A Hacker News user has been testing frontier AI models by tasking them with creating self-contained web pages that display clocks, inspired by Simon Willison’s pelican-on-a-bicycle metric. Over several sessions in the Claude chat interface, Claude Opus 5.5 generated a total of 500 unique clocks. The resulting collection is compiled into a single 6.3 MB HTML file, showcasing the model’s creativity and consistency in design. The author notes being particularly impressed by the variety, interest, and quality of the clocks produced. The full prompting process and page design details are available on GitHub at https://github.com/tkgally/500-clocks/tree/main.
The project highlights how generative models can be evaluated not just on text or code, but on their ability to produce visually engaging and diverse outputs within a constrained format. Each clock is styled differently, ranging from minimalist digital displays to ornate animated timepieces.
The post has garnered attention on Hacker News, receiving 37 points and 9 comments. Readers are invited to explore the live page and the source code to see the breadth of designs created by the model.
Comments and discussion can be found at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50137820
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing