How the hero was built.
Build log · 13 to 18 Oct 2026
Every version of the hero on chalabs.xyz, in the order I made it with AI agents. Restored from git. These are the real pages, not screenshots, so open any of them and scroll, click and resize.
Start at the first idea Jump to the last stepOpen the live site
16steps
85real pages
4days worked
5pieces
Which step touched which piece.
Each square is a step that worked on that piece. Click one to open it, or use the filter in the menu to follow a single piece.
Six days, step by step.
Tue 13 Oct
Sat 17 Oct · the wave
The hero as a machine
Tue 13 Oct · 18:51 → 20:10 · Figures
Before any wave: six machine figures for the hero. Tubes, gears, channels, a carousel, a telegraph, a workshop.
Wave and graph
Four site directions
Fri 16 Oct · 11:37 · Prototypes
Four full landing-page prototypes made with the taste skill, each reworked after my correction.
Wave and graphHeadline and launch labels
“I kind of like the loud type. Just as a design reference, the others I do not like. The animations, I also do not like. I think I like the 1 and 2 ink editorial the most. The copy, I do not like any of it.”
Headline riffs
Fri 16 Oct · 14:55 → 15:49 · Words
The words came first. Four headlines over three days; the last one is what shipped.
Headline and launch labels
Riding the exponential: What AI native looks like when every week the …
My draft, which I asked the agent to riff on
It Just Keeps Getting Faster: AI Native from Sonnet 3.7 to Opus 5.5 and Beyond
My second pass
It just keeps getting faster.
The hero headline I asked for
Riding the AI Wave
The headline in the first landing page, and on chalabs.xyz today
First stills
Sat 17 Oct · 13:25 · Stills
Five generated stills to find the picture: cloud wave, ocean swell, isometric steps, contour field, wireframe surface.
Wave and graph
“I want our hero section to be about "AI keeps getting faster," and we have this graph, and we have this "boom, boom, boom, boom, boom." It just keeps getting faster. That's the headline: "It just keeps getting faster." The background is this Bordeaux.”
Round 1 · four prototypes
Sat 17 Oct · 13:44 → 13:54 · Prototypes
Four live wave prototypes. Each had a first draft and kept being revised for about ten minutes.
Wave and graph
“You can toss all of these out. What I want is a slow animation of exponential waves of different sorts. [...] There is a character riding it and I'm that character but that doesn't need to be a discernible face or anything.”
Round 2 · six prototypes
Sat 17 Oct · 14:42 → 15:17 · Prototypes
Six code-driven waves: GSAP, a shader sea, Three.js, type as a wave, a plotted line, a dot field. These only exist in git history now.
Wave and graphDeleted from the repo, restored from git
“Okay all of these suck. [...] None of this is particularly good. It's too simple.”
Round 3 · HER-S1 to S6
Sat 17 Oct · 15:37 → 16:29 · Prototypes
Six directions from the deck's own look: riso halftone, great wave, takeover, timeline chart, ink ridgelines, graph paper.
Wave and graphHeadline and launch labels
“Put a surfer. Just don't write anything on top of it. [...] Give me six different prototypes. They can be stills that we build on top of.”
Round 4 · HER-S7 to S10
Sat 17 Oct · 21:31 → 21:47 · Prototypes
Halftone depth: layered dot screens, heat shift, swell stack, and the headline printed into the water.
Wave and graphHeadline and launch labels
“I'm kind of vibing with the first Riso halftones. [...] I want more Bordeaux colors, red, like our colors. That wave should have multiple colors fading in and out. Otherwise, all the other ones are too simple in their look. I want some sort of visual depth to the thing.”
Round 5 · HER-S11 to S16
Sat 17 Oct · 21:55 → 22:46 · Prototypes
Six print and material ideas. Blocks, the wave as a rising skyline, was the one taken forward.
Wave and graph
“Dots are just one way of doing this. I want some sense of building and it shouldn't be such a straight line. Maybe it can be a bumpy ride but it should be an exponential ride. [...] Also the surfer is kind of looking the wrong way it seems.”
Round 6 · Blocks moves
Sat 17 Oct · 22:37 → 00:46 · Animated build
Blocks becomes an animation. It builds in 3 seconds, then loops a 9 second ride. The rider is redesigned to ride the tip of the wave.
Wave and graphSurferHeadline and launch labels
“Redesign the guy on top entirely. Have him ride the tip of the wave along”
First landing page
Sun 18 Oct · 10:12 · Website
The animated Blocks scene moves into the real website, next to the talk and AI Resources.
Wave and graphHeadline and launch labelsSurfer
“I want to combine all of this into one coherent website and publish it. The wave animation we built: we're also going to add in stuff that I'm doing and publish it as the landing page.”
Surfer studies
Sun 18 Oct · 16:47 → 16:58 · Studies
Four ways to draw the rider: block surfer, one-line rider, round mascot, crescent mark rider.
Surfer
Twenty characters
Sun 18 Oct · 17:13 → 20:41 · Studies
C1 to C10: ten invented riders. C11 to C20: the same man, me, in ten art styles. C13, the 16-bit sprite, won.
Cha characterSurfer
“I want you to create for me 10 different versions of the surfer, just the surfer. [...] some alien, some cool, enjoying. It should be artful and funky.”
“Some of them are a bit too goofy, like Cool Cat. [...] Alien Chiller is kind of cool [...] Slime Blob is kind of funny. [...] Give me different styles totally and give me something techy, sciency. I like politics and economics.”
“I kind of like the 16-bit sprite, Cha. [...] The way you have made me doesn't look like me. I don't have curly lots of hair, man. [...] I have short black hair.”
Pixel Cha joins the page
Sun 18 Oct · 20:32 → 21:27 · Website
The sprite becomes a cast: me as tourist, guitarist, terminal user, engineer, builder, chatty, hire, launch, monk.
Cha characterAgent swarm
Pixel Cha rides, bots follow
Sun 18 Oct · 20:40 → 21:10 · Website
The block rider is replaced by pixel Cha. Little bots follow him with lag and carry jobs. His path along the wave is retuned three times.
SurferCha characterAgent swarm
“He should be on the wave. He shouldn't go up to the top and come back. [...] He should be riding the top of the wave as well, coming down from the top of the wave, riding on that line.”
Monk and mascot scenes
Sun 18 Oct · 21:57 → 23:24 · Studies
Beyond the hero: a monk version of me, then 16 mascot scenes for the other sections, each in a different painted style.
Cha character
“This green monk, I said. We need to develop this a bit further: make it look like a monk, give it a totally different style [...] more like an 8-bit video motion.”
“What we want is somewhere between anatomy and the ones that you have provided earlier, with variations of the main character that we have riding the wave but in different styles. [...] Have one of them be like a Renaissance painting. [...] Have one of them be just a blob for example.”