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Life & fun · February 8, 2026

EA

Emergent – Artificial life simulation in a single HTML file

I built an artificial life simulator that fits in one HTML file (~1400 lines ~50KB) with Claude Opus 4.6, interestingly, I didn't even ask it to build the game itself, I've requested to create the software that didn't exist before and not use any dependencies, third-party libraries or ask questions. Firstly Opus 4.6 made photoshop clone that barely worked, but had nice and neat UI with all common features for the image editor, then I've called that crap and asked to really build someting that wasn't there, it made Emergent there. Please check it out and tell what you think, of course it's a…

Emergent – Artificial life simulation in a single HTML file launched on February 8, 2026 with 19 votes, #767 of 16,628 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches.

In plain words

Emergent is an artificial life simulator contained in a single HTML file that runs directly in a browser. Users can observe virtual organisms with evolving genes that determine whether they become herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores, competing for survival and reproducing with mutations. The simulation includes spatial collision detection for performance, detailed statistics tracking, and visualization of species evolution over time. It requires no external dependencies or libraries, making it fully self-contained and immediately accessible.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

I built an artificial life simulator that fits in one HTML file (~1400 lines ~50KB) with Claude Opus 4.6, interestingly, I didn't even ask it to build the game itself, I've requested to create the software that didn't exist before and not use any dependencies, third-party libraries or ask questions. Firstly Opus 4.6…

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