drawing a pattern to exclude rules that ever generate it.

Weaknesses

•Audience is limited to those specifically interested in cellular automata rule discovery.
•Lacks collaborative features or a shared library of discovered 'interesting' rules.

Post Description

Many years ago I was interested in cellular automata, inspired by Stephen Wolfram's work. I dug into elementary CA and totalistic 3-state rules. But when I went to more states it was getting boring. Almost all of them are dead or chaotic or something that everybody has already seen. But somewhere inside there could be another 110, and nobody looked.

Now that we have AI coding, I decided I can build something in that area, and an app for scanning rules was the obvious thing. I implemented an explorer with a bunch of filters: gliders, chaos, large structures, and custom search. The last one works backwards — you draw a pattern and a rule passes only if this pattern never occurs. I could not define "interesting", but it was easy to say what disqualifies a rule. It also renders diagrams as big PNG.

Demo: https://kypaku.github.io/pages/ca2026/ Source: https://github.com/Kypaku/ca2026