rewrite: refresh all blog posts for public audience
Merged overlapping posts: - forking-gitea + fork-dont-build → one post about the fork philosophy - fal-image-generation + image-generation-fal → one post about AI art pipeline Rewrote all posts with external/public voice: - Stronger hooks, concrete examples, punchier language - agentic-workflow: restructured around soul files + skills + numbers - agent-harness: clearer framing of 'what an agent harness is' - cloud-harness: tighter narrative about overnight agents - godot-optimisation: same depth, sharper opening - pre-commit-agent: clearer architecture, cost breakdown - studio-cli: reframed around identity/cold-start problem - blog-visual-upgrade: tightened the restyle story 10 posts total (9 markdown + 1 hand-authored HTML)
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<title>Tinqs Studio Is an Agent Harness for Game Dev — Tinqs Blog</title>
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<title>What an Agent Harness Is and Why Game Dev Needs One — Tinqs Blog</title>
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<meta name="description" content="An agent harness gives AI agents identity, memory, tools, and guardrails. Tinqs Studio is one built specifically for game development --- git, 3D preview, image generation, and a CLI that makes every session a warm start.">
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<meta name="description" content="A raw AI model is a brain without hands, eyes, or memory. An agent harness gives it identity, tools, context, and guardrails — and game development needs one built for binary assets, visual pipelines, and spatial systems.">
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<meta property="og:title" content="Tinqs Studio Is an Agent Harness for Game Dev">
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<meta property="og:title" content="What an Agent Harness Is and Why Game Dev Needs One">
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<meta property="og:description" content="Tinqs Studio is an agent harness for game dev --- identity, skills, vision, git, and creative tools in one platform.">
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<meta property="og:description" content="Agent harnesses give AI identity, memory, and tools. Game dev needs one that understands 3D assets.">
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<meta name="twitter:description" content="Tinqs Studio is an agent harness for game dev --- identity, skills, vision, git, and creative tools in one platform.">
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<meta name="twitter:description" content="Agent harnesses give AI identity, memory, and tools. Game dev needs one that understands 3D assets.">
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"description": "A raw AI model is a brain without hands, eyes, or memory. An agent harness gives it identity, tools, context, and guardrails — and game development needs one built for binary assets, visual pipelines, and spatial systems."
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<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
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<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
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<span class="post__date">25 May 2026</span>
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<span class="post__date">25 May 2026</span>
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<h1 class="post__title">Tinqs Studio Is an Agent Harness for Game Dev</h1>
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<h1 class="post__title">What an Agent Harness Is and Why Game Dev Needs One</h1>
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<p class="post__lead">An agent harness is the layer between a raw AI model and a useful team member. It gives the agent identity, memory, tools, and guardrails. Tinqs Studio is an agent harness built specifically for game development.
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<p class="post__lead">Open Claude or ChatGPT right now and ask it to review your last PR. It'll say "I don't have access to your repository." Ask it to take a screenshot of your game. It'll say "I can't interact with your operating system." Ask it what you were working on yesterday. It'll say "I don't have memory of previous conversations."</p>
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## What Is an Agent Harness?
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A raw AI model — Claude, GPT, Gemini — is powerful but stateless. It doesn't know who you are, what project you're working on, what tools are available, or what happened yesterday. Every session is a cold start. Every conversation begins with "let me explain the project..."
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An agent harness solves this. It wraps around the model and provides:
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- <strong>Identity</strong> — who the agent is, what it values, how it should behave
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- <strong>Memory</strong> — what happened in previous sessions, what was decided, what failed
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- <strong>Tools</strong> — what the agent can actually do beyond generating text
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- <strong>Context</strong> — what project this is, who's asking, what infrastructure exists
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- <strong>Guardrails</strong> — what the agent must never do, what requires human approval
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Without a harness, you have a chatbot. With one, you have a team member.
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## Why Game Dev Needs Its Own Harness
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Generic agent harnesses exist — LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen. They're built for web apps, data pipelines, and customer support. Game development has different problems:
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<strong>Assets are binary.</strong> A web developer's PR is a text diff. A game developer's PR is a 150MB GLB file. Generic harnesses don't know how to preview 3D models, manage LFS bandwidth, or review binary assets.
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<strong>The pipeline is visual.</strong> Game dev goes from concept art to 3D model to rigged character to in-engine asset. Each step uses different tools — image generators, 3D modellers, auto-riggers, game engines. An agent harness for game dev needs to orchestrate this entire chain.
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<strong>Scale is physical.</strong> A web app's complexity is in business logic. A game's complexity is in geometry — 12km worlds, 155 vegetation prototypes, 576 terrain regions, 2000 crowd instances. The agent needs to understand spatial systems, GPU memory, and frame budgets.
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<strong>The team is small and cross-functional.</strong> A 4-person game studio has no dedicated DevOps, no dedicated artist, no dedicated PM. The harness needs to fill all those gaps, not just one.
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## How Tinqs Studio Works as a Harness
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Tinqs Studio is a platform built on a <a href="forking-gitea" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Gitea fork</a> with game-specific features layered on top. But the git platform is just the foundation. The harness is everything around it.
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### Identity: Soul Files
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Every agent session starts by loading a soul file — a markdown document that defines the agent's persistent identity. Not just "you are a helpful assistant" but specific values, knowledge scope, and behavioural rules.
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The soul file means the agent behaves consistently whether it's triaging bugs at 9am or generating concept art at midnight. It knows what repos exist, who the team members are, what the game is about, and what decisions have been made. Identity isn't cosmetic — it's the difference between an agent that asks "what project is this?" and one that says "I see the vegetation grid was updated yesterday, want me to check the cache eviction?"
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### Memory: Markdown Files in Git
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Agent memory is plain markdown files in a git repository. No vector databases, no proprietary stores. The agent reads its memory on session start, updates it during work, and commits changes back.
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This is deliberately low-tech. Markdown in git gives you version history, branching, merge conflict resolution, and human readability for free. When memory goes wrong — and it will — you can <code>git log</code> to see what changed and <code>git revert</code> to fix it.
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### Tools: The CLI
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A <a href="studio-cli" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">single Go binary</a> gives every agent access to:
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- <strong>Identity loading</strong> — full project context in 100ms
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- <strong>Screenshots</strong> — capture any window from outside the process
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- <strong>Cloud vision</strong> — send screenshots to a vision model, get structured descriptions
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- <strong>Health checks</strong> — verify services, repos, and tools are working
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- <strong>Service status</strong> — which URLs are live, what's reachable
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The CLI is the agent's hands and eyes. Without it, the agent can only read and write text. With it, the agent can see the game running, photograph bugs, and verify infrastructure.
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### Skills: Teachable Workflows
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Skills are markdown playbooks that teach agents specific procedures. Instead of hoping the model figures out how to generate concept art or create a 3D model, you write the steps once:
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- <a href="../skills/image-generation.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Image Generation</a> — generate game art with fal.ai Flux using a <a href="fal-image-generation" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">4-layer prompt pattern</a>
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- <a href="../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Concept Art Pipeline</a> — from design brief through 2D art to 3D model export
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- <a href="../skills/tripo-browser-workflow.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">3D Model Generation</a> — Tripo Studio text-to-3D and image-to-3D
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- <a href="../skills/sora2-video.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Video Generation</a> — trailer clips with OpenAI Sora 2
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Skills compound. Every playbook you write makes the agent more capable. After six months, our agents handle art generation, competitive research, video production, project management, and code review — all from markdown files.
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### Git Platform: 3D Preview and LFS
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The <a href="forking-gitea" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Gitea fork</a> underneath handles the game-specific git problems:
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- <strong>3D asset preview</strong> — rotate GLB/FBX/STL files in the browser during code review
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- <strong>LFS-first workflows</strong> — auto-tracking for game file extensions, storage dashboards
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- <strong>OAuth2 SSO</strong> — one login for git, tools, and the game
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- <strong>22 format support</strong> — GLB, FBX, OBJ, STL, 3DS, PLY, and more via O3DV
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### Guardrails: Human-in-the-Loop
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The harness defines what agents can and cannot do:
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- Agents can file issues, draft announcements, generate assets, write code
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- Agents <strong>cannot</strong> merge code, deploy builds, push to public repos, or post to external channels without human approval
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- The <a href="https://tinqs.com/tinqs/blog" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">public blog repo</a> requires human-approved merge requests — agents can propose changes but a person must review
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This isn't a limitation — it's a feature. The agent handles volume; the human handles judgement.
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## The Cold Start Problem
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The biggest problem with AI agents in production isn't capability — it's context. Every new session is blank. The agent doesn't know what happened yesterday, what's in progress, or what tools are available.
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Most teams solve this with long system prompts. That works until your context is 200 markdown files, 15 skills, and 3 years of project history. You can't paste all of that into a system prompt.
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The harness solves this with <strong>staged loading</strong>:
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1. <strong>CLI identity call</strong> (100ms) — loads soul file, company context, machine info, service status
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2. <strong>Memory file</strong> (instant) — loads cross-session context
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3. <strong>Skills</strong> (on demand) — loaded only when the task matches a skill name
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4. <strong>Repo context</strong> (on demand) — read files as needed, not all upfront
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The agent goes from cold to fully contextual in under a second. No "let me explain..." No re-reading the same onboarding doc. Just start working.
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## What Makes This Different from LangChain
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LangChain, CrewAI, and similar frameworks are <strong>code-first</strong>. You define agents in Python, chain them with function calls, and deploy them as services. They're powerful for building AI products.
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Tinqs Studio is <strong>file-first</strong>. Agents are defined in markdown. Skills are markdown. Memory is markdown. Identity is markdown. Everything is in git, readable by humans, editable without code changes, and version-controlled.
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This matters for game teams because:
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- <strong>Non-engineers can contribute.</strong> The designer writes a skill for concept art. The PM writes a skill for sprint planning. No Python required.
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- <strong>Everything is auditable.</strong> <code>git log</code> shows who changed what, when, and why. Memory changes are commits. Skill updates are diffs.
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- <strong>It works with any AI tool.</strong> The same soul files and skills work in Cursor, Claude Code, or any tool that reads markdown. You're not locked into one framework.
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## The Stack
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| Layer | What | How |
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|——-|——|—–|
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| <strong>Identity</strong> | Soul files, company context | Markdown in git, loaded via CLI |
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| <strong>Memory</strong> | Cross-session context | Markdown in git, updated by agents |
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| <strong>Skills</strong> | Teachable workflows | Markdown playbooks, loaded on demand |
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| <strong>Tools</strong> | CLI, screenshots, vision | Go binary, one install per machine |
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| <strong>Git</strong> | 3D preview, LFS, SSO | Gitea fork with game-specific features |
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| <strong>Creative</strong> | Image gen, 3D models, video | fal.ai, Tripo, Sora 2 via skills |
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| <strong>Guardrails</strong> | Human approval gates | Branch protection, MR requirements |
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## Getting Started
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If you want to build your own agent harness for game dev:
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1. <strong>Start with a soul file.</strong> Write 50 words about your project's identity, values, and scope. Put it in your repo root as <code>SOUL.md</code>.
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2. <strong>Write one skill.</strong> Pick the workflow you repeat most — concept art generation, bug triage, build verification — and write the steps as markdown.
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3. <strong>Build a CLI identity command.</strong> Even a shell script that prints "project name, repos, services" gives your agent a warm start.
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4. <strong>Put everything in git.</strong> Not a database, not a SaaS tool. Git. You already have it.
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The rest — 3D preview, LFS management, OAuth SSO, creative pipelines — you can add as you need it. Or use <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>, where we've already built it.
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—
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An agent harness isn't a product category yet. But it should be. The gap between "I have an AI model" and "I have an AI team member" is infrastructure — identity, memory, tools, context, guardrails. For game development, that infrastructure needs to understand binary assets, visual pipelines, and spatial systems. That's what we're building.</p>
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<div class="post__body">
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<div class="post__body">
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<p>A raw AI model is a brain without hands, eyes, or memory. An <strong>agent harness</strong> is the layer that gives it all three — plus identity, tools, and guardrails. And game development needs one that understands binary assets, visual pipelines, and spatial systems.</p>
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<h2>What a harness provides</h2>
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<p>Every agent harness, regardless of domain, needs five things:</p>
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<p><strong>Identity.</strong> Who the agent is, what it values, how it should behave. Not "you are a helpful assistant" — that's generic and unmoored. A soul file that says "you're working on Ariki, a survival colony sim. The team is four people. Never push to main without review. Prefer existing conventions." Identity creates consistency across sessions.</p>
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<p><strong>Memory.</strong> What happened last session. What decisions were made. What failed and why. Without memory, every conversation is a cold start — "let me explain the project..." Memory stored as markdown in git means it's version-controlled, diffable, and human-readable. When something goes wrong, you <code>git log</code> instead of debugging a vector database.</p>
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<p><strong>Tools.</strong> What the agent can actually do beyond generating text. A CLI that takes screenshots, checks service health, and loads project context. API wrappers for git, CI, image generation. Without tools, the agent is a very articulate oracle that can't touch anything.</p>
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<p><strong>Context.</strong> Which project this is. Who's asking. What machine they're on. What services are reachable. A single CLI call — <code>tstudio identity</code> — returns all of this in 100ms. No re-reading the README. No "what repo are we in?"</p>
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<p><strong>Guardrails.</strong> What the agent must never do. No merging to main without review. No pushing to public repos without approval. No running destructive commands. The harness enforces these at the platform layer, not in the prompt. Prompts can be ignored. Platform gates cannot.</p>
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<h2>Why generic harnesses fail for game dev</h2>
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<p>LangChain, CrewAI, and AutoGen are built for web apps. They assume text-in, text-out. Game development is different in ways that break those assumptions:</p>
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<p><strong>Assets are binary.</strong> A web PR is a text diff. A game PR is a 150MB GLB file with textures, rigging, and animations. You can't review it without seeing it. Our harness renders 3D models in the browser during code review — rotate, zoom, check materials. The artist pushes, the lead inspects, no downloads required.</p>
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<p><strong>The pipeline is visual.</strong> Concept art → 3D model → rigged character → in-engine asset. Each step uses different tools. The harness needs to orchestrate image generators, 3D modellers, auto-riggers, and game engines as a single workflow — not as five separate API calls the human has to stitch together.</p>
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<p><strong>Scale is physical.</strong> A web app's complexity is in business logic. A game's complexity is in geometry — 12km worlds, 155 vegetation types, 2,000 crowd instances. The agent needs to understand spatial systems, GPU memory budgets, and frame timing. "Add more RAM" isn't an answer when you have 8GB of VRAM.</p>
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<p><strong>The team is small and cross-functional.</strong> Four people. No dedicated DevOps, no dedicated artist, no dedicated PM. The harness fills all those gaps, not just one.</p>
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<h2>The toolchain that makes it work</h2>
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<p>Our harness runs on <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>, built on a Gitea fork with game-specific features. The key pieces:</p>
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<p><strong>The CLI</strong> — a single Go binary. One command (<code>tstudio identity</code>) gives the agent full project context in 100ms. Screenshots, cloud vision, health checks — all subcommands of the same binary.</p>
|
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<p><strong>The soul file</strong> — a markdown document in the repo root. The agent reads it on session start. It defines values, scope, and behavioural rules. The same soul file works in Cursor, Claude Code, or any tool that reads markdown.</p>
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<p><strong>Skills</strong> — markdown playbooks for specific workflows. Image generation, concept art pipeline, 3D model creation, video generation. Each skill is a procedure the agent follows. Write once, use forever.</p>
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<p><strong>3D preview</strong> — click a <code>.glb</code> file in a PR and rotate the model in your browser. 22 formats supported. This alone transformed our review process — nobody approves a binary diff blind anymore.</p>
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<p><strong>Guardrails</strong> — agents can file issues, draft announcements, generate assets, and write code. They cannot merge, deploy, or push to public repos without human approval. Branch protection rules enforced at the git platform layer.</p>
|
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<h2>The cold-start problem, solved</h2>
|
||||||
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<p>Every AI agent session starts blank. Most teams solve this with long system prompts — but when your context is 200 markdown files, 15 skills, and 3 years of project history, you can't paste all of that.</p>
|
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<p>The harness uses staged loading:</p>
|
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<p>1. <strong>CLI identity call</strong> (100ms) — soul file, company context, machine info, service status</p>
|
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<p>2. <strong>Memory file</strong> (instant) — cross-session context from the docs repo</p>
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<p>3. <strong>Skills</strong> (on demand) — loaded only when the task matches a skill name</p>
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<p>4. <strong>Repo context</strong> (on demand) — files read as needed, not all upfront</p>
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||||||
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<p>Agent goes from cold to fully contextual in under a second. No "let me explain the project." No re-reading onboarding docs. Just start working.</p>
|
||||||
|
<h2>The bet</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p>The gap between "I have an AI model" and "I have an AI team member" is infrastructure. Identity, memory, tools, context, guardrails. For game development, that infrastructure needs to understand binary assets, visual pipelines, and spatial systems.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>We're betting that specialised harnesses beat generic ones. A harness built for game dev — with 3D preview, LFS management, and creative pipelines — will outperform a general-purpose agent framework on game dev tasks. Not because the AI is smarter, but because it has the right hands, eyes, and memory for the job.</p>
|
||||||
|
<hr>
|
||||||
|
<p><em>Tinqs Studio is an agent harness for game development — git hosting, AI agents, creative pipelines. Open for teams. We're building <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a> with the same tools.</em></p>
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<title>How a 4-Person Studio Runs on AI Agents — Tinqs Blog</title>
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"description": "Soul files, skill playbooks, and markdown as the universal API. How we built an agentic workflow that lets a 4-person indie studio operate at 10x scale."
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<span class="post__date">6 March 2026</span>
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<span class="post__date">6 March 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h1 class="post__title">How a Small Game Studio Runs on AI Agents</h1>
|
<h1 class="post__title">How a 4-Person Studio Runs on AI Agents</h1>
|
||||||
<p class="post__lead">We gave our AI agents persistent identities, skill playbooks, and access to our entire knowledge base. This is how a 4-person game studio built an agentic workflow that punches above its weight.</p>
|
<p class="post__lead">Last week one of our agents caught a stale bug at 3am — a vegetation culling issue that had been open for six days. It nudged the team chat, drafted a fix summary, and by morning the issue was resolved. Nobody lost sleep. Nobody context-switched. The agent just handled it.</p>
|
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<div class="post__body">
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<div class="post__body">
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||||||
<h2>The Problem Every Small Studio Knows</h2>
|
<p>This is what happens when you stop treating AI as a chatbot and start treating it as a team member with a persistent identity, a memory, and a set of skills it can actually execute.</p>
|
||||||
<p>When you're four people building a game, there's no room for a dedicated DevOps person, a full-time PM tool chain, or someone whose job it is to "keep things organised." Everyone wears five hats. Documentation drifts. Issues pile up. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand shipped.</p>
|
<h2>The problem with "just use ChatGPT"</h2>
|
||||||
<p>We tried the usual tools — Notion, Trello, shared Google Docs. They all had the same problem: they're passive. They sit there and wait for a human to update them. In a team of four where the lead developer is also the CTO, that human never has time.</p>
|
<p>Every small studio hits the same wall: four people, forty roles. Nobody has time to keep documentation current. Bugs pile up. The backlog rots. Someone asks "what did we decide about the inventory system?" and three different answers come back.</p>
|
||||||
<p>So we built something different. We gave AI agents persistent identities, connected them to our entire knowledge base, and let them become working members of the team.</p>
|
<p>The usual fix is more tools — Notion, Trello, Linear, Slack integrations. But tools are passive. They sit there waiting for humans to update them. In a team where the lead developer is also the CTO, that human is already stretched thin.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>The Architecture: Agents with Identity</h2>
|
<p>We tried something different. Instead of adding more tools for humans to maintain, we gave AI agents persistent identities, connected them to our entire knowledge base, and let them do the maintenance.</p>
|
||||||
<p>Our primary AI agent runs inside the IDE and has access to the full documentation repository — the game design document, backlog, meeting notes, company operations, everything. It's not a chatbot. It's a persistent team member with a <strong>soul file</strong> that defines its values and operating principles, and a <strong>memory file</strong> that persists context across sessions.</p>
|
<h2>Soul files: giving agents a personality that sticks</h2>
|
||||||
<p>The key insight: <strong>all knowledge lives in markdown files in one repo</strong>. No databases, no SaaS dashboards, no proprietary formats. Plain text, version-controlled, readable by humans and agents alike. When anyone on the team opens the docs repo, the agent wakes up with full context of who they are, what machine they're on, and what's been happening.</p>
|
<p>The core idea is embarrassingly simple. Every agent gets a <strong>soul file</strong> — a markdown document that defines who it is, what it values, and how it should behave:</p>
|
||||||
<h3>What the agent actually does</h3>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>Values</strong> — "never break the build," "always verify before acting," "prefer existing patterns over novelty"</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>Knowledge scope</strong> — what repos exist, who's on the team, what the game is about</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>Behavioural rules</strong> — when to act autonomously, when to ask, what requires explicit human approval</li>
|
||||||
|
</ul>
|
||||||
|
<p>This isn't theatre. It's the difference between an agent that asks "what project is this?" every session and one that says "I see the vegetation grid was updated yesterday — want me to check the cache eviction?"</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>The soul file loads in 100ms when the agent starts. No cold starts. No re-explaining.</p>
|
||||||
|
<h2>Memory: markdown in git, not a vector database</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p>Agent memory lives as plain markdown files in our docs repo. No vector databases, no proprietary stores, no SaaS dashboards. The agent writes to its memory file during work, commits it, and reads it on the next session.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>This is deliberately low-tech. Markdown in git gives you version history, diffs, branching, and human readability for free. When memory goes wrong — and it will — you <code>git log</code> to see what changed and <code>git revert</code> to fix it. Try debugging a corrupted vector embedding at 11pm.</p>
|
||||||
|
<h2>Skills: teachable playbooks, not prompt engineering</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p>Agents don't just have instructions. They have <strong>skills</strong> — markdown playbooks that teach specific workflows. When someone says "generate concept art for a character," the agent reads <code>skills/image-generation.md</code> and follows the procedure. No prompt engineering per session. No "let me try a different prompt."</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>We've open-sourced several skills:</p>
|
||||||
|
<ul>
|
||||||
|
<li><a href="../skills/image-generation.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Image Generation with fal.ai</a> — 4-layer prompt pattern that actually produces usable game art</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><a href="../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Concept Art Pipeline</a> — full 2D concept → 3D model workflow</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><a href="../skills/tripo-browser-workflow.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">3D Model Generation</a> — Tripo Studio text-to-3D</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><a href="../skills/sora2-video.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Video Generation</a> — trailer clips with Sora 2</li>
|
||||||
|
</ul>
|
||||||
|
<p>Each skill took about 30 minutes to write. After six months, our agents have 15+ skills covering art generation, competitive research, video production, and project management. Skills compound — every playbook you write makes every future session more capable.</p>
|
||||||
|
<h2>What the agents actually do, every day</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>During the day</strong> (interactive, inside the IDE):</p>
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li>Triages and grooms the issue backlog</li>
|
<li>Triages and grooms the issue backlog</li>
|
||||||
<li>Keeps documentation in sync with the game state</li>
|
<li>Keeps documentation in sync with what's actually in the game</li>
|
||||||
<li>Processes bug reports from testers and creates structured issues</li>
|
<li>Processes tester bug reports and creates structured issues</li>
|
||||||
<li>Drafts team announcements, reviews PRs, manages cross-repo coordination</li>
|
<li>Generates concept art, trailer frames, UI icons on demand</li>
|
||||||
<li>Generates concept art, trailer frames, and UI assets using integrated API skills</li>
|
<li>Conducts competitive research — Steam pages, player reviews, pricing</li>
|
||||||
<li>Conducts competitive research — analysing Steam pages, player reviews, pricing strategies</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<p>The team talks to the agent through voice. The IDE's built-in microphone transcribes and auto-translates (multilingual team). The agent is trained to interpret messy voice-to-text artifacts and act on intent, not grammar.</p>
|
<p>The team talks to the agent through voice. The IDE microphone transcribes, and the agent interprets intent from messy voice-to-text. "There's a tree floating two meters above the terrain on the west beach" becomes a filed issue with a screenshot, a vision-model description, and coordinates.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Background Automation</h2>
|
<p><strong>At night</strong> (background daemon, $15/day):</p>
|
||||||
<p>The interactive agent only runs when someone opens the IDE. But a studio doesn't sleep — bugs get reported at midnight, issues go stale, and the team chat fills up while everyone's away.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>A background daemon runs 24/7, ticking every 15 minutes. It uses a three-tier model strategy — cheap models for routine checks, medium for analysis, and premium only when it needs deep reasoning. The whole thing costs about $15/day.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>What it handles</h3>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Chat monitoring</strong> — polls team chat, responds to commands, acknowledges messages</li>
|
<li>Polls team chat every 15 minutes, responds to commands</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Bug intake</strong> — when a tester reports a bug in chat, creates a structured issue automatically</li>
|
<li>When a tester reports a bug in chat, creates a structured issue automatically</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Stale issue detection</strong> — flags issues that haven't been touched, nudges the team</li>
|
<li>Flags stale issues that haven't been touched</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Daily summaries</strong> — posts a morning digest of what happened overnight</li>
|
<li>Posts a morning digest of what happened overnight</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Self-learning</strong> — creates its own skill files when it discovers better approaches</li>
|
<li>Creates its own skill files when it discovers better approaches</li>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>The two agents coordinate through the docs repo itself. One writes, the other reads. No API calls between them, no message queue. Just git.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The Skill System</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Agents don't just have instructions — they have <strong>skills</strong>. Each skill is a markdown file that teaches the agent a specific workflow: how to generate concept art through a pipeline, how to use image generation APIs, how to conduct competitive research, how to create 3D models from concept art.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>When someone asks the agent to do something that matches a skill, it reads the skill file and follows the procedure. This means you can teach the agent new capabilities without changing any code — just write a new markdown file.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>We've open-sourced several of our skills in this repo:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><a href="../skills/image-generation.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Image Generation with fal.ai</a></li>
|
|
||||||
<li><a href="../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Concept Art Pipeline</a></li>
|
|
||||||
<li><a href="../skills/tripo-browser-workflow.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">3D Model Generation with Tripo</a></li>
|
|
||||||
<li><a href="../skills/sora2-video.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Video Generation with Sora 2</a></li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<h2>Soul Files: Why Identity Matters</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Giving the agent a persistent identity isn't theatre. It creates consistency across sessions. The soul file defines:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Values</strong> — what the agent prioritises (e.g., "never break the build," "always verify before acting")</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Knowledge scope</strong> — what repos, services, and team members exist</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Behavioural rules</strong> — how to handle ambiguity, when to ask vs act, what requires human approval</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>The agent remembers what it learned, adapts to who's asking, and maintains the same principles whether it's triaging bugs or drafting a Steam page description. The soul file is the agent's constitution.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>What We've Learned</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Plain text is the universal API.</strong> Every tool, every agent, every human can read a markdown file. We store everything — design documents, meeting notes, agent memory, team contacts — as .md files in one repository. This sounds almost too simple, but it eliminates an entire class of integration problems.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Cheap models for routine, expensive models for thinking.</strong> Most of what an autonomous agent does is pattern matching and text formatting — you don't need the most expensive model for that. Save the premium tokens for decisions that actually require reasoning.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>The human stays in the loop for decisions.</strong> The agents can file issues, draft announcements, and generate assets — but they don't merge code, deploy builds, or post to public channels without explicit approval. The workflow is designed so the AI handles the grunt work while humans make the calls that matter.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Voice input changes everything.</strong> When you can describe a bug while looking at the game screen, and the agent transcribes, interprets, and files an issue — that's a workflow that collapses the distance between noticing a problem and tracking it.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Skills compound.</strong> Every skill file you write makes the agent more capable. After 6 months, our agents have 15+ skills covering art generation, competitive research, video production, and project management. Each one took 30 minutes to write and saves hours every week.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The Numbers</h2>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Team size:</strong> 4 humans + AI agents</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Background agent cost:</strong> ~$15/day (~$450/month)</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Knowledge files:</strong> 200+ markdown documents</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Skills:</strong> 15+ agent skill files and growing</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Infrastructure:</strong> Multiple machines, self-hosted git, zero DevOps engineers</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
|
<h2>What we learned</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Plain text is the universal API.</strong> Every tool, every agent, every human can read a markdown file. We store everything — design docs, meeting notes, agent memory, team contacts — as <code>.md</code> in one repo. It sounds too simple, but it eliminates an entire class of integration problems.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Cheap models for routine, expensive models for thinking.</strong> Most of what an agent does is pattern matching — "does this look like a bug report?" You don't need DeepSeek Pro for that. Save the premium tokens for decisions that actually require reasoning. Our background daemon costs $15/day with a three-tier model strategy.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Voice changes everything.</strong> When you can describe a bug while looking at the screen, and the agent transcribes, interprets, and files it — that collapses the distance between noticing a problem and tracking it. Keyboard-free bug reporting is a superpower.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Skills compound exponentially.</strong> One skill saves 15 minutes per session. Fifteen skills save hours per day across the whole team. The investment curve is absurdly favourable — 30 minutes of writing per skill, compounding returns forever.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>We're four people. With agents doing the mechanical work, we operate like forty. Not because the AI is magic — because we gave it identity, memory, and the right playbooks, and then got out of its way.</p>
|
||||||
<hr>
|
<hr>
|
||||||
<p>We're not claiming this is how every studio should work. But for a small team trying to build something ambitious, having AI agents that actually understand the project — not just answer questions about it — has been transformative. The agents don't replace anyone on the team. They make it possible for four people to do the work of forty.</p>
|
<p><em>We're building <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a>, a survival colony sim, using the same agent workflow described here. Everything runs on <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> — a game dev platform with built-in AI agents, git hosting, and creative pipelines.</em></p>
|
||||||
<p>We're building all of this as part of <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> — a game development platform that brings git hosting, AI tools, and team workflows together. The blog posts and skills in this repo are part of that journey.</p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
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|
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|
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|
||||||
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Our Blog Just Got a Visual Upgrade — Here's How We Did It">
|
<meta name="twitter:title" content="How We Restyled Our Blog with Two Template Files and Zero Dependencies">
|
||||||
<meta name="twitter:description" content="How we restyled the Tinqs blog with a gradient-first, dark-code-panel aesthetic — using only two template files and a markdown build script.">
|
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Blog restyle: gradient titles, dark code panels, amber callouts — two template files, zero deps.">
|
||||||
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg">
|
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg">
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<script type="application/ld+json">
|
<script type="application/ld+json">
|
||||||
{
|
{
|
||||||
"@context": "https://schema.org",
|
"@context": "https://schema.org",
|
||||||
"@type": "BlogPosting",
|
"@type": "BlogPosting",
|
||||||
"headline": "Our Blog Just Got a Visual Upgrade — Here's How We Did It",
|
"headline": "How We Restyled Our Blog with Two Template Files and Zero Dependencies",
|
||||||
"datePublished": "2026-06-03",
|
"datePublished": "2026-06-03",
|
||||||
"author": {
|
"author": {
|
||||||
"@type": "Person",
|
"@type": "Person",
|
||||||
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@
|
|||||||
"name": "Tinqs Limited",
|
"name": "Tinqs Limited",
|
||||||
"url": "https://www.tinqs.com"
|
"url": "https://www.tinqs.com"
|
||||||
},
|
},
|
||||||
"description": "We gave the Tinqs blog a visual refresh, borrowing the dark, gradient-heavy aesthetic from our internal team guides. No external CSS tinkering, no framework, no build-step drift — just two template files and a Node script."
|
"description": "Gradient titles, dark code panels, amber callouts — we gave the Tinqs blog a visual refresh borrowing our internal team guide aesthetic. Two template files, one Node script, no framework."
|
||||||
}
|
}
|
||||||
</script>
|
</script>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
@@ -218,182 +218,49 @@
|
|||||||
<article class="post">
|
<article class="post">
|
||||||
<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
|
<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
|
||||||
<span class="post__date">3 June 2026</span>
|
<span class="post__date">3 June 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h1 class="post__title">Our Blog Just Got a Visual Upgrade — Here's How We Did It</h1>
|
<h1 class="post__title">How We Restyled Our Blog with Two Template Files and Zero Dependencies</h1>
|
||||||
<p class="post__lead">Until yesterday, the Tinqs blog looked... fine. Readable. Semantic. It had the brand amber accent, proper typography, and all the SEO metadata in the right places. But it didn't have much <em>personality</em>. The code blocks were unstyled. The headings sat flat. And the design said "competent" more than "intentional".</p>
|
<p class="post__lead">Our blog looked fine. Readable, semantic, proper typography. But it didn't have much personality. Code blocks were unstyled. Headings sat flat. The design said "competent" more than "intentional."</p>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__body">
|
<div class="post__body">
|
||||||
<p>Then we looked at our own internal team guide — the onboarding doc we keep at <code>docs/team/dev-basics-env-secrets-git.html</code>. It had gradient titles that clip to transparent. Dark, crisp code panels. Callout boxes with coloured left borders. Pill-shaped date labels. A restrained four-colour palette that felt cohesive without screaming.</p>
|
<p>Then we looked at our internal team guide — a self-contained HTML doc with gradient titles that clip to transparent, dark code panels, and callout boxes with coloured borders. It radiated a "well-maintained developer doc" energy. We wanted the blog to feel like it came from the same shop.</p>
|
||||||
<p>We wanted the blog to feel like it came from the same shop. So we restyled it.</p>
|
<p>Two template files, one build step, zero external dependencies. Here's what we changed.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>The design source</h2>
|
<h2>The build system (why it mattered)</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Our team guide is a single self-contained HTML file with a dark theme — background <code>#0d1117</code>, panels <code>#161b22</code>, ink <code>#e6edf3</code>. It uses a four-accent palette:</p>
|
<p>The blog is generated by <code>build.js</code> — a zero-dependency Node script that converts markdown to HTML:</p>
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Green</strong> <code>#22c55e</code> — for <code>.env</code> and environment topics</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Blue</strong> <code>#38bdf8</code> — secondary links, kickers, syntax table headers</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Purple</strong> <code>#a855f7</code> — git topics, hover states</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Amber</strong> <code>#f59e0b</code> — warnings, emphasis, callouts</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>The title is the star: an <code>h1</code> filled with a <code>linear-gradient</code> across all four colours, clipped to the text via <code>-webkit-background-clip: text</code>. Code blocks live in dark <code>#0a0e14</code> panels with <code>#2a3340</code> borders. Blockquotes become amber-tinted callouts. The whole thing radiates a "well-maintained developer doc" energy without feeling like a Bootstrap template.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>We wanted that energy on the public-facing blog.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The build system (and why it mattered)</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>The blog is generated by a zero-dependency Node script — <code>build.js</code> — that converts markdown posts into HTML. The pipeline is:</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>posts/*.md + _template.html / _index_template.html → *.html</code></pre>
|
<pre><code>posts/*.md + _template.html / _index_template.html → *.html</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>This means <strong>we never touch a generated <code>.html</code> file by hand</strong>. Every visual change flows through the two templates. <code>build.js</code> then stamps out all 11 posts plus the index in under a second.</p>
|
<p>This means we never touch a generated <code>.html</code> file by hand. Every visual change flows through the templates. The site-wide CSS — nav, footer, base typography, brand accent — lives in <code>../style.css</code>, served by Git Studio from outside the repo. We didn't touch it.</p>
|
||||||
<p>The site-wide CSS — navigation, footer, base typography, the brand amber <code>–c-accent: #c9935a</code> — lives in <code>../style.css</code>, which is served by Git Studio from outside the blog repo. We deliberately <strong>did not</strong> touch that file. Instead, we injected a self-contained <code><style></code> block at the very end of <code><head></code> in both templates, after the <code>../style.css</code> link. Cascade order handles the overrides.</p>
|
<p>Instead, we injected a self-contained <code><style></code> block at the end of <code><head></code> in both templates, after the <code>../style.css</code> link. Cascade order handles the overrides. No <code>!important</code>. No external font loads. No CDN dependencies.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>What we changed</h2>
|
<h2>The palette</h2>
|
||||||
<h3>Post template (<code>_template.html</code>)</h3>
|
<p>Four accent colours, borrowed from our team guide:</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Gradient title.</strong> The post <code>h1</code> now gets the gradient treatment — amber <code>#c9935a</code> → warm gold <code>#f59e0b</code> → blue <code>#38bdf8</code>. It's the same technique as the team guide: <code>background-clip: text; color: transparent</code>. The underlying text is still there for screen readers and SEO.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Date pill.</strong> The post date is now a monospace chip — blue text, <code>999px</code> border-radius, uppercase, tight letter-spacing. It sits before the title like a kicker.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Code blocks.</strong> This was the biggest functional improvement. The site CSS only styled inline <code><code></code> — fenced code blocks inside <code><pre></code> had no styling at all. We added a dark panel (<code>#0a0e14</code> background, <code>#2a3340</code> border, <code>10px</code> radius, monospace, <code>overflow-x: auto</code>). A reset rule on <code>.post__body pre code</code> prevents the inline-code styles from doubling up inside the panel. Inline code got its own treatment: <code>#1c2230</code> background, green <code>#9fe6c0</code> text.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Section cues.</strong> <code>h2</code> headings now have a <code>4px</code> amber left border as a visual anchor. <code>h3</code> headings get a subtle purple tint — enough to signal a section break without pulling focus.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Links and emphasis.</strong> Body links are blue <code>#38bdf8</code> and shift to purple <code>#a855f7</code> on hover. Bold text picks up amber <code>#f59e0b</code>. Horizontal rules became a single dark <code>#2a3340</code> line.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Blockquote callouts.</strong> We wrote the CSS for amber-tinted callout blockquotes — tinted background, <code>4px</code> amber left border, rounded right corners — but <code>build.js</code> doesn't emit <code><blockquote></code> yet. The rules are there, ready to activate when someone adds blockquote handling or swaps in a full markdown library.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Index template (<code>_index_template.html</code>)</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>The blog listing page got the same treatment, translated to its own selectors:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><code>.blog-header__title</code> — same amber→gold→blue gradient</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><code>.section-label</code> — a monospace kicker pill above the title</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><code>.blog-card__date</code> — date pill matching the post pages</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><code>.blog-card:hover</code> — border shifts to brand amber on hover</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><code>.blog-card__read</code> — blue link, purple on card hover</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<h3>The palette at a glance</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Role | Colour | Where |</p>
|
<p>| Role | Colour | Where |</p>
|
||||||
<p>|——|——–|——-|</p>
|
<p>|——|——–|——-|</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Brand anchor | <code>#c9935a</code> | Gradient start, h2 left bar, card hover |</p>
|
<p>| Brand amber | <code>#c9935a</code> | Gradient start, h2 left bar, card hover |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Warm gold | <code>#f59e0b</code> | Gradient midpoint, bold text |</p>
|
<p>| Warm gold | <code>#f59e0b</code> | Gradient midpoint, bold text |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Blue | <code>#38bdf8</code> | Gradient endpoint, links, date pills |</p>
|
<p>| Blue | <code>#38bdf8</code> | Gradient endpoint, links, date pills |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Purple | <code>#a855f7</code> | h3 colour, link hover |</p>
|
<p>| Purple | <code>#a855f7</code> | h3 colour, link hover |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Dark panel | <code>#0a0e14</code> | Code block background |</p>
|
<p>Tasteful. Not a rainbow.</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Border | <code>#2a3340</code> | Code panels, hr, inline code |</p>
|
<h2>What we styled</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Four accent colours. No rainbow.</p>
|
<p><strong>Gradient titles.</strong> Post <code>h1</code> gets <code>linear-gradient(90deg, #c9935a, #f59e0b 40%, #38bdf8)</code> via <code>background-clip: text; color: transparent</code>. Underlying text preserved for screen readers and SEO.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Date pills.</strong> Monospace chip — blue text, <code>999px</code> border-radius, uppercase, tight letter-spacing. Sits before the title like a kicker.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Code blocks.</strong> The site CSS only styled inline <code><code></code>. Fenced blocks got a dark panel (<code>#0a0e14</code>, <code>#2a3340</code> border, <code>10px</code> radius, monospace, <code>overflow-x: auto</code>). A reset rule on <code>pre code</code> prevents inline-code styles from doubling up inside the panel.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Section cues.</strong> h2 gets a 4px amber left border as visual anchor. h3 gets a purple tint — enough to signal a section break without pulling focus.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Links.</strong> Blue <code>#38bdf8</code>, purple <code>#a855f7</code> on hover. Bold text picks up amber.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Blockquote callouts.</strong> Amber-tinted background, 4px amber left border, rounded right corners. The CSS is written and waiting — <code>build.js</code> doesn't emit <code><blockquote></code> yet, but the rules activate the moment we add <code>></code> syntax support.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Index page.</strong> Same gradient on the listing title. Date pills on cards. Amber border on card hover. Blue/purple read links.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>The rebuild</h2>
|
<h2>The rebuild</h2>
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-bash">cd ~/tinqs-ltd/blog && node build.js</code></pre>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>Building blog...
|
|
||||||
agent-harness.md → agent-harness.html
|
|
||||||
agentic-workflow.md → agentic-workflow.html
|
|
||||||
...
|
|
||||||
studio-cli.md → studio-cli.html
|
|
||||||
index.html (listing)
|
|
||||||
Done — 11 posts built.</code></pre>
|
|
||||||
<p>Zero errors. Every regenerated HTML file now carries the inline <code><style></code> block. We confirmed with <code>grep -l "background-clip" *.html</code> — all 12 files (11 posts + index) ship the gradient.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>What we didn't change</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Navigation, footer, and site chrome are untouched. This was a CSS-only change — no markup was altered in either template beyond the <code><style></code> injection. The existing responsive behaviour is preserved. The blog still uses the same <code>IBM Plex Sans</code> font stack, the same SEO metadata, the same <code>build.js</code> pipeline.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>What's next</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>The restyle is on a branch (<code>style/team-guide-aesthetic</code>) awaiting review. Once merged, the blog gets its new look with no deployment step beyond a <code>git push</code> — Git Studio picks it up automatically.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>Two gaps we might address later:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>1. <strong>Blockquote support in <code>build.js</code>.</strong> The callout CSS is written and waiting. Adding <code>></code> syntax to our markdown converter would let post authors drop amber callout boxes anywhere in a post.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>2. <strong>Ordered lists.</strong> Same story — the CSS isn't written because <code>build.js</code> doesn't emit <code><ol></code> / <code><li></code> inside ordered lists yet. Both are one-function additions.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The blog toolkit: a hands-on guide</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>If you're going to write for the Tinqs blog — or tweak how it looks — here's everything you need to know, all in one place.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Adding a new post</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Every post starts as a markdown file in <code>posts/</code>. The filename doesn't matter for routing (that's driven by the <code>slug</code> field), but we name them descriptively: <code>blog-visual-upgrade.md</code>, <code>pre-commit-agent.md</code>, etc.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The file has two parts: <strong>YAML frontmatter</strong> (metadata wrapped in <code>—</code>) and <strong>markdown body</strong> (everything after the second <code>—</code>).</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Frontmatter fields:</strong></p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-yaml">---
|
|
||||||
title: "Post Title — with optional subtitle"
|
|
||||||
slug: url-friendly-slug
|
|
||||||
date: "2026-06-03"
|
|
||||||
description: "One-sentence summary for meta tags and SEO."
|
|
||||||
og_description: "Shorter version for social cards (optional — falls back to description)."
|
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
|
||||||
excerpt: "A teaser line shown on the blog index page."
|
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
|
||||||
---</code></pre>
|
|
||||||
<p>All fields are required except <code>og_description</code> and <code>og_image</code> (they have defaults). The <code>slug</code> becomes the filename on disk — <code>blog-visual-upgrade</code> produces <code>blog-visual-upgrade.html</code>.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Markdown body:</strong> The first paragraph after frontmatter becomes the <strong>lead</strong> (shown above the fold on the post page). Everything after the first blank line is the body. <code>build.js</code> splits them automatically.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>Once your <code>.md</code> file is ready:</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-bash">node build.js</code></pre>
|
<pre><code class="language-bash">node build.js</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>That regenerates the new post's HTML plus a fresh <code>index.html</code> with the updated card listing. No manual HTML editing, ever.</p>
|
<pre><code>Building blog...
|
||||||
<h3>The template handshake</h3>
|
11 posts built + index.html
|
||||||
<p>The blog uses two Handlebars-style templates (actually plain string replacement — no library needed):</p>
|
Done.</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>| File | Role | Key placeholders |</p>
|
<p>Zero errors. Every regenerated HTML file now carries the inline <code><style></code>. Confirmed with <code>grep -l "background-clip" *.html</code> — all pages ship the gradient.</p>
|
||||||
<p>|——|——|——————|</p>
|
<h2>What we didn't touch</h2>
|
||||||
<p>| <code>_template.html</code> | Wraps a single blog post | <code>{{TITLE}}</code>, <code>{{DATE_DISPLAY}}</code>, <code>{{LEAD}}</code>, <code>{{BODY}}</code>, <code>{{AUTHOR_*}}</code> |</p>
|
<p>Navigation, footer, site chrome, responsive behaviour — all unchanged. This was a CSS-only change. No markup altered beyond the <code><style></code> injection.</p>
|
||||||
<p>| <code>_index_template.html</code> | Wraps the blog listing page | <code>{{CARDS}}</code> — replaced with an <code><a class="blog-card"></code> block per post |</p>
|
<h2>What we learned</h2>
|
||||||
<p><code>build.js</code> reads both templates at startup, then for each post:</p>
|
<p><strong>Inline styles beat separate CSS files when you don't control the server.</strong> The blog repo is standalone — it can't modify <code>../style.css</code>. Inline <code><style></code> blocks ship inside the generated HTML, so the blog is fully self-contained. One <code>git push</code> and it's live.</p>
|
||||||
<p>1. Parses the frontmatter + splits lead from body</p>
|
<p><strong>Cascade order is the cleanest specificity hack.</strong> Putting the <code><style></code> block after the external stylesheet link means same-selector rules win by position. No <code>!important</code>, no selector wars, no unexpected regressions.</p>
|
||||||
<p>2. Runs the markdown converter on the body (<code>md()</code> function)</p>
|
<p><strong>Build systems make CSS changes safe.</strong> Because we never hand-edit <code>.html</code>, every style change is tested by regenerating all pages and grepping for the new selectors. If a rule doesn't ship, you know immediately.</p>
|
||||||
<p>3. Does <code>template.replace(/\{\{KEY\}\}/g, value)</code> for every placeholder</p>
|
<p>Two gaps we'll fill later: blockquote support in <code>build.js</code> (the callout CSS is waiting) and ordered lists (same story). In the meantime, the blog already looks intentional — and it took two template files, one build step, and zero dependencies.</p>
|
||||||
<p>4. Writes the result to <code>{slug}.html</code></p>
|
<hr>
|
||||||
<p>After all posts are built, it generates <code>index.html</code> by sorting posts newest-first and replacing <code>{{CARDS}}</code> with a block of <code>.blog-card</code> links.</p>
|
<p><em>The blog is generated by <a href="https://tinqs.com/tinqs/blog" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">build.js</a> and served by <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>. All styling is self-contained in the templates.</em></p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>The critical rule:</strong> never edit a generated <code>*.html</code> file. They get overwritten on the next <code>node build.js</code>. Always change the templates or the markdown source.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>The three-layer styling architecture</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Styling has three layers, and they cascade in this order:</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>1. ../style.css ← external, served by Git Studio (untouchable from this repo)
|
|
||||||
2. <style> in _template ← post-page overrides (inline, at end of <head>)
|
|
||||||
3. <style> in _index ← index-page overrides (inline, at end of <head>)</code></pre>
|
|
||||||
<p>Layer 1 provides the nav, footer, base typography, and the <code>–c-accent: #c9935a</code> variable. It also defines bare selectors like <code>.post__title</code>, <code>.post__date</code>, <code>.blog-card</code>, etc. — but with minimal styling.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>Layers 2 and 3 are our <strong>self-contained inline <code><style></code> blocks</strong>. They sit AFTER the <code>../style.css</code> link in the <code><head></code>, so same-specificity rules win by cascade order. We never use <code>!important</code> — the position handles precedence naturally.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Why inline instead of a separate <code>.css</code> file?</strong> The blog repo is standalone — it doesn't control what Git Studio serves. Adding a file like <code>blog-style.css</code> would require coordinating a deploy to the parent site. Inline <code><style></code> blocks ship inside the generated HTML, so the blog is fully self-contained. One <code>git push</code> and it's live.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>The markdown dialect (what <code>build.js</code> understands)</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Our converter is intentionally minimal — zero dependencies, about 100 lines of Node. It handles the subset we actually use:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Markdown | HTML emitted | Notes |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>|———-|————-|——-|</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| <code># Heading</code> through <code>######</code> | <code><h1></code>–<code><h6></code> | |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| <code><strong>bold</strong></code> | <code><strong></code> | |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| <code><em>italic</em></code> | <code><em></code> | |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| `<code> </code>code<code> </code><code> | </code><code>` (inline) | |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| <code> </code>`<code>lang </code>`<code> </code> | <code><pre><code class="language-lang"></code> | Fenced code blocks |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| <code>- list item</code> or <code>* list item</code> | <code><ul><li></code> | Unordered only |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| <code>!<a href="url" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">alt</a></code> on its own line | <code><figure><img><figcaption></code> | |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| <code>—</code> on its own line | <code><hr></code> | |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| <code><a href="url" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">text</a></code> | <code><a href></code> | |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Bare text | <code><p></code> | |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>What's NOT supported yet:</strong></p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><code>> blockquote</code> — the CSS callout rules are written and waiting</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><code>1. ordered lists</code> — no <code><ol></code> output</li>
|
|
||||||
<li>Nested lists, tables, inline HTML, footnotes</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>If you need one of these, the fix lives in the <code>md()</code> function in <code>build.js</code>. Each missing feature is a ~5-line addition.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Adding a new style rule</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>You're writing a post and want a new visual element. The workflow:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>1. <strong>Open <code>_template.html</code></strong> (or <code>_index_template.html</code> for listing-only styles)</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>2. <strong>Find the <code><style></code> block</strong> at the end of <code><head></code> — it's clearly marked with a <code>/<em> ── Team guide aesthetic ── </em>/</code> comment</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>3. <strong>Add your rule</strong> inside that block. Follow the existing conventions:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p> - Use the team guide palette (amber <code>#c9935a</code>, gold <code>#f59e0b</code>, blue <code>#38bdf8</code>, purple <code>#a855f7</code>)</p>
|
|
||||||
<p> - Prefix body-content rules with <code>.post__body</code> to scope them</p>
|
|
||||||
<p> - Match the existing code style (2-space indent, comment headers for sections)</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>4. <strong>Rebuild:</strong> <code>node build.js</code></p>
|
|
||||||
<p>5. <strong>Verify:</strong> open the page and check; <code>grep</code> your new selector in <code>*.html</code> to confirm it shipped</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The golden rules for style additions:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Never</strong> edit <code>../style.css</code> — it's outside the repo</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Never</strong> hand-edit a <code>*.html</code> file — the build will clobber it</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Don't</strong> restyle <code>.nav</code>, <code>.footer</code>, or the mobile menu — those belong to the parent site</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Do</strong> use the existing palette; don't introduce new colours unless there's a strong reason</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Keep it self-contained</strong> — no external font loads, no CDN dependencies, no <code>@import</code></li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Extending <code>build.js</code></h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Here are the most likely extensions and where to add them:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Blockquote support</strong> (<code>></code> lines in markdown). Add to the <code>md()</code> function after the list handler:</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-js">// Blockquote
|
|
||||||
const bqMatch = line.match(/^>\s?(.*)$/);
|
|
||||||
if (bqMatch) {
|
|
||||||
closeUl();
|
|
||||||
html += `<blockquote><p>${inline(bqMatch[1])}</p></blockquote>\n`;
|
|
||||||
continue;
|
|
||||||
}</code></pre>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Ordered lists</strong> (<code>1. item</code>). Add after the unordered list handler, with a separate <code>inOl</code> flag and <code>closeOl()</code> function mirroring <code>closeUl()</code>.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Syntax highlighting.</strong> The current <code>md()</code> function already adds <code>class="language-{lang}"</code> to <code><code></code> inside <code><pre></code>. Swap in a lightweight highlighter like <code>highlight.js</code> or <code>shiki</code> — or write a tokenizer that emits <code><span></code> classes matching the team guide's <code>.c</code>, <code>.g</code>, <code>.p</code>, <code>.y</code>, <code>.r</code> colour convention.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Swap in a full parser.</strong> If the feature gap gets annoying, replace the <code>md()</code> function with <code>marked</code> or <code>markdown-it</code>. The template system and frontmatter parsing stay the same — only the body conversion changes. One <code>require()</code> call and you get tables, blockquotes, ordered lists, and footnotes for free.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Quick reference cheatsheet</h3>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-bash"># Add a new post
|
|
||||||
nano posts/my-post.md # write frontmatter + markdown
|
|
||||||
node build.js # regenerate HTML
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
# Tweak styling
|
|
||||||
nano _template.html # edit the <style> block
|
|
||||||
node build.js # rebuild all pages
|
|
||||||
grep "your-selector" *.html # confirm it shipped
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
# Verify before deploy
|
|
||||||
git diff --stat # should only show templates + *.html
|
|
||||||
node build.js # must exit 0
|
|
||||||
ls *.html | wc -l # 12 files = 11 posts + index</code></pre>
|
|
||||||
<p>In the meantime, the blog already looks sharper and more intentional — and it took two template files, one build step, and zero external dependencies to get there. That's the kind of upgrade we like.</p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
</div>
|
</div>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|||||||
|
Before
After
|
+50
-78
@@ -4,27 +4,27 @@
|
|||||||
<meta charset="UTF-8">
|
<meta charset="UTF-8">
|
||||||
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
|
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<title>Building a Cloud Agent Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi — Tinqs Blog</title>
|
<title>Agents That Code Overnight: Our $0.80 Cloud Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi — Tinqs Blog</title>
|
||||||
<meta name="description" content="We forked Pi, merged a browser dashboard into the monorepo, and built a Go orchestrator inside our Gitea fork. Agents code overnight for about $0.80 — and you can watch them from localhost:33634.">
|
<meta name="description" content="A Pi fork for the brain, a Go orchestrator inside Gitea for overnight batch work, and a browser dashboard for daytime. Agents code while you sleep for about $0.80.">
|
||||||
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
|
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
|
||||||
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/cloud-harness">
|
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/cloud-harness">
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<meta property="og:type" content="article">
|
<meta property="og:type" content="article">
|
||||||
<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/cloud-harness">
|
<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/cloud-harness">
|
||||||
<meta property="og:title" content="Building a Cloud Agent Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi">
|
<meta property="og:title" content="Agents That Code Overnight: Our $0.80 Cloud Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi">
|
||||||
<meta property="og:description" content="Pi fork, merged agent dashboard, and a Go orchestrator inside Tinqs Studio.">
|
<meta property="og:description" content="Pi fork + Go orchestrator + browser dashboard. Agents code overnight for $0.80.">
|
||||||
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/img/cloud-harness-architecture.png">
|
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/img/cloud-harness-architecture.png">
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
|
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
|
||||||
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Building a Cloud Agent Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi">
|
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Agents That Code Overnight: Our $0.80 Cloud Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi">
|
||||||
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Pi fork, merged agent dashboard, and a Go orchestrator inside Tinqs Studio.">
|
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Pi fork + Go orchestrator + browser dashboard. Agents code overnight for $0.80.">
|
||||||
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/img/cloud-harness-architecture.png">
|
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/img/cloud-harness-architecture.png">
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<script type="application/ld+json">
|
<script type="application/ld+json">
|
||||||
{
|
{
|
||||||
"@context": "https://schema.org",
|
"@context": "https://schema.org",
|
||||||
"@type": "BlogPosting",
|
"@type": "BlogPosting",
|
||||||
"headline": "Building a Cloud Agent Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi",
|
"headline": "Agents That Code Overnight: Our $0.80 Cloud Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi",
|
||||||
"datePublished": "2026-05-26",
|
"datePublished": "2026-05-26",
|
||||||
"author": {
|
"author": {
|
||||||
"@type": "Person",
|
"@type": "Person",
|
||||||
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@
|
|||||||
"name": "Tinqs Limited",
|
"name": "Tinqs Limited",
|
||||||
"url": "https://www.tinqs.com"
|
"url": "https://www.tinqs.com"
|
||||||
},
|
},
|
||||||
"description": "We forked Pi, merged a browser dashboard into the monorepo, and built a Go orchestrator inside our Gitea fork. Agents code overnight for about $0.80 — and you can watch them from localhost:33634."
|
"description": "A Pi fork for the brain, a Go orchestrator inside Gitea for overnight batch work, and a browser dashboard for daytime. Agents code while you sleep for about $0.80."
|
||||||
}
|
}
|
||||||
</script>
|
</script>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
@@ -218,103 +218,75 @@
|
|||||||
<article class="post">
|
<article class="post">
|
||||||
<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
|
<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
|
||||||
<span class="post__date">26 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="post__date">26 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h1 class="post__title">Building a Cloud Agent Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi</h1>
|
<h1 class="post__title">Agents That Code Overnight: Our $0.80 Cloud Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi</h1>
|
||||||
<p class="post__lead">We spent a few sessions building something that still barely exists elsewhere: a cloud agent harness where AI coding agents are first-class citizens of the platform, not bolt-on tools. The stack is a <a href="https://tinqs.com/tinqs/pi" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Pi fork</a> for the brain, a Go orchestrator inside our <a href="https://tinqs.com/tinqs/studio" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Gitea fork</a> for overnight work, and a browser dashboard merged into Pi for the daytime. Here is how it fits together.</p>
|
<p class="post__lead">Every coding agent today — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Pi — has the same limitation: it runs in your terminal. You watch it work. You close the laptop, it stops. There's no way to say "build these eight features overnight" and wake up to pull requests.</p>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__body">
|
<div class="post__body">
|
||||||
<h2>The Problem</h2>
|
<p>We built exactly that. A Pi fork for the brain, a Go orchestrator inside our Gitea platform for overnight batch work, and a browser dashboard for daytime. Here's the stack.</p>
|
||||||
<p>Every coding agent today — Claude Code, Codex, Pi, Aider — runs in your terminal. You watch it work. You close the laptop, it stops. There is no way to say "build these eight features overnight" and wake up to pull requests.</p>
|
<h2>The problem with terminal-only agents</h2>
|
||||||
<p>We wanted exactly that. Not a coding assistant. An autonomous workforce — with a UI when a human needs to be in the loop.</p>
|
<p>Claude Code runs on Opus at $15/MTok output. Codex uses GPT-5.5. Running eight agents overnight on either would cost $50-200. That's not sustainable for a four-person studio.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Why Not Just Use Claude Code or Codex?</h2>
|
<p>DeepSeek V4 Flash costs $0.28/MTok output. Eight overnight tasks: <strong>about $0.80</strong>. The cost differential changes what's possible — from "I'll use this sparingly" to "run it on everything."</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Cost.</strong> Claude Code runs on Opus at $15/MTok output. Codex uses GPT 5.5. Running eight agents overnight on either would cost $50–200. DeepSeek V4 Flash costs $0.28/MTok output. Eight overnight tasks: <strong>about $0.80</strong>.</p>
|
<p>But cost isn't the only issue. Cloud tools are black boxes. You can't add a Gitea API tool, a fal.ai image generator, or a guardrail that blocks destructive commands. With our own harness, you add an extension and it's live. Agents are not a feature to outsource — they're the product.</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Control.</strong> Cloud tools are black boxes. We cannot add a Gitea API tool, a fal.ai image generator, or a guardrail that blocks <code>aws ec2 terminate-instances</code>. With our own harness, we add an extension and it is live.</p>
|
<h2>Pi — the agent brain</h2>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Platform.</strong> We are building <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> — a Gitea-based game development platform. Agents are not a feature we want to outsource. They are the product.</p>
|
<p><a href="https://pi.dev" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Pi</a> is an open-source coding agent. MIT license, TypeScript, 51k stars. Four core tools (read, write, edit, bash) and an extension system. We forked it and added four extensions:</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Pi — The Agent Brain</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p><a href="https://pi.dev" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Pi</a> is an open-source coding agent by Mario Zechner. MIT license, TypeScript, minimal by design — four core tools (read, write, edit, bash) and an extension system.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>We <a href="https://tinqs.com/tinqs/pi" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">forked it</a>. Not to rewrite the core — to add first-party extensions:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li><strong>tinqs-provider</strong> — routes DeepSeek V4 Flash and Pro through our inference proxy</li>
|
<li><strong>tinqs-provider</strong> — routes DeepSeek V4 Flash/Pro through our inference proxy</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>tinqs-tools</strong> — Gitea REST API, fal.ai image generation, Amazon Nova Lite vision</li>
|
<li><strong>tinqs-tools</strong> — Gitea REST API, fal.ai image generation, vision model access</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>tinqs-ci</strong> — reads CI pipeline status, logs, and polls for completion</li>
|
<li><strong>tinqs-ci</strong> — reads CI pipeline status, logs, polls for completion</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>tinqs-guardrail</strong> — 29 safety patterns that block dangerous operations</li>
|
<li><strong>tinqs-guardrail</strong> — 29 safety patterns blocking dangerous commands</li>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<p>Each extension is a single TypeScript file. No extra npm dependencies on the extension side.</p>
|
<p>Each extension is a single TypeScript file. No npm dependencies. The core Pi code is untouched — we only add files.</p>
|
||||||
<p>Pi has four output modes. The one that matters for automation is <strong>RPC</strong> — a headless process that accepts JSON on stdin/stdout. That is how the orchestrator drives it.</p>
|
<p>Pi's RPC mode is what makes overnight automation possible. It runs headless, accepting JSON on stdin/stdout. The orchestrator spawns it as a subprocess, sends tasks, receives results. No terminal, no editor UI.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>DeepSeek V4 — The LLM</h2>
|
<h2>DeepSeek V4 — the LLM</h2>
|
||||||
<p>DeepSeek V4 Flash through our own inference proxy. OpenAI-compatible API, so Pi treats it like any other provider. The proxy adds:</p>
|
<p>DeepSeek V4 Flash through our own inference proxy. OpenAI-compatible API, so Pi treats it like any other provider. The proxy adds:</p>
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li>Redis job queue (10 concurrent workers)</li>
|
<li>Redis job queue (10 concurrent workers)</li>
|
||||||
<li>Per-user usage tracking</li>
|
<li>Per-user usage tracking</li>
|
||||||
<li>System prompt injection for cache hit optimization</li>
|
<li>System prompt injection for cache-hit optimization</li>
|
||||||
<li>Gitea PAT authentication (same token as git push)</li>
|
<li>Gitea PAT authentication — same token as git push</li>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<p>Cost per task: <strong>$0.02–0.10</strong> depending on complexity.</p>
|
<p>Cost per task: $0.02-0.10 depending on complexity.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Go Orchestrator — Overnight Batch Work</h2>
|
<h2>Go orchestrator — overnight batch work</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Inside <code>tinqs/studio</code> we added <code>modules/agents/</code> — a Go worker pool that:</p>
|
<p>Inside our Gitea fork we added <code>modules/agents/</code> — a Go worker pool that spawns Pi processes, tracks task lifecycle, and streams events over SSE to any connected UI. Six endpoints, same auth as git push:</p>
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li>Spawns Pi with <code>–mode rpc –no-session</code></li>
|
|
||||||
<li>Tracks task lifecycle (pending → running → done)</li>
|
|
||||||
<li>Streams events over <strong>SSE</strong> to any connected UI</li>
|
|
||||||
<li>Enforces guardrails at the platform layer (worker limits, timeouts)</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>Six HTTP endpoints, same auth as git push:</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>POST /api/v1/agents/tasks — submit a task
|
<pre><code>POST /api/v1/agents/tasks — submit a task
|
||||||
GET /api/v1/agents/tasks — list all tasks
|
GET /api/v1/agents/tasks — list all tasks
|
||||||
GET /api/v1/agents/tasks/{id} — get task details
|
GET /api/v1/agents/tasks/{id} — get task details
|
||||||
DELETE /api/v1/agents/tasks/{id} — stop a task
|
DELETE /api/v1/agents/tasks/{id} — stop a task
|
||||||
GET /api/v1/agents/stream — SSE live events
|
GET /api/v1/agents/stream — SSE live events
|
||||||
GET /api/v1/agents/health — orchestrator status</code></pre>
|
GET /api/v1/agents/health — orchestrator status</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>We considered bolting on a separate orchestration SaaS and rejected it. The orchestrator lives in the same binary as git — same auth, no extra service to deploy.</p>
|
<p>The orchestrator lives in the same binary as git — same auth, no extra service to deploy. The intended loop:</p>
|
||||||
<p>The intended loop:</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>Orchestrator reads task brief
|
<pre><code>Orchestrator reads task brief
|
||||||
→ spawns pi --mode rpc
|
→ spawns pi --mode rpc
|
||||||
→ Pi writes code using DeepSeek V4
|
→ Pi writes code using DeepSeek V4
|
||||||
→ Pi pushes branch, calls ci_wait
|
→ Pi pushes branch, calls ci_wait
|
||||||
→ CI green → Pi opens PR via gitea_api
|
→ CI green → Pi opens PR via gitea_api
|
||||||
→ CI red → Pi reads ci_logs, fixes, retries
|
→ CI red → Pi reads ci_logs, fixes, retries (≤3)
|
||||||
→ Human reviews PR, merges</code></pre>
|
→ Human reviews PR, merges</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>Git worktree integration and full push/PR automation are still being wired; the API and worker pool already run locally.</p>
|
<h2>Browser dashboard — daytime UI</h2>
|
||||||
<h2>Pi Dashboard — Browser UI (Shipped)</h2>
|
<p>The orchestrator is for overnight batch work. During the day, you want to see agents, chat with them, and spawn sessions — without living in a terminal.</p>
|
||||||
<p>The cloud orchestrator is for batch work while you sleep. During the day you want to see agents, chat with them, and spawn sessions without living in a terminal.</p>
|
<p>We merged <a href="https://github.com/BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">pi-agent-dashboard</a> into the Pi monorepo. One command:</p>
|
||||||
<p>We merged <a href="https://github.com/BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">pi-agent-dashboard</a> into the Pi monorepo — not as a second repo to install. One checkout, one command:</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-bash">npm run dashboard:dev</code></pre>
|
<pre><code class="language-bash">npm run dashboard:dev</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>Open <strong>http://localhost:33634</strong>. You get:</p>
|
<p>Open <code>localhost:33634</code> and you get live session streaming (watch tool calls and model output in real time), interactive chat, session spawning in any project folder, and per-session cost tracking. The dashboard talks to Pi sessions over WebSocket on port 9999. Inference uses the same Tinqs proxy as the CLI — one API key, one billing account.</p>
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<pre><code>Browser (localhost:33634)
|
||||||
<li><strong>Live session streaming</strong> — watch tool calls and model output in real time</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Interactive chat</strong> — send prompts, answer <code>ask_user</code> dialogs from the browser</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Session spawning</strong> — start Pi in any pinned project folder</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Cost tracking</strong> — per-session token usage when using Tinqs inference</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Plugins</strong> — flows, subagents, workspace helpers</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>The dashboard talks to Pi sessions over a WebSocket bridge on port <strong>9999</strong>. Inference uses the same Tinqs proxy as the CLI — register a custom provider in <code>~/.pi/agent/providers.json</code> and authenticate with your existing <code>tstudio</code> token. No separate LLM API keys.</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>Dashboard (localhost:33634)
|
|
||||||
↕ WebSocket (port 9999)
|
↕ WebSocket (port 9999)
|
||||||
Pi sessions (interactive or headless)
|
Pi sessions (interactive or headless)
|
||||||
↕ OpenAI-compatible API
|
↕ OpenAI-compatible API
|
||||||
Tinqs Studio proxy (tinqs.com/api/v1/ai)
|
Tinqs proxy (tinqs.com/api/v1/ai)
|
||||||
↕ DeepSeek V4 Flash / Pro</code></pre>
|
↕ DeepSeek V4 Flash / Pro</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>When Studio runs locally with agents enabled, the dashboard can also talk to the orchestrator API on port 3000 — submit tasks and watch SSE events in the same UI.</p>
|
<h2>The guardrail</h2>
|
||||||
<p>One browser tab for daytime work; the orchestrator queue for overnight runs.</p>
|
<p>The biggest fear with autonomous agents: hallucination. An agent claiming it read a file without calling <code>read</code>. Three consecutive turns with no tool calls. Running <code>aws ec2 terminate-instances</code> at 3am.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>The Guardrail</h2>
|
<p>The guardrail extension monitors every turn:</p>
|
||||||
<p>Our biggest fear: an agent hallucinating instead of using tools, or running <code>aws ec2 terminate-instances</code> at 3 AM.</p>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<p>The guardrail extension monitors every agent turn:</p>
|
<li><strong>Hallucination detection</strong> — claims without tool calls get corrected</li>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Hallucination detection</strong> — if the agent claims file contents without calling <code>read</code>, it gets corrected.</p>
|
<li><strong>No-tool drift</strong> — three turns with zero tool calls triggers a warning</li>
|
||||||
<p><strong>No-tool drift</strong> — three consecutive turns without a tool call triggers a warning.</p>
|
<li><strong>Command blocking</strong> — 29 patterns covering destructive git, AWS teardown, process killing, production API abuse</li>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Command blocking</strong> — 29 patterns covering destructive git, AWS teardown, process killing, and production API abuse.</p>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<h2>What It Cost to Build</h2>
|
<p>Guardrails at the platform layer, not the prompt layer. Prompts can be ignored. Platform gates cannot.</p>
|
||||||
<p>A few focused sessions: about 2,000 lines of Go, 900 lines of TypeScript extensions, 52 tests, plus merging the dashboard packages into the Pi monorepo. No new servers — Pi is a Node subprocess; the dashboard is another Node process on your machine.</p>
|
<h2>What it cost to build</h2>
|
||||||
<h2>What Is Next</h2>
|
<p>About 2,000 lines of Go, 900 lines of TypeScript extensions, 52 tests, plus merging the dashboard into the Pi monorepo. No new servers — Pi is a Node subprocess; the dashboard is another Node process on your machine. The orchestrator is a Go module inside our existing Gitea binary — zero additional infrastructure.</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Piece | Status |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>|——-|——–|</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Pi fork + tinqs extensions | Shipped |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Dashboard merged into Pi monorepo | Shipped |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Go orchestrator + REST/SSE API | MVP, running locally |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Git worktree + push + PR loop | In progress |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Domain routing (game / sim / platform tasks) | Designed |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>Next we are promoting studio skills from IDE playbooks into orchestrator prompt packs — so the same Pi worker behaves like a game builder, sim maintainer, or platform engineer depending on the task. Specialized agents (planner, reviewer, asset pipeline) sit on top of this foundation.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The harness — inference proxy, guardrails, dashboard, orchestrator API — is in place. The work now is feeding it real tasks and hardening the git loop.</p>
|
|
||||||
<hr>
|
<hr>
|
||||||
<p><em>Tinqs Studio is an open platform for game development — git hosting, AI inference, asset generation, and autonomous agents. We are building <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a>, a survival colony sim, using the same tools we ship.</em></p>
|
<p>The harness — inference proxy, guardrails, dashboard, orchestrator API — is in place. Agents code while you sleep for pocket change. And because everything runs on your own infrastructure, you control the models, the tools, and the safety rails.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><em>Tinqs Studio is an open platform for game development — git hosting, AI inference, asset generation, and autonomous agents. We're building <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a> using the same tools.</em></p>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
</div>
|
</div>
|
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<title>AI Art at Scale: Using fal.ai Flux for Game Asset Generation — Tinqs Blog</title>
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<title>AI Art at Every Price Point: How We Generate Game Assets with fal.ai — Tinqs Blog</title>
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<meta name="description" content="How we use fal.ai Flux models to generate concept art, trailer frames, and UI assets for our game --- with a 4-layer prompt pattern that actually works.">
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<meta name="description" content="From $0.002 to $0.09 per image, across 12 models. How we built a prompt pattern that actually produces usable game art, and a model-picking strategy that keeps costs at $8/month.">
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<meta property="og:title" content="AI Art at Scale: Using fal.ai Flux for Game Asset Generation">
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<meta property="og:title" content="AI Art at Every Price Point: How We Generate Game Assets with fal.ai">
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<meta property="og:description" content="fal.ai Flux for game art: 4-layer prompts, $0.01/image, and a pipeline that replaced our concept art bottleneck.">
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<meta property="og:description" content="12 fal.ai models, $0.002-$0.09/image, 4-layer prompt pattern. Game art that actually ships.">
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"headline": "AI Art at Scale: Using fal.ai Flux for Game Asset Generation",
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},
|
},
|
||||||
"description": "How we use fal.ai Flux models to generate concept art, trailer frames, and UI assets for our game --- with a 4-layer prompt pattern that actually works."
|
"description": "From $0.002 to $0.09 per image, across 12 models. How we built a prompt pattern that actually produces usable game art, and a model-picking strategy that keeps costs at $8/month."
|
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<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
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<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
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||||||
<span class="post__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="post__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h1 class="post__title">AI Art at Scale: Using fal.ai Flux for Game Asset Generation</h1>
|
<h1 class="post__title">AI Art at Every Price Point: How We Generate Game Assets with fal.ai</h1>
|
||||||
<p class="post__lead">We're a small indie studio building a survival colony sim. We don't have a concept artist on staff. Every piece of character art, trailer frame, and UI icon in our game was generated with fal.ai Flux models — at roughly a penny per image.</p>
|
<p class="post__lead">Every visual asset in our game — character art, app icons, trailer frames, logo variants, Steam capsules — was generated through a single API. No Photoshop. No concept artist on staff. Last month: 673 images, $8.30 total. Here's the prompt pattern that makes AI art actually usable for game development, and how we pick between 12 models spanning $0.002 to $0.09 per image.</p>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__body">
|
<div class="post__body">
|
||||||
<h2>The Problem with AI Art for Games</h2>
|
<h2>The problem with AI art for games</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Most AI image generators produce beautiful images that are completely useless for game development. They look great on social media but fall apart when you need consistency: the same character from four angles, a UI icon that reads at 64x64, a trailer frame that matches your game's art style rather than whatever the model defaults to.</p>
|
<p>Most AI-generated images look beautiful on social media and useless in a game. The character looks different from every angle. The art style drifts between generations. The text in the logo is garbled. The icon doesn't read at 64×64.</p>
|
||||||
<p>The issue isn't the models — Flux is genuinely good. The issue is prompting. When you write "warrior on a beach," you get a different art style every time. Different skin tones, different proportions, different lighting. You can't build a game from that.</p>
|
<p>The issue isn't the models — Flux, Ideogram, and Recraft are genuinely good. The issue is prompting. "Warrior on a beach" gives you a different art style, different skin tone, different proportions every time. You can't build a game from one-offs.</p>
|
||||||
<p>We spent three months iterating on prompt patterns before we found something that works consistently. The result is a 4-layer system that anchors the model to your art direction and produces images you can actually ship.</p>
|
<p>We spent three months iterating before we found a prompt structure that anchors the model to a consistent art direction and produces images you can actually ship. It has four layers.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Why fal.ai</h2>
|
<h2>The 4-layer prompt pattern</h2>
|
||||||
<p>We evaluated Midjourney, DALL-E 3, Stable Diffusion (self-hosted), and fal.ai:</p>
|
<h3>Layer 1: Design context (the anchor)</h3>
|
||||||
<p><strong>API-first.</strong> Midjourney is Discord-only. DALL-E's API works but the model makes everything look like a stock photo. Self-hosted SD means maintaining GPU infrastructure. fal.ai gives you Flux models behind a simple REST API — POST a prompt, GET an image URL.</p>
|
<p>This is the most important paragraph and the one most people skip. It sets the art direction for every single generation:</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Cost.</strong> $0.01 per image with <code>flux-2-pro</code>. $0.004 with <code>schnell</code> for rapid iteration. A full character design session — 12 variants across 3 rounds of refinement — costs $0.12. A 20-frame trailer storyboard costs $0.20. At these prices, the bottleneck is creative direction, not budget.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Speed.</strong> <code>flux/schnell</code> returns an image in 4 seconds. <code>flux-2-pro</code> in 15 seconds. Fast enough that an AI agent can generate, display, get feedback, and regenerate in a single conversation turn.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>No subscription.</strong> Pay per image. No monthly fee, no credit packs that expire, no tier-gated features.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The 4-Layer Prompt Pattern</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>This is the pattern that made AI art actually usable for our game. Each layer adds specificity, and the combination anchors the model to a consistent output.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Layer 1: Design Context</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>The most important layer and the one most people skip. It sets the overall art direction:</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>Art direction: stylized 3D render for a survival colony sim. Warm earthy
|
<pre><code>Art direction: stylized 3D render for a survival colony sim. Warm earthy
|
||||||
palette --- browns, tans, dark reds, cream, ocean blues. Carved wood
|
palette — browns, tans, dark reds, cream, ocean blues. Carved wood
|
||||||
textures, traditional patterns, woven natural fibres. Game engine quality,
|
textures, traditional patterns, woven natural fibres. Game engine quality,
|
||||||
not photorealistic.</code></pre>
|
not photorealistic.</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>This paragraph appears at the start of every prompt. Same paragraph whether you're generating a character, a landscape, or an icon. It anchors the model to your art style.</p>
|
<p>Same paragraph whether you're generating a character, a landscape, or an icon. It's your art bible compressed into 50 words. Every time we skipped it — "just a quick test" — the output drifted into generic fantasy art.</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>The key insight:</strong> write this once, paste it everywhere. It's your art bible compressed into 50 words. Every time we skipped it — "just a quick test" — the output drifted into generic fantasy art.</p>
|
<h3>Layer 2: Scene description (be specific)</h3>
|
||||||
<h3>Layer 2: Scene Description</h3>
|
<p>Not "tribal clothing" — "woven wrap skirt, mid-thigh length." Not "jewelry" — "shell necklace with a carved bone pendant." Vague prompts produce vague results. Specific prompts produce usable assets. Describe element by element.</p>
|
||||||
<p>Describe exactly what should appear, element by element:</p>
|
<h3>Layer 3: Negative prompt (prevent drift)</h3>
|
||||||
<pre><code>Full body character in T-pose, front view. Young woman, mid-20s.
|
|
||||||
Wearing a woven wrap skirt (mid-thigh length) and a fitted cloth top.
|
|
||||||
Shell necklace with a carved bone pendant. Single bone bracelet on
|
|
||||||
left wrist. Hair swept back over right shoulder. Bare feet.
|
|
||||||
Matte skin, warm brown tones. Neutral confident expression ---
|
|
||||||
not smiling, not angry. Dark grey background.</code></pre>
|
|
||||||
<p>Not "tribal clothing" but "woven wrap skirt." Not "jewelry" but "shell necklace with a carved bone pendant." Vague prompts produce vague results. Specific prompts produce usable assets.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Layer 3: Negative Prompt</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Always include what you don't want:</p>
|
<p>Always include what you don't want:</p>
|
||||||
<pre><code>Do not include: cartoon style, anime style, photorealistic render,
|
<pre><code>Do not include: cartoon style, anime style, photorealistic render,
|
||||||
extra text or taglines, watermark, deformed elements, modern or
|
extra text or taglines, watermark, deformed elements, modern or sci-fi.
|
||||||
sci-fi. No extra fingers, no merged limbs, no floating accessories.</code></pre>
|
No extra fingers, no merged limbs, no floating accessories.</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>Extend per-subject. For characters: "no stereotypical elements, no overly shiny materials." The negative prompt is as important as the positive one.</p>
|
<p>AI models have strong defaults — they want to make things shiny, symmetrical, and photorealistic. If your game isn't those things, say so explicitly.</p>
|
||||||
<h3>Layer 4: Reference Images</h3>
|
<h3>Layer 4: Reference images (consistency)</h3>
|
||||||
<p>When you need consistency — the same character from different angles, or a new character matching an existing one — pass a reference image:</p>
|
<p>When you need the same character from different angles, pass the first approved image as reference. Without it, every generation is independent — a different person every time. With it, every generation builds on the last approved output. This is how you get a roster of characters that look like they belong in the same game.</p>
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-python">result = fal_client.subscribe("fal-ai/flux-2-pro", arguments={
|
<h2>The model lineup (and when to use each)</h2>
|
||||||
"prompt": "Same character, side view, same clothing and accessories...",
|
<p>Not every image needs the best model. A throwaway mockup doesn't justify $0.09. A final logo doesn't deserve $0.002.</p>
|
||||||
"image_url": "https://your-approved-front-view.png",
|
<p>| Model | Cost | Speed | Use for |</p>
|
||||||
"image_size": "square_hd",
|
<p>|——-|——|——-|———|</p>
|
||||||
})</code></pre>
|
<p>| Flux 2 Pro | $0.03 | 15s | Final art, characters, environments |</p>
|
||||||
<p>The first approved image becomes the reference for all subsequent views. Without it, you get a different person every time.</p>
|
<p>| Flux Schnell | $0.003 | 3s | Exploration drafts, 20-variant grids |</p>
|
||||||
<h2>The Model Lineup</h2>
|
<p>| Ideogram v3 Quality | $0.09 | 12s | Anything with readable text |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Model | Cost | Speed | When |</p>
|
<p>| Recraft v3 | $0.04-0.08 | 10s | Logos, brand assets, SVG vectors |</p>
|
||||||
<p>|——-|——|——-|——|</p>
|
<p>| Seedream v4.5 | $0.04 | 8s | Photorealistic scenes |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| <code>flux-2-pro</code> | $0.01 | ~15s | Final art. Default for anything you'll ship. |</p>
|
<p>| Flux Dev | $0.025 | 10s | LoRA fine-tuning base |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| <code>flux/schnell</code> | $0.004 | ~4s | Exploration and iteration. |</p>
|
<p>| Nano Banana Edit | $0.039 | 12s | Style transfer, material variants |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| <code>ideogram/v2</code> | $0.008 | ~5s | Anything with readable text — logos, UI, posters. |</p>
|
<p>| BiRefNet | $0.001 | 3s | Background removal |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| <code>flux-pro/v1.1-ultra</code> | $0.015 | ~8s | Highest quality, but can hang. |</p>
|
<h3>The Schnell-to-Pro pipeline (never iterate on expensive models)</h3>
|
||||||
<p>The workflow: explore with <code>schnell</code>, refine with <code>flux-2-pro</code>, add text with <code>ideogram/v2</code>.</p>
|
<p>Every generation session follows the same pattern:</p>
|
||||||
<h2>How This Fits Our Pipeline</h2>
|
<p>1. <strong>Explore with Schnell</strong> ($0.003) — 10-20 variants, different angles, color palettes. Cost: $0.03-0.06</p>
|
||||||
<p>fal.ai is the first step in a pipeline from idea to in-game asset:</p>
|
<p>2. <strong>Pick 2-3 directions.</strong> Human looks at the grid, picks winners.</p>
|
||||||
<pre><code>Brief --> fal.ai (2D concept art) --> Tripo Studio (3D model) --> Blender (decimate) --> Godot (in-game)</code></pre>
|
<p>3. <strong>Refine with Flux 2 Pro</strong> ($0.03) — regenerate winners at full quality. Cost: $0.06-0.09</p>
|
||||||
<p>1. <strong>Brief.</strong> The designer describes the character or asset.</p>
|
<p>4. <strong>Post-process</strong> — BiRefNet for background removal ($0.001), Recraft for vector ($0.08)</p>
|
||||||
<p>2. <strong>2D generation.</strong> Generate 3 variants with <code>flux-2-pro</code>, score each on a rubric (style match, cultural accuracy, silhouette, expression, animatability), pick the best.</p>
|
<p>A full session — blank canvas to final assets — costs under $0.20. Most of the creative work happens at $0.003/image. The expensive model just polishes a decision you already made.</p>
|
||||||
<p>3. <strong>Reference sheet.</strong> Generate front, side, three-quarter, and head closeup views using the winner as reference.</p>
|
<h3>Typography: one model rules them all</h3>
|
||||||
<p>4. <strong>3D model.</strong> Approved concept art goes into Tripo Studio for image-to-3D. Outputs ~1.5M faces with full PBR textures.</p>
|
<p>Every model except Ideogram fails at text. Flux gives you beautiful art with garbled letters. SDXL doesn't try. If your image has words in it, Ideogram v3 Quality is the only answer. We learned to accept the $0.09 cost rather than waste $0.30 on ten failed Flux attempts.</p>
|
||||||
<p>5. <strong>Decimation.</strong> Blender CLI decimates to 25,000 faces.</p>
|
<h3>Logo variants at scale</h3>
|
||||||
<p>6. <strong>Rigging.</strong> Auto-rig the body (hair separated first if large).</p>
|
<p>Our game logo has 18 material variants — mahogany, mother-of-pearl, obsidian, molten lava, bronze with verdigris. Each generated with Nano Banana Edit ($0.039) + BiRefNet ($0.001) for transparency. Total: $0.72. A designer would quote hundreds of dollars and a week.</p>
|
||||||
<p>7. <strong>In-game.</strong> Import into the engine, set up materials, done.</p>
|
<h2>The numbers (one month of generation)</h2>
|
||||||
<p>The entire pipeline from "I want a character" to "character walking around in the game" takes about 2 hours. The quality isn't AAA, but for an indie game with a stylised art style, it's more than good enough.</p>
|
<p>| Category | Images | Cost | Avg/Image |</p>
|
||||||
<h2>What We Learned</h2>
|
<p>|———-|——–|——|———–|</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>The design context layer is everything.</strong> Without it, every image is a one-off. With it, every image belongs to the same game. The 50-word context block is worth more than the rest of the prompt combined.</p>
|
<p>| Concept art (flux-2-pro) | 120 | $3.60 | $0.03 |</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Negative prompts prevent drift.</strong> AI models have strong defaults — they want to make things shiny, symmetrical, and photorealistic. If your game isn't those things, say so explicitly.</p>
|
<p>| Exploration (schnell) | 400 | $1.20 | $0.003 |</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Score and iterate, don't accept the first output.</strong> Generate 3 variants, score on 5 criteria, approve only 8+/10. Three attempts at $0.01 each is $0.03 — cheaper than working around a mediocre image.</p>
|
<p>| Logo variants | 18 | $0.72 | $0.04 |</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Reference images are the consistency mechanism.</strong> Without them, every generation is independent. With them, every generation builds on the last approved output. This is how you get a roster of characters that look like they belong in the same game.</p>
|
<p>| Icons | 30 | $1.20 | $0.04 |</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Fast models for exploration, quality models for output.</strong> <code>schnell</code> at 4 seconds is for "what if..." iterations. <code>flux-2-pro</code> at 15 seconds is for "yes, this is the one."</p>
|
<p>| Typography (ideogram) | 25 | $1.50 | $0.06 |</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Let the AI agent handle prompt engineering.</strong> We encode the 4-layer pattern, art style guide, and cultural guardrails in a <a href="../skills/image-generation.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">skill file</a>. The agent writes the full prompt, generates images, displays them, and asks for scores. The human's job is creative direction.</p>
|
<p>| Background removal | 80 | $0.08 | $0.001 |</p>
|
||||||
<h2>The Numbers</h2>
|
<p>| <strong>Total</strong> | <strong>673</strong> | <strong>$8.30</strong> | <strong>$0.012</strong> |</p>
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<p>Six hundred images. Eight dollars.</p>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Characters designed:</strong> 10 (full roster for early access)</li>
|
<h2>The pipeline: from prompt to in-game asset</h2>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Total images generated:</strong> ~400 across all iterations</li>
|
<p>fal.ai is step one of a pipeline that goes from idea to walking character in about two hours:</p>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Total cost:</strong> ~$6 in fal.ai credits</li>
|
<pre><code>Brief → fal.ai (2D concept) → Tripo Studio (3D model) → Blender (decimate) → Godot (in-game)</code></pre>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Time per character:</strong> ~30 minutes from brief to approved reference sheet</li>
|
<p>1. Designer describes the character</p>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Pipeline time:</strong> ~2 hours from concept art to in-game model</li>
|
<p>2. Generate 3 variants with Flux 2 Pro, score on 5 criteria (style match, cultural accuracy, silhouette, expression, animatability)</p>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Models used:</strong> flux-2-pro (80%), schnell (15%), ideogram/v2 (5%)</li>
|
<p>3. Generate front/side/three-quarter reference views using the winner</p>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
<p>4. Tripo Studio image-to-3D (~1.5M faces, PBR textures)</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Open-Source Skills</h2>
|
<p>5. Blender CLI decimates to 25k faces</p>
|
||||||
<p>We've published the skill files that power this workflow. A skill is a markdown document that teaches an AI agent a specific procedure — like a runbook, but the reader is an LLM.</p>
|
<p>6. Auto-rig, import into engine, done</p>
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<p>Quality isn't AAA, but for an indie game with a stylized art style, it's more than good enough. Ten characters designed, total fal.ai spend: $6.</p>
|
||||||
<li><strong><a href="../skills/image-generation.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Image Generation</a></strong> — fal.ai API, 4-layer prompt pattern, model comparison</li>
|
<h2>What we learned</h2>
|
||||||
<li><strong><a href="../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Concept Art Pipeline</a></strong> — full 2D-to-3D character workflow</li>
|
<p><strong>The design context block is worth more than the rest of the prompt combined.</strong> Without it, every image is a one-off. With it, every image belongs to the same game.</p>
|
||||||
<li><strong><a href="../skills/tripo-browser-workflow.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">3D Model Generation</a></strong> — Tripo Studio text-to-3D and image-to-3D</li>
|
<p><strong>Never iterate on expensive models.</strong> Schnell at $0.003/image is for exploration. Flux 2 Pro at $0.03 is for final output. The cheap model does 90% of the creative work.</p>
|
||||||
<li><strong><a href="../skills/sora2-video.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Video Generation</a></strong> — trailer clip generation with OpenAI Sora 2</li>
|
<p><strong>Aggregation beats loyalty.</strong> No single model is best at everything. Flux for art, Ideogram for text, Recraft for design, Nano Banana for edits, BiRefNet for masks. Use the right tool for each job.</p>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
<p><strong>Let the agent handle prompting.</strong> We encode the 4-layer pattern, art style guide, and model selection rules in an <a href="../skills/image-generation.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">agent skill file</a>. The AI writes the full prompt, generates images, displays them, and asks for scores. The human's job is creative direction.</p>
|
||||||
<p>Drop any of these into your <code>.cursor/skills/</code> directory and your AI agent can follow them. Adapt the design context block to your game's art style and you're good to go.</p>
|
<p>AI art isn't magic and it isn't free. But at a penny per image, with the right prompt structure and model strategy, it eliminates the most expensive bottleneck in indie game development: the gap between "I know what this should look like" and "I have an asset I can actually use."</p>
|
||||||
<hr>
|
<hr>
|
||||||
<p>AI image generation isn't magic and it isn't free. But at a penny per image, with the right prompt structure, it eliminates the most expensive bottleneck in indie game development: the gap between "I know what this should look like" and "I have an image I can actually use."</p>
|
<p><em>Image generation is built into <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>. We've open-sourced the <a href="../skills/image-generation.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">prompt engineering skill</a> and <a href="../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">concept art pipeline skill</a>. We're building <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a> with these tools.</em></p>
|
||||||
<p>We're building all of this as part of <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> — a game development platform that brings together git hosting, AI tools, and creative workflows for game teams.</p>
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"description": "Everyone is building new AI developer tools. We forked three battle-tested open-source projects — Gitea, Pi, and Godot — and modified them from the inside. Combined changes: less than 0.5% of upstream code."
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<span class="post__date">25 May 2026</span>
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<span class="post__date">25 May 2026</span>
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<h1 class="post__title">Fork, Don't Build: The Age of Agents Doesn't Need New Tools</h1>
|
<h1 class="post__title">Fork, Don't Build: How We Modified Gitea, Pi, and Godot Instead of Starting from Scratch</h1>
|
||||||
<p class="post__lead">The AI developer tools space has a problem: everyone is building new things. New agents, new IDEs, new platforms, new wrappers around GPT. Meanwhile, the tools that actually run the world — git servers, game engines, CI runners — sit there unchanged, waiting for someone to open them up and let agents in. We chose to fork instead of build. Three times. Here's why.</p>
|
<p class="post__lead">The AI developer tools space is full of people building new things. New agents, new IDEs, new platforms, new wrappers. Meanwhile, the tools that actually run the world — git servers, game engines, CI runners — sit there unchanged, waiting for someone to open them up and let AI agents in.</p>
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||||||
<div class="post__body">
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<div class="post__body">
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||||||
<h2>The Pattern</h2>
|
<p>We forked three of them. Gitea for git hosting. Pi for coding agents. Godot for the game engine. Combined changes: less than 0.5% of upstream code. Here's why, how, and what we learned.</p>
|
||||||
<p>We're a four-person game studio. We don't have time to build a git platform, a coding agent, and a game engine from scratch. Nobody does. But we can take something that already works — something with years of battle-testing, thousands of contributors, and millions of users — and change it from the inside.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The pattern is simple:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>1. Find an open-source tool that does 95% of what you need</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>2. Fork it</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>3. Add the 5% that makes it yours</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>4. Stay close to upstream so you get their fixes for free</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>We've done this three times.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>Fork 1: Gitea — Our Git Platform</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p><a href="https://gitea.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Gitea</a> is a self-hosted git server. Single Go binary, MIT license, 45k GitHub stars. It handles repos, issues, pull requests, CI, LFS — everything a team needs.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>We <a href="https://tinqs.com/tinqs/studio" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">forked it</a> and built Tinqs Studio. Our changes:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>3D asset preview</strong> — click a <code>.glb</code> file and rotate the model in your browser</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>HTML file preview</strong> — rendered in a sandboxed iframe, not raw source</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Agent API</strong> — six endpoints that let AI agents submit tasks, push code, and open PRs</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>OAuth2 SSO</strong> — one login for git, the game, and every tool</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Credits system</strong> — monetize AI inference without hiding features behind paywalls</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>Total lines changed from upstream: about 2,000 out of Gitea's 500,000. That's 0.4%. We modify templates, add Go modules, and tweak CSS variables. We never touch the database schema — we ride upstream's migrations. When Gitea releases 1.27, we rebase, fix conflicts, and ship.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The alternative was building a git platform from scratch. That's a multi-year, multi-million dollar project. Or using GitHub/GitLab and accepting their limitations. Neither option gives you the ability to embed AI agents directly into the platform.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>Fork 2: Pi — Our Agent Runtime</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p><a href="https://pi.dev" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Pi</a> is an open-source coding agent. 51k stars, MIT license, TypeScript. Four core tools (read, write, edit, bash), a minimal system prompt, and an extension system.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>We <a href="https://tinqs.com/tinqs/pi" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">forked it</a> and added four extensions:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>tinqs-provider</strong> — routes inference through our DeepSeek V4 proxy ($0.28/MTok vs Opus at $15/MTok)</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>tinqs-tools</strong> — Gitea API, fal.ai image generation, vision preprocessing</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>tinqs-ci</strong> — reads CI pipeline status and logs, polls for completion</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>tinqs-guardrail</strong> — 29 safety patterns blocking dangerous commands</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>Each extension is a single TypeScript file. No npm dependencies. The core Pi code is untouched — we only add files.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The alternative was building our own agent from scratch. That means writing tool-calling logic, context management, streaming, retry handling, conversation threading — months of work to reinvent what Pi already does. Or using Claude Code / Codex as a black box and accepting that you can't add a Gitea API tool or a budget cap.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>Fork 3: Godot — Our Game Engine</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p><a href="https://godotengine.org" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Godot</a> is an open-source game engine. We forked 4.6.2 and added nine C++ modules that turn the engine into an agent-aware runtime:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>agent_api</strong> — HTTP server inside the engine, so agents can query game state</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>agent_vision</strong> — screenshot capture for AI vision pipelines</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>agent_console</strong> — programmatic access to the engine console</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>agent_replay</strong> — record and replay game sessions for testing</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>agent_analytics</strong> — PostHog event tracking from inside the engine</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>These modules compile into the engine binary. A vanilla Godot user never sees them. An agent can connect to the running engine over HTTP, take a screenshot, read the scene tree, execute a console command, and capture the result — all without touching the editor UI.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The alternative was building an engine integration from scratch. Or worse, building a custom engine. We'd still be writing a renderer instead of making a game.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>Why Forking Beats Building</h2>
|
|
||||||
<h3>You inherit decades of work</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Gitea has handled millions of git pushes. Godot renders millions of frames. Pi has processed millions of LLM tokens. That battle-testing is free when you fork. When you build from scratch, you spend your first year rediscovering bugs that were fixed upstream in 2019.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>You get free maintenance</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Every upstream release brings security patches, performance improvements, and new features — written by hundreds of contributors we don't pay. Our job is to rebase, resolve conflicts, and test. That's an afternoon, not a quarter.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>You stay focused</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Building a git server from scratch means worrying about pack-file format, SSH key management, webhook delivery, and a thousand other things that have nothing to do with AI agents. Forking means you only think about the 5% that matters to you. The other 95% is someone else's problem.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Agents work better on real platforms</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>An agent that pushes to a real Gitea instance — with real CI, real code review, real permissions — produces work that humans can actually review and ship. An agent that pushes to a toy demo platform produces demos.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The whole point of AI agents is to participate in real workflows. Real workflows run on real tools. If you want agents in your git workflow, put them in your git server. If you want agents in your game pipeline, put them in your game engine.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The 0.5% Rule</h2>
|
<h2>The 0.5% Rule</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Across all three forks, our total changeset is less than 0.5% of the upstream code. Tinqs Studio: 0.4% of Gitea. Pi extensions: 900 lines added to a 15,000-line codebase. Godot modules: 2,000 lines added to a 2-million-line engine.</p>
|
<p>We're four people. We can't build a git platform, a coding agent, or a game engine from scratch. Nobody can — not in a timeframe measured in months.</p>
|
||||||
<p>This isn't a coincidence. If your fork touches more than 1% of upstream, you're doing too much. Either the upstream tool is wrong for the job, or you're not trusting it enough. The power of forking is that you don't have to understand the whole codebase. You find the extension points, add your code, and leave the rest alone.</p>
|
<p>But we can take something that already works — something with years of battle-testing and thousands of contributors — and change the last half-percent that makes it ours. The pattern:</p>
|
||||||
<h2>What We're Not Doing</h2>
|
<p>1. Find open-source tool that does 95% of what you need</p>
|
||||||
<p>We're not building a new IDE. Cursor and Claude Code exist. We're not building a new LLM. DeepSeek and Claude exist. We're not building a new cloud platform. AWS exists.</p>
|
<p>2. Fork it</p>
|
||||||
<p>We're building the layer that connects them. The git server that speaks agent. The coding agent that speaks Gitea. The game engine that speaks HTTP. Each fork is a bridge between an existing tool and the agentic future — not a replacement for either.</p>
|
<p>3. Add the 5% (really, 0.5%)</p>
|
||||||
<h2>The Bet</h2>
|
<p>4. Stay close to upstream so their fixes are your fixes</p>
|
||||||
<p>The age of agents doesn't need more agents. It needs better platforms. Platforms that understand agents as first-class users — with API endpoints, safety rails, and lifecycle management. Those platforms already exist as open-source projects. They just need someone to fork them and add the wiring.</p>
|
<p>Across three forks, we've never touched more than 0.5% of upstream code. If your fork hits 1%, you're doing too much — either the upstream tool is wrong for the job, or you're not trusting it enough.</p>
|
||||||
<p>That's the bet. Fork, don't build. Modify the foundation, don't stack another layer on top. Let the upstream community handle the 99.5% while you focus on the 0.5% that makes it yours.</p>
|
<h2>Fork 1: Gitea → Tinqs Studio</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p>Gitea is a self-hosted git server. Single Go binary, MIT license, 45k GitHub stars. We used GitHub for two years. It was fine for docs. For the game repo — 12GB in LFS, growing weekly — it was untenable. LFS bandwidth limits, slow clones, $5/50GB pricing. And nobody on the team could <strong>see</strong> what changed. A PR modifying a <code>.glb</code> file showed a binary diff. No preview. The artist pushed, the developer approved blindly, and three days later someone noticed the normals were inverted.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>We forked Gitea and built <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>. Our changes:</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>3D asset preview.</strong> Click a <code>.glb</code>, <code>.gltf</code>, or <code>.fbx</code> file in a PR and rotate the model in your browser. 22 formats supported via O3DV. This alone transformed our review process — the artist pushes, the lead inspects, nobody downloads anything.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>HTML file preview.</strong> Sandboxed iframe rendering. Our internal docs and game design pages look like websites, not raw source.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Agent API.</strong> Six REST endpoints that let AI agents submit tasks, push code, check CI status, and open PRs. Agents are first-class users of the git platform, not bolt-on tools.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>LFS-first workflows.</strong> Auto-tracking on repo creation. Game file extensions (<code>.fbx</code>, <code>.glb</code>, <code>.png</code>, <code>.wav</code>) tracked by default. Storage dashboard per repo. Clone times went from 45 minutes to 3 minutes.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>OAuth2 SSO.</strong> One login for git, the game tools, and the team dashboard.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>Total lines changed: about 2,000 out of Gitea's 500,000. We modify templates, add Go modules, tweak CSS. We <strong>never</strong> touch the database schema — upstream owns that, and we ride their migrations.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>The alternative was building a git platform from scratch. Multi-year project, multi-million dollar budget. Or using GitHub/GitLab and accepting their limitations. Neither gives you the ability to embed agents directly into the platform.</p>
|
||||||
|
<h2>Fork 2: Pi → Agent Runtime with Game Tools</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p><a href="https://pi.dev" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Pi</a> is an open-source coding agent by Mario Zechner. MIT license, TypeScript, minimal by design — four core tools (read, write, edit, bash) and an extension system. 51k stars.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>We forked it and added four extensions, each a single TypeScript file:</p>
|
||||||
|
<ul>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>tinqs-provider</strong> — routes inference through our DeepSeek V4 proxy ($0.28/MTok vs Opus at $15/MTok)</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>tinqs-tools</strong> — Gitea REST API, fal.ai image generation, vision model access</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>tinqs-ci</strong> — reads CI pipeline status, fetches build logs, polls for completion</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>tinqs-guardrail</strong> — 29 safety patterns blocking dangerous commands</li>
|
||||||
|
</ul>
|
||||||
|
<p>The core Pi code is untouched — 900 lines of extensions added to a 15,000-line codebase. Agents get Gitea-native tools without a fork of the entire agent ecosystem.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>The alternative: building our own agent from scratch — tool-calling logic, context management, streaming, retry handling, conversation threading. Months of work to reinvent what Pi already does.</p>
|
||||||
|
<h2>Fork 3: Godot → Agent-Aware Game Engine</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p><a href="https://godotengine.org" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Godot</a> is the open-source game engine powering our survival colony sim. We forked 4.6.2 and added nine C++ modules that give agents direct access to the running game:</p>
|
||||||
|
<ul>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>agent_api</strong> — HTTP server inside the engine so agents can query game state</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>agent_vision</strong> — screenshot capture for AI vision pipelines</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>agent_console</strong> — programmatic console access</li>
|
||||||
|
<li><strong>agent_replay</strong> — record and replay game sessions for testing</li>
|
||||||
|
</ul>
|
||||||
|
<p>These compile into the engine binary. A vanilla Godot user never sees them. An agent connects over HTTP, takes a screenshot, reads the scene tree, executes a console command — all without touching the editor UI.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>2,000 lines added to a 2-million-line engine. The alternative: building our own engine, or worse, writing a renderer instead of making a game.</p>
|
||||||
|
<h2>Why forking beats building</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>You inherit decades of work, for free.</strong> Gitea has handled millions of git pushes. Godot renders millions of frames. Pi has processed millions of LLM tokens. That battle-testing is yours when you fork. When you build from scratch, year one is spent rediscovering bugs fixed upstream in 2019.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>You get free maintenance.</strong> Every upstream release brings security patches, performance improvements, and new features — written by hundreds of contributors you don't pay. Your job is to rebase, resolve conflicts, and test. An afternoon, not a quarter.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>You stay focused.</strong> Building a git server means worrying about pack-file format, SSH key management, webhook delivery. Forking means you only think about the 0.5% that matters to you. The other 99.5% is someone else's problem.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p><strong>Agents work better on real platforms.</strong> An agent pushing to a real Gitea instance — with real CI, real code review, real permissions — produces work humans can actually review and ship. An agent pushing to a toy demo platform produces demos.</p>
|
||||||
|
<h2>What we're not building</h2>
|
||||||
|
<p>We're not building a new IDE (Cursor and Claude Code exist). Not a new LLM (DeepSeek and Claude exist). Not a new cloud platform (AWS exists).</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>We're building the layer that connects them. The git server that speaks agent. The coding agent that speaks Gitea. The game engine that speaks HTTP. Each fork is a bridge between an existing tool and the agentic future — not a replacement for either.</p>
|
||||||
|
<p>The age of agents doesn't need more agents. It needs better platforms. Platforms that already exist as open-source projects. They just need someone to fork them and add the wiring.</p>
|
||||||
<hr>
|
<hr>
|
||||||
<p><em><a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> is our Gitea fork, open for game teams and indie studios. We're building <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a> — a survival colony sim — using every tool described in this post. If you're interested in self-hosted game development with built-in AI agents, come take a look.</em></p>
|
<p><em><a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> is our Gitea fork, open for game teams. <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a> is the game we're building with every tool described here.</em></p>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
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|
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|
||||||
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||||||
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||||||
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||||||
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||||||
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||||||
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|
||||||
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|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<!-- NAV -->
|
|
||||||
<nav class="nav nav--scrolled" id="nav">
|
|
||||||
<a href="/" class="nav__logo" aria-label="Tinqs home">
|
|
||||||
<span class="nav__wordmark">TINQS</span>
|
|
||||||
</a>
|
|
||||||
<div class="nav__links">
|
|
||||||
<a href="/#game" class="nav__link">Games</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/#tech" class="nav__link">Technology</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/#about" class="nav__link">About</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/blog/" class="nav__link" style="color: var(--c-accent-l);">Blog</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/#signup" class="nav__link">Contact</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/press" class="nav__link">Press</a>
|
|
||||||
</div>
|
|
||||||
<button class="nav__burger" aria-label="Open menu" id="navBurger">
|
|
||||||
<span></span><span></span><span></span>
|
|
||||||
</button>
|
|
||||||
</nav>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<!-- MOBILE MENU -->
|
|
||||||
<div class="mobile-menu" id="mobileMenu">
|
|
||||||
<a href="/#game" class="mobile-menu__link">Games</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/#tech" class="mobile-menu__link">Technology</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/#about" class="mobile-menu__link">About</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/blog/" class="mobile-menu__link">Blog</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/#signup" class="mobile-menu__link">Contact</a>
|
|
||||||
<a href="/press" class="mobile-menu__link">Press</a>
|
|
||||||
</div>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<!-- POST -->
|
|
||||||
<article class="post">
|
|
||||||
<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
|
|
||||||
<span class="post__date">20 May 2026</span>
|
|
||||||
<h1 class="post__title">Why We Forked Gitea and Built Tinqs Studio</h1>
|
|
||||||
<p class="post__lead">GitHub is built for web developers. Game studios need something different — LFS that works, 3D asset previews in the browser, and project management that understands sprints and milestones. So we forked Gitea and built Tinqs Studio.</p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__body">
|
|
||||||
<h2>The Problem with GitHub for Game Dev</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>We used GitHub for two years. It was fine for docs — small files, text diffs, pull requests. But the game repo was a different story.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>A single character model with textures and animations is 50–200MB. A terrain heightmap is 16MB. An island's vegetation data is another 10MB. Our game repo was 12GB in LFS alone, growing every week. GitHub's LFS bandwidth limits, slow clone times, and $5/50GB pricing made it untenable.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>More importantly, nobody on the team could <strong>see</strong> what changed. A PR that modifies a GLB file shows a binary diff. You can't preview it. You can't compare before and after. The artist pushes a model, the developer approves it blindly, and three days later someone notices the normals are inverted.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>Why Self-Host, and Why Gitea</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>We evaluated GitLab, Forgejo, Gogs, and Gitea. The decision came down to:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Single binary.</strong> Gitea compiles to one Go binary with SQLite support. No PostgreSQL, no Redis, no Docker compose with 7 services. Just copy the binary, write an app.ini, and run it.</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Resource usage.</strong> Our instance runs on a single EC2 instance alongside other services. It uses about 200MB RAM. GitLab needs 4GB minimum.</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>LFS built-in.</strong> Gitea includes a full LFS server. No external LFS store, no S3 configuration for basic use. Files are stored locally. We added S3 backend later, but it works out of the box.</li>
|
|
||||||
<li><strong>Forkable.</strong> Gitea is MIT-licensed, written in Go, with a clean codebase. We can modify it without worrying about license restrictions or CLA headaches.</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>We ran vanilla Gitea for six months. It solved the cost and bandwidth problems immediately. But the UX gaps for game development were still there.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>What We Built: Tinqs Studio</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p><a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> is our fork. It tracks upstream Gitea on the <code>main</code> branch and keeps all customisations on a separate branch. We rebase onto upstream releases periodically, fix conflicts, and deploy.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>3D Asset Preview</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>The headline feature. When you open a PR that contains a <code>.glb</code>, <code>.gltf</code>, or <code>.fbx</code> file, you see a 3D viewer directly in the browser. Rotate, zoom, check materials. No downloads, no external tools. We integrated Online 3D Viewer (O3DV), which supports 22 file formats including STL, OBJ, 3DS, and PLY.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>This changes the review process fundamentally. The artist pushes a model, the lead rotates it in the browser, leaves a comment about the UV seam on the shoulder, and the artist fixes it — all without leaving the git platform.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>LFS-First Workflows</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Vanilla Gitea treats LFS as an afterthought. You configure <code>.gitattributes</code> manually. There's no dashboard showing LFS usage, no way to see which files are tracked, no warnings when someone commits a large file without LFS.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>Tinqs Studio adds auto-LFS tracking on repository creation. Game file extensions (<code>.fbx</code>, <code>.glb</code>, <code>.png</code>, <code>.wav</code>, <code>.ogg</code>, <code>.tscn</code>, <code>.tres</code>) are tracked by default. An API endpoint exposes LFS storage stats per repo. The goal: LFS should be invisible. It should just work.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Platform Integration</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Tinqs Studio integrates project management — issues, sprints, time tracking — and OAuth2 SSO. One login for git, the game tools, and the team dashboard.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The Branching Strategy</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Staying close to upstream is critical. We don't want to maintain a fork that diverges forever:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
|
||||||
<li><code>main</code> tracks upstream <code>go-gitea/gitea</code>. We never commit to it directly.</li>
|
|
||||||
<li>Our production branch holds all customisations.</li>
|
|
||||||
<li>Feature branches merge into production.</li>
|
|
||||||
<li>When upstream releases a new version, we merge, resolve conflicts, test, deploy.</li>
|
|
||||||
</ul>
|
|
||||||
<p>We deliberately limit what we touch. We modify templates, locale strings, CSS variables, and a handful of Go packages. We <strong>never</strong> touch the database models — schema is owned by upstream, and we ride their migrations. This keeps rebasing manageable.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>What We Learned</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Self-hosting git is surprisingly easy.</strong> The hard part isn't running Gitea — it's convincing yourself that you're allowed to. After years of GitHub being the default, it feels transgressive to host your own git. But a single Go binary on a $10/month server handles a small team with room to spare.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>LFS changes everything for game repos.</strong> Our clone times went from 45 minutes to 3 minutes. Developers only download the LFS objects they need. CI only pulls what changed. The bandwidth savings alone paid for the server.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Forking is maintenance, not rebellion.</strong> The romantic version is "we forked Gitea and built our own platform." The reality is we changed 200 lines of Go, 50 template strings, and a CSS file. 99.5% of the code is upstream's. We're just customising the last half-percent for our use case.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>3D preview is a game changer.</strong> We expected it to be a nice-to-have. It turned out to be the feature that made the rest of the team actually use git. When the artist can see their work rendered in the browser, they stop asking the developer to "check if it looks right."</p>
|
|
||||||
<hr>
|
|
||||||
<p><a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> is built for game teams that are tired of paying GitHub for LFS bandwidth and reviewing binary diffs blind. We're building it for ourselves first — dogfooding it on our own game — but the plan is to make it available as a platform for other studios. If you're a game team that self-hosts or wants to, we'd love to hear what features you need.</p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
</div>
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|
||||||
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|
||||||
<div class="post__author">
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|
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<div class="post__author-avatar">OB</div>
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|
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<div class="post__author-info">
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|
||||||
<span class="post__author-name">Ozan Bozkurt</span><br>
|
|
||||||
CTO & Developer, Tinqs
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<meta name="description" content="Godot 4 has no built-in asset streaming. We built four layers — terrain regions, vegetation chunks, async loading, and entity rendering — to run a 12km open world with 9 islands, 155 vegetation types, and 2,000 crowd instances.">
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"description": "How we built four streaming layers, async resource loading, and memory-safe caches to run a 12km open world in Godot 4 with C#."
|
"description": "Godot 4 has no built-in asset streaming. We built four layers — terrain regions, vegetation chunks, async loading, and entity rendering — to run a 12km open world with 9 islands, 155 vegetation types, and 2,000 crowd instances."
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<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
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<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
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<span class="post__date">22 May 2026</span>
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<span class="post__date">22 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h1 class="post__title">Streaming a 12km Archipelago in Godot 4</h1>
|
<h1 class="post__title">Streaming a 12km Archipelago in Godot 4</h1>
|
||||||
<p class="post__lead">Godot has no built-in asset streaming. Our game is a 12km x 12km archipelago with 9 islands, thousands of trees, hundreds of buildings, and an ocean that never ends. Here's how we made it run.</p>
|
<p class="post__lead">Godot 4 has no terrain streaming, no asset LOD pipeline, and no distance-based loading. Our game is a 12km × 12km archipelago with 9 islands, 155 vegetation prototypes, and 2,000 simulated colonists. If you load everything at startup, you run out of VRAM before the player sees the main menu.</p>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__body">
|
<div class="post__body">
|
||||||
<h2>The Problem</h2>
|
<p>Here's how we built four streaming layers on top of Godot, all in C#, to make it work.</p>
|
||||||
<p>We're building a survival colony sim set across 9 islands. The total world is roughly 12km x 12km. Each island is 4km across with its own terrain heightmap, biome textures, vegetation prototypes, and building grids. The player can travel between islands by canoe.</p>
|
<h2>The scale problem</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Godot 4 is a fantastic engine, but it wasn't designed for this scale. There's no terrain streaming, no asset LOD pipeline, no distance-based loading. If you load everything at startup, you run out of VRAM before the player sees the main menu. So we built four streaming layers on top of Godot, all in C#.</p>
|
<p>Each island is roughly 4km across with its own terrain heightmap, biome textures, vegetation, and building grids. The player travels between islands by canoe. At any given moment, only a small fraction of the world is visible — but Godot doesn't know that unless you tell it.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Layer 1: Terrain Regions</h2>
|
<p>We built four layers that teach Godot what to load, when to load it, and when to let it go.</p>
|
||||||
<p>We use <strong>Terrain3D</strong> for heightmaps — a GDExtension that gives us a clipmap renderer with 7 LOD levels. Internally, Terrain3D divides each island into 512m x 512m regions. A 4km island has 64 regions. Across 9 islands, that's 576 regions total.</p>
|
<h2>Layer 1: Terrain regions (lazy instantiation)</h2>
|
||||||
<p>The key insight: <strong>don't create all 9 terrain nodes at startup.</strong> Each node allocates a clipmap mesh, collision structures, and materials even when hidden. Our original code created all 9 in <code>_Ready()</code> and just toggled visibility. This wasted hundreds of megabytes on islands the player hadn't visited yet.</p>
|
<p>We use <strong>Terrain3D</strong> for heightmaps — a GDExtension that provides clipmap rendering with 7 LOD levels. Each island is split into 512m × 512m regions. A 4km island has 64 regions. Nine islands: 576 regions total.</p>
|
||||||
<p>The fix was lazy instantiation. We create the current island's terrain on startup and defer the rest. When the player gets in a canoe and sails to a new island, we create that island's terrain node on demand, import the heightmap, and start async texture loading — all while a loading screen covers the transition.</p>
|
<p>The original code created all 9 terrain nodes in <code>_Ready()</code> and toggled visibility. This wasted hundreds of megabytes on islands the player hadn't visited. The fix: create the current island's terrain on startup, defer the rest. When the player sails to a new island, create that island's terrain node on demand, import the heightmap, start async texture loading — all behind a loading screen.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Layer 2: Vegetation Chunks (128m Grid)</h2>
|
<h2>Layer 2: Vegetation chunks (128m grid)</h2>
|
||||||
<p>This is the main prop streaming system. Every island's vegetation — trees, rocks, grasses, shrubs — is divided into a spatial grid of 128m x 128m chunks.</p>
|
<p>The main prop streaming system. Every island's vegetation is divided into a spatial grid of 128m × 128m chunks.</p>
|
||||||
<p>The camera position is checked every 0.5 seconds. When it crosses a chunk boundary, we calculate which chunks should be active within a 400m radius (roughly 39 chunks in a circle), <code>QueueFree</code> chunks that fell out of range, and build new chunks that entered range.</p>
|
<p>The camera position is checked every 0.5 seconds. When it crosses a chunk boundary, we calculate which chunks should be active within a 400m radius (~39 chunks), destroy chunks that fell out of range, and build new ones that entered. Each chunk groups vegetation by prototype, creates a <strong>MultiMesh</strong> per group, and places instances using height queries. A chunk with 50 palm trees and 30 rocks becomes 2 MultiMesh draw calls — not 80 individual nodes.</p>
|
||||||
<p>Each chunk groups vegetation instances by prototype, creates a <strong>MultiMesh</strong> per group, and places instances using height queries. A chunk with 50 palm trees and 30 rocks becomes 2 MultiMesh draw calls, not 80 individual nodes.</p>
|
<p>The cache problem: vegetation meshes and materials are cached in dictionaries keyed by prototype name. These caches are append-only by default — visit all 9 islands and you accumulate every mesh variant permanently. The fix is island-scoped eviction. When the player leaves an island, we clear vegetation caches. They reload from disk on return, behind a loading screen.</p>
|
||||||
<h3>The cache problem</h3>
|
<h2>Layer 3: Async resource loading</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Vegetation meshes and materials are cached in dictionaries keyed by prototype name. The problem: these caches are <strong>append-only</strong>. Visit all 9 islands and you accumulate every mesh and material variant permanently. With 155 unique prototypes across the archipelago, that's a lot of GPU memory that never gets freed.</p>
|
<p>Godot's <code>GD.Load()</code> is synchronous. It blocks the main thread. During gameplay, the frame freezes.</p>
|
||||||
<p>The fix is island-scoped eviction. When the player leaves an island, we clear the vegetation caches. Meshes and materials for the departed island are released. If the player returns, they reload from disk. The loading screen covers this cost.</p>
|
<p>We audited the entire codebase and found <strong>26 resource load calls across 13 files</strong> — only 1 was async. The worst offender was <code>GetMeshForProto()</code> in the vegetation grid. As the player walks across a new island, every new vegetation prototype triggers a synchronous load. With 155 prototypes, the first traversal stutters visibly.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Layer 3: Async Resource Loading</h2>
|
<p>Two fixes:</p>
|
||||||
<p>Godot's <code>GD.Load()</code> is synchronous. It blocks the main thread. During gameplay, the frame freezes. We audited the entire codebase and found <strong>26 resource load calls across 13 files</strong>, and only 1 was async.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The worst offender was <code>GetMeshForProto()</code> in the vegetation grid. As the player walks across an island for the first time, every new vegetation prototype triggers a synchronous load. With 155 prototypes, the first traversal stutters visibly.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>We fixed this in two ways:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Pre-warm during loading screens.</strong> When an island is imported, we kick off background loads for all known prototypes. By the time the player gains control, most meshes are already cached.</li>
|
<li><strong>Pre-warm during loading screens.</strong> When an island is imported, kick off background loads for all known prototypes. By the time the player gains control, most meshes are cached.</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Async loading for biome textures.</strong> Terrain textures use <code>ResourceLoader.LoadThreadedRequest()</code> with <code>_Process()</code> polling. The terrain renders immediately with autoshader colours, and biome textures pop in when ready. The player never notices.</li>
|
<li><strong>Async texture loading.</strong> Terrain textures use <code>ResourceLoader.LoadThreadedRequest()</code> with <code>_Process()</code> polling. The terrain renders immediately with autoshader colors; biome textures pop in when ready.</li>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<h3>The ResourceLoader cache trap</h3>
|
<p>The ResourceLoader trap: Godot maintains an internal resource cache. Every <code>GD.Load()</code> caches the result globally. If you load an FBX as a <code>PackedScene</code>, instantiate it to extract a mesh, then free the instance — the PackedScene <strong>stays cached</strong>. Rule: use <code>ResourceLoader.Load(path, "", CacheMode.Ignore)</code> for one-shot loads where you extract data and discard the container.</p>
|
||||||
<p>On top of our own caches, Godot maintains an internal resource cache. Every <code>GD.Load()</code> call caches the result globally. There's no API to query the cache size or evict entries.</p>
|
<h2>Layer 4: Entity rendering (event-driven)</h2>
|
||||||
<p>If you load an FBX as a <code>PackedScene</code>, instantiate it to extract a mesh, then free the instance — the PackedScene <strong>stays cached</strong>. The mesh you extracted is fine (it's a Resource, not a Node), but the discarded scene wastes memory forever.</p>
|
<p>Dynamic entities — colonists, animals, buildings, VFX — update when the simulation pushes new state, not per frame.</p>
|
||||||
<p>The rule: use <code>ResourceLoader.Load(path, "", CacheMode.Ignore)</code> for one-shot loads where you extract data and discard the container. Use <code>GD.Load()</code> only for things that should persist (shaders, shared textures).</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>Layer 4: Entity Rendering</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Dynamic entities — colonists, animals, buildings, VFX — are event-driven, not streamed. They update when the simulation pushes new state, not per frame.</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Crowd rendering:</strong> Single MultiMesh for up to 2000 colonists. Positions lerped per frame from pre-allocated arrays. Labels distance-culled, capped at 20. No individual nodes, no per-frame allocation.</li>
|
<li><strong>Crowd rendering:</strong> Single MultiMesh for up to 2,000 colonists. Positions lerped per frame from pre-allocated arrays. Labels distance-culled, capped at 20.</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Animals:</strong> One MultiMesh per type. Max 500 per type. Updates only on state change, not per frame.</li>
|
<li><strong>Animals:</strong> One MultiMesh per type. Max 500 per type. Updates only on state change.</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Buildings:</strong> Tracked by ID from sim state. <code>QueueFree</code> when removed. Self-cleaning.</li>
|
<li><strong>Buildings:</strong> Tracked by ID from sim state. <code>QueueFree</code> when removed.</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>VFX:</strong> Capped at 50 active particle systems. Worst case: 10,000 GPU particles.</li>
|
<li><strong>VFX:</strong> Capped at 50 active particle systems. Worst case: 10,000 GPU particles.</li>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<h2>Memory Safety: Zero Leaks</h2>
|
<h2>Memory safety: the QueueFree audit</h2>
|
||||||
<p>We audited every <code>QueueFree()</code> call in the codebase — 47 calls across 17 files. <strong>Zero <code>RemoveChild()</code> calls without a corresponding <code>QueueFree()</code>.</strong> Three patterns we follow everywhere:</p>
|
<p>We audited every <code>QueueFree()</code> call — 47 calls across 17 files. <strong>Zero <code>RemoveChild()</code> calls without a corresponding <code>QueueFree()</code>.</strong> Three patterns we follow everywhere:</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Pattern 1: Chunk streaming</strong> — Deactivate out-of-range chunks by iterating the active dict, calling <code>QueueFree()</code>, collecting keys to remove, then removing them after iteration. Never modify a dictionary while iterating it.</p>
|
<p>1. <strong>Chunk streaming:</strong> Iterate active dict, call <code>QueueFree()</code>, collect keys to remove, then remove after iteration. Never modify a dictionary while iterating.</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Pattern 2: Extract data from PackedScene</strong> — Instantiate a scene, extract the mesh, <code>QueueFree()</code> the temporary instance. The mesh survives because it's a Resource, not a Node.</p>
|
<p>2. <strong>Extract from PackedScene:</strong> Instantiate, extract mesh, <code>QueueFree()</code> the temp instance. The mesh survives because it's a Resource, not a Node.</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Pattern 3: UI rebuild</strong> — <code>QueueFree()</code> all children, then build new content. Safe because <code>QueueFree</code> is deferred — new children are added in the same frame before old ones are freed.</p>
|
<p>3. <strong>UI rebuild:</strong> <code>QueueFree()</code> all children, build new content. Safe because <code>QueueFree</code> is deferred — new children added in same frame before old ones freed.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>What Runs Every Frame</h2>
|
<h2>What runs every frame (and what doesn't)</h2>
|
||||||
<p>We're strict about what goes in <code>_Process()</code>:</p>
|
<p><code>_Process()</code> is strictly limited:</p>
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Vegetation grid:</strong> Camera chunk check (0.5s throttle, early-exits if same chunk)</li>
|
<li>Vegetation grid: camera chunk check (0.5s throttle, early-exit if same chunk)</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Terrain manager:</strong> Poll async texture loads (loop pending list, check status)</li>
|
<li>Terrain manager: poll async texture loads</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Crowd renderer:</strong> Lerp 2000 colonist positions (math-only, pre-allocated arrays)</li>
|
<li>Crowd renderer: lerp 2,000 positions (math-only, pre-allocated arrays)</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Day/night:</strong> Rotate sun, adjust light energy</li>
|
<li>Day/night: rotate sun</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Camera:</strong> Follow + zoom smoothing</li>
|
<li>Camera: follow + zoom</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Sim bridge:</strong> Drain WebSocket message queue</li>
|
<li>Sim bridge: drain WebSocket message queue</li>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<p>No heap allocation in any of these. Total per-frame overhead is dominated by the crowd lerp and the message queue drain.</p>
|
<p><strong>No heap allocation in any of these.</strong> Per-frame overhead is dominated by the crowd lerp and message queue drain.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Shaders We Watch</h2>
|
<p>Two shaders to watch: the ocean shader (4 Gerstner waves, depth reconstruction, caustics, foam — heaviest thing in the pipeline) and the wind sway shader (6 trig ops per vertex on every vegetation mesh within 400m). Future optimization: disable sway on distant chunks.</p>
|
||||||
<p>Two custom shaders are performance-sensitive:</p>
|
<h2>Target: RTX 3060, 8GB VRAM</h2>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Ocean shader</strong> — 4 Gerstner wave calculations in the vertex stage, applied to a 12,000m plane. Fragment stage does depth reconstruction, caustics, foam masking, and two normal map lookups. It's the heaviest thing in the render pipeline. We pre-warm it during the loading screen to avoid shader compilation stutter.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Wind sway shader</strong> — 6 trig ops per vertex on every vegetation mesh within 400m. The sway is invisible beyond 100m but the shader runs at full cost regardless. Future optimisation: disable sway on distant chunks.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The Target: RTX 3060</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Our early access target is an RTX 3060 with 8GB VRAM:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li>Main island + full vegetation < 4GB VRAM — ship it, we have headroom</li>
|
<li>Main island + full vegetation < 4GB VRAM → ship it</li>
|
||||||
<li>Approaching 6–8GB — implement lazy terrain nodes + cache eviction</li>
|
<li>Approaching 6-8GB → implement lazy terrain nodes + cache eviction</li>
|
||||||
<li>Exceeding 8GB — implement vegetation LOD and region-level streaming</li>
|
<li>Exceeding 8GB → implement vegetation LOD and region-level streaming</li>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Always measure before optimising.</strong> We added VRAM logging before writing a single line of optimisation code. Half the "problems" we expected turned out to be non-issues. The other half were worse than expected. Profiling isn't optional.</p>
|
<p><strong>Always measure before optimizing.</strong> We added VRAM logging before writing a single line of optimization code. Half the "problems" we expected were non-issues. The other half were worse than expected. Profiling isn't optional.</p>
|
||||||
<hr>
|
<hr>
|
||||||
<p>Godot 4 can handle open worlds at this scale, but it won't do it for you. You need to build streaming, manage your own caches, audit your resource loading, and be disciplined about what runs per frame. The engine gives you the primitives — MultiMesh, <code>LoadThreadedRequest</code>, <code>QueueFree</code> — and it's up to you to wire them into a system that scales.</p>
|
<p>Godot 4 can handle open worlds at this scale, but it won't do it for you. You need to build streaming, manage your own caches, audit resource loading, and be disciplined about what runs per frame. The engine gives you the primitives — MultiMesh, <code>LoadThreadedRequest</code>, <code>QueueFree</code>. It's up to you to wire them into a system that scales.</p>
|
||||||
<p>We're building with these systems and developing the game using <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>. If you're building something large-scale in Godot, we hope this is useful.</p>
|
<p><em>We're building <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a>, a survival colony sim, with these systems. The tools we use — git hosting, AI agents, creative pipelines — are part of <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>.</em></p>
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<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
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||||||
<span class="post__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
|
||||||
<h1 class="post__title">Image Generation at Every Price Point with fal.ai</h1>
|
|
||||||
<p class="post__lead">We generate every visual asset for Ariki — concept art, app icons, trailer frames, logo variants, Steam capsules — through a single inference proxy that routes to fal.ai. No Photoshop. No Midjourney subscription. Just API calls at prices that range from $0.002 to $0.09 per image. Here's how we decide which model gets which job.</p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__body">
|
|
||||||
<h2>The Setup</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Our <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> platform includes an inference proxy that sits between agents and model providers. When an agent (or a human in Cursor) says "generate an image," the proxy routes the request to fal.ai, handles authentication, tracks usage per user, and persists the result to S3. The caller doesn't care which model runs — they describe what they want, and the proxy picks or the caller specifies.</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>Agent describes what it wants
|
|
||||||
→ tinqsProxy receives generate_image call
|
|
||||||
→ Routes to fal.ai with the specified model
|
|
||||||
→ Image generated, persisted to S3
|
|
||||||
→ Permanent URL returned to caller</code></pre>
|
|
||||||
<p>One API key. One billing account. Access to every model fal.ai hosts. That's the pitch of aggregator platforms, and fal.ai delivers on it.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The Tiers</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Not every image needs the best model. A throwaway mockup doesn't justify $0.09. A final logo doesn't deserve $0.002. We split our usage into four tiers.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Best Quality — Final Art</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>For images that ship — hero art, app icons, trailer keyframes, print-ready designs — we use three models depending on the content:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Flux 2 Pro</strong> ($0.03/megapixel, ~15 seconds). Our default. Best all-round quality for concept art, character illustrations, environment paintings, and anything that doesn't need text. Handles complex prompts with multiple elements well. Rarely fails.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Ideogram v3 Quality</strong> ($0.09, ~12 seconds). The only model that renders text reliably inside images. When we need a poster with a tagline, a sign in a game scene, or a logo with readable letters, this is the only option. The QUALITY tier is expensive but worth it — text at lower tiers gets blurry.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Recraft v3</strong> ($0.04 raster, $0.08 vector, ~10 seconds). Built for commercial design. Clean lines, consistent style, and the only model on fal.ai that outputs SVG vectors. When we need brand assets, packaging mockups, or anything that might end up in print, Recraft produces work that doesn't need cleanup.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Mid Tier — Everyday Work</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>For images that are good enough for internal review, social posts, or documentation:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Ideogram v3 Balanced</strong> ($0.06, ~8 seconds). Typography quality between Turbo and Quality. Good for marketing materials where text matters but perfection doesn't.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Seedream v4.5</strong> ($0.04, ~8 seconds). Google's model on fal.ai. Photorealistic scenes and product shots. Different aesthetic from Flux — slightly more photographic, less painterly.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Flux Dev</strong> ($0.025, ~10 seconds). The open-weight Flux variant. Good quality, and the base for LoRA fine-tuning if you want to train on your own style. We use it when we need custom-trained models later.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Low Cost — Drafts and Exploration</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>For iteration, A/B testing, and throwing things at the wall:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Flux Schnell</strong> ($0.003/megapixel, ~3 seconds). The workhorse for exploration. When we're figuring out composition, trying different camera angles, or generating 20 variants to pick one direction — Schnell. A hundred images costs $0.30. You can afford to be wasteful.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>SDXL Lightning</strong> (~$0.002, ~2 seconds). The absolute cheapest option. Lower quality than Schnell, but when you need 50 thumbnails to test a layout grid or generate placeholder textures, quality doesn't matter. Two cents for ten images.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Specialised — Editing and Post-Processing</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>For modifying existing images rather than generating new ones:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Flux Kontext</strong> (~$0.04, ~12 seconds). Context-aware editing. Give it an image and say "change the wood to marble" or "make it sunset lighting." Preserves composition while changing style or material. Useful for quick style transfers without regenerating from scratch.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Nano Banana Edit</strong> ($0.039, ~12 seconds). Image-to-image restyle. We use this for our logo variant pipeline — take one carved-wood Ariki logo and produce versions in mahogany, pearl, obsidian, coral, gold. It's better than Kontext at preserving fine detail in complex images.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>BiRefNet</strong> ($0.001, ~3 seconds). Background removal. Produces clean alpha cutouts from any image. We pair it with every logo and icon generation — generate with a white background, then cut it out. A dollar gets you a thousand cutouts.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>How We Actually Use Them</h2>
|
|
||||||
<h3>The Schnell-to-Pro Pipeline</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>We never start with the expensive model. Every generation session follows the same pattern:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>1. <strong>Explore with Schnell</strong> ($0.003) — 10-20 variants, different angles, compositions, color palettes. Total: $0.03-0.06.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>2. <strong>Pick 2-3 directions.</strong> Human looks at the grid, picks the promising ones.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>3. <strong>Refine with Flux 2 Pro</strong> ($0.03) — regenerate the winners at full quality with refined prompts. Total: $0.06-0.09.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>4. <strong>Post-process</strong> — BiRefNet for background removal ($0.001), maybe Recraft for a vector version ($0.08).</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>A full session — from blank canvas to final assets — costs under $0.20. That's the price of a single Midjourney generation on their Pro plan.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Logo Variants at Scale</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Our Ariki logo has 18 material variants — deep mahogany, mother-of-pearl, obsidian, molten lava, bronze with verdigris, tapa cloth, and more. Each one generated with Nano Banana Edit ($0.039) + BiRefNet ($0.001) for transparency. Total cost for 18 variants: <strong>$0.72</strong>. A designer would quote hundreds of dollars and a week of work for the same output.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Typography That Works</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>Every model except Ideogram fails at text. Flux will give you beautiful art with garbled letters. Recraft gets close but isn't consistent. SDXL doesn't try. If the image has words in it, Ideogram v3 is the only answer. We've learned to accept the $0.09 cost for text-heavy images rather than wasting $0.30 on ten failed Flux attempts.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The Numbers</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Over the past month:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Category | Images | Total Cost | Avg Cost/Image |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>|———-|——–|———–|—————-|</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Concept art (flux-2-pro) | ~120 | $3.60 | $0.03 |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Exploration drafts (schnell) | ~400 | $1.20 | $0.003 |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Logo variants (nano-banana) | 18 | $0.72 | $0.04 |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Icons (nano-banana + birefnet) | 30 | $1.20 | $0.04 |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Typography (ideogram) | ~25 | $1.50 | $0.06 |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| Background removal (birefnet) | ~80 | $0.08 | $0.001 |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| <strong>Total</strong> | <strong>~673</strong> | <strong>$8.30</strong> | <strong>$0.012</strong> |</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>Six hundred images for eight dollars. The infrastructure to route, authenticate, and persist them costs more than the generation itself.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>What We Learned</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Never iterate on expensive models.</strong> The Schnell-to-Pro pipeline saves 10x. Most of the creative work happens at $0.003/image. The expensive model just polishes the decision you already made.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Typography is a solved problem — but only on one model.</strong> Stop trying to make Flux render text. Use Ideogram v3 Quality for anything with words. Accept the cost.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Vector output is underrated.</strong> Recraft v3's SVG export means logos and icons scale to any size without artifacts. For anything that might end up on a billboard or a business card, pay the $0.08 for vector.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Background removal is basically free.</strong> At $0.001 per image, there's no reason to ever manually mask anything. Run BiRefNet on everything, keep both versions.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p><strong>Aggregation beats loyalty.</strong> No single model is best at everything. Flux for art, Ideogram for text, Recraft for design, Nano Banana for edits, BiRefNet for masks. The proxy pattern lets us use the right tool for each job without managing five API keys and five billing accounts.</p>
|
|
||||||
<hr>
|
|
||||||
<p><em>Image generation is built into <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> — our Gitea-based platform for game teams. Every model above is available through the same inference proxy that handles LLM calls, authenticated with the same Gitea token. We're building <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a> with these tools, and every asset in the game touched at least one of them.</em></p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
</div>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__author">
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__author-avatar">OB</div>
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__author-info">
|
|
||||||
<span class="post__author-name">Ozan Bozkurt</span><br>
|
|
||||||
CTO & Developer, Tinqs
|
|
||||||
</div>
|
|
||||||
</div>
|
|
||||||
</article>
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|
+16
-30
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|
|||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="blog-visual-upgrade" class="blog-card">
|
<a href="blog-visual-upgrade" class="blog-card">
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">3 June 2026</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__date">3 June 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Our Blog Just Got a Visual Upgrade — Here's How We Did It</h2>
|
<h2 class="blog-card__title">How We Restyled Our Blog with Two Template Files and Zero Dependencies</h2>
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">We gave the Tinqs blog a visual refresh — borrowing the dark, gradient-heavy look from our internal team docs. Here's why, what we changed, and how the build system made it painless.</p>
|
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">We gave the Tinqs blog a visual refresh — gradient titles, dark code panels, date pills, amber accent bars. Two template files, one build step, zero external dependencies.</p>
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
||||||
</a>
|
</a>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="cloud-harness" class="blog-card">
|
<a href="cloud-harness" class="blog-card">
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">26 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__date">26 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Building a Cloud Agent Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi</h2>
|
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Agents That Code Overnight: Our $0.80 Cloud Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi</h2>
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">We forked Pi, merged a browser dashboard into the monorepo, and built a Go orchestrator inside our Gitea fork. Agents code overnight for about $0.80 — and you can watch them from the browser.</p>
|
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">Every coding agent today runs in your terminal. Close the laptop, it stops. We built a cloud harness where agents code overnight for about $0.80 — and you can watch from a browser dashboard.</p>
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
||||||
</a>
|
</a>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="agent-harness" class="blog-card">
|
<a href="agent-harness" class="blog-card">
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Tinqs Studio Is an Agent Harness for Game Dev</h2>
|
<h2 class="blog-card__title">What an Agent Harness Is and Why Game Dev Needs One</h2>
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">An agent harness gives AI agents identity, memory, tools, and guardrails. Tinqs Studio is one built for game development.</p>
|
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">A raw AI model is stateless. An agent harness wraps around it and provides identity, memory, tools, context, and guardrails. Here's why game development needs its own.</p>
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
||||||
</a>
|
</a>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="fal-image-generation" class="blog-card">
|
<a href="fal-image-generation" class="blog-card">
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">AI Art at Scale: Using fal.ai Flux for Game Asset Generation</h2>
|
<h2 class="blog-card__title">AI Art at Every Price Point: How We Generate Game Assets with fal.ai</h2>
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">We generate concept art, trailer frames, and UI icons with fal.ai Flux models at $0.01 per image. Here's the prompt engineering pattern that makes it work for game dev.</p>
|
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">We generate all visual assets for our game through fal.ai — concept art, icons, logos, trailer frames. Here's the 4-layer prompt pattern that actually works, and how we pick between 12 models spanning two orders of magnitude in cost.</p>
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
||||||
</a>
|
</a>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="fork-dont-build" class="blog-card">
|
<a href="fork-dont-build" class="blog-card">
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Fork, Don't Build: The Age of Agents Doesn't Need New Tools</h2>
|
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Fork, Don't Build: How We Modified Gitea, Pi, and Godot Instead of Starting from Scratch</h2>
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">Everyone is building new AI developer tools. We forked three existing ones and modified them from the inside. Here's why that's the better bet.</p>
|
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">Three forks, less than 0.5% code changed. Why modifying existing platforms beats building new ones — and how we turned Gitea into a game dev platform with 3D preview, AI agents, and LFS-first workflows.</p>
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
|
||||||
</a>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="image-generation-fal" class="blog-card">
|
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Image Generation at Every Price Point with fal.ai</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">We generate concept art, logos, icons, and trailer frames through a single API proxy. Here's how we pick between 12 models spanning $0.002 to $0.09 per image.</p>
|
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
||||||
</a>
|
</a>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="pre-commit-agent" class="blog-card">
|
<a href="pre-commit-agent" class="blog-card">
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">A Pre-Commit Agent That Guards Your Secrets for $0.001</h2>
|
<h2 class="blog-card__title">A Pre-Commit Agent That Guards Your Secrets for $0.001</h2>
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">We built a pre-commit hook that calls DeepSeek V4 Flash to review every commit. It catches leaked secrets, classified terms, and broken URLs --- for a tenth of a cent.</p>
|
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">Too many things to remember before hitting commit. Don't leak API keys. Don't reference classified codenames. Don't link to deleted repos. We built a two-layer pre-commit hook — regex + LLM — that catches all of it for $0.001.</p>
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
||||||
</a>
|
</a>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="godot-optimisation" class="blog-card">
|
<a href="godot-optimisation" class="blog-card">
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">22 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__date">22 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Streaming a 12km Archipelago in Godot 4</h2>
|
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Streaming a 12km Archipelago in Godot 4</h2>
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">Four streaming layers, async resource loading, memory-safe caches, and zero leaks. How we built a 12km open world in Godot 4 with C#.</p>
|
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">Godot has no built-in asset streaming. We built four layers to run a 12km archipelago with 9 islands, 155 vegetation types, and 2,000 crowd instances — on an RTX 3060.</p>
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
|
||||||
</a>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="forking-gitea" class="blog-card">
|
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">20 May 2026</span>
|
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">Why We Forked Gitea and Built Tinqs Studio</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">GitHub doesn't understand game dev. We forked Gitea to build Tinqs Studio --- with 3D asset preview, LFS-first workflows, and project management for game teams.</p>
|
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
||||||
</a>
|
</a>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="studio-cli" class="blog-card">
|
<a href="studio-cli" class="blog-card">
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">18 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__date">18 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">One Binary to Rule Them All: Building a Studio CLI</h2>
|
<h2 class="blog-card__title">One Binary to Rule Them All: Our Studio CLI</h2>
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">A single Go binary that gives AI agents context about who you are, what machine you're on, and what services are reachable. Screenshots, cloud vision, health checks --- one install, every machine.</p>
|
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">Every machine in our studio runs the same Go binary. It knows who you are, what machine you're on, and what services are reachable. It takes screenshots, sends them to cloud vision, and runs health checks — in 100ms.</p>
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
||||||
</a>
|
</a>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<a href="agentic-workflow" class="blog-card">
|
<a href="agentic-workflow" class="blog-card">
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__date">6 March 2026</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__date">6 March 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h2 class="blog-card__title">How a Small Game Studio Runs on AI Agents</h2>
|
<h2 class="blog-card__title">How a 4-Person Studio Runs on AI Agents</h2>
|
||||||
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">Soul files, skill playbooks, and markdown as the universal API. How we built an agentic workflow that lets a 4-person indie studio operate at 10x scale.</p>
|
<p class="blog-card__excerpt">We gave AI agents persistent identities, skill playbooks, and access to our entire knowledge base. Here's how four people ship like forty.</p>
|
||||||
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
<span class="blog-card__read">Read →</span>
|
||||||
</a>
|
</a>
|
||||||
</div>
|
</div>
|
||||||
|
|||||||
|
Before
After
|
+38
-111
@@ -1,151 +1,78 @@
|
|||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
title: "Tinqs Studio Is an Agent Harness for Game Dev"
|
title: "What an Agent Harness Is and Why Game Dev Needs One"
|
||||||
slug: agent-harness
|
slug: agent-harness
|
||||||
date: "2026-05-25"
|
date: "2026-05-25"
|
||||||
description: "An agent harness gives AI agents identity, memory, tools, and guardrails. Tinqs Studio is one built specifically for game development --- git, 3D preview, image generation, and a CLI that makes every session a warm start."
|
description: "A raw AI model is a brain without hands, eyes, or memory. An agent harness gives it identity, tools, context, and guardrails — and game development needs one built for binary assets, visual pipelines, and spatial systems."
|
||||||
og_description: "Tinqs Studio is an agent harness for game dev --- identity, skills, vision, git, and creative tools in one platform."
|
og_description: "Agent harnesses give AI identity, memory, and tools. Game dev needs one that understands 3D assets."
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
||||||
excerpt: "An agent harness gives AI agents identity, memory, tools, and guardrails. Tinqs Studio is one built for game development."
|
excerpt: "A raw AI model is stateless. An agent harness wraps around it and provides identity, memory, tools, context, and guardrails. Here's why game development needs its own."
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
author_initials: "OB"
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
An agent harness is the layer between a raw AI model and a useful team member. It gives the agent identity, memory, tools, and guardrails. Tinqs Studio is an agent harness built specifically for game development.
|
Open Claude or ChatGPT right now and ask it to review your last PR. It'll say "I don't have access to your repository." Ask it to take a screenshot of your game. It'll say "I can't interact with your operating system." Ask it what you were working on yesterday. It'll say "I don't have memory of previous conversations."
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What Is an Agent Harness?
|
A raw AI model is a brain without hands, eyes, or memory. An **agent harness** is the layer that gives it all three — plus identity, tools, and guardrails. And game development needs one that understands binary assets, visual pipelines, and spatial systems.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A raw AI model --- Claude, GPT, Gemini --- is powerful but stateless. It doesn't know who you are, what project you're working on, what tools are available, or what happened yesterday. Every session is a cold start. Every conversation begins with "let me explain the project..."
|
## What a harness provides
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
An agent harness solves this. It wraps around the model and provides:
|
Every agent harness, regardless of domain, needs five things:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Identity** --- who the agent is, what it values, how it should behave
|
**Identity.** Who the agent is, what it values, how it should behave. Not "you are a helpful assistant" — that's generic and unmoored. A soul file that says "you're working on Ariki, a survival colony sim. The team is four people. Never push to main without review. Prefer existing conventions." Identity creates consistency across sessions.
|
||||||
- **Memory** --- what happened in previous sessions, what was decided, what failed
|
|
||||||
- **Tools** --- what the agent can actually do beyond generating text
|
|
||||||
- **Context** --- what project this is, who's asking, what infrastructure exists
|
|
||||||
- **Guardrails** --- what the agent must never do, what requires human approval
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Without a harness, you have a chatbot. With one, you have a team member.
|
**Memory.** What happened last session. What decisions were made. What failed and why. Without memory, every conversation is a cold start — "let me explain the project..." Memory stored as markdown in git means it's version-controlled, diffable, and human-readable. When something goes wrong, you `git log` instead of debugging a vector database.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Why Game Dev Needs Its Own Harness
|
**Tools.** What the agent can actually do beyond generating text. A CLI that takes screenshots, checks service health, and loads project context. API wrappers for git, CI, image generation. Without tools, the agent is a very articulate oracle that can't touch anything.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Generic agent harnesses exist --- LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen. They're built for web apps, data pipelines, and customer support. Game development has different problems:
|
**Context.** Which project this is. Who's asking. What machine they're on. What services are reachable. A single CLI call — `tstudio identity` — returns all of this in 100ms. No re-reading the README. No "what repo are we in?"
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Assets are binary.** A web developer's PR is a text diff. A game developer's PR is a 150MB GLB file. Generic harnesses don't know how to preview 3D models, manage LFS bandwidth, or review binary assets.
|
**Guardrails.** What the agent must never do. No merging to main without review. No pushing to public repos without approval. No running destructive commands. The harness enforces these at the platform layer, not in the prompt. Prompts can be ignored. Platform gates cannot.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**The pipeline is visual.** Game dev goes from concept art to 3D model to rigged character to in-engine asset. Each step uses different tools --- image generators, 3D modellers, auto-riggers, game engines. An agent harness for game dev needs to orchestrate this entire chain.
|
## Why generic harnesses fail for game dev
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Scale is physical.** A web app's complexity is in business logic. A game's complexity is in geometry --- 12km worlds, 155 vegetation prototypes, 576 terrain regions, 2000 crowd instances. The agent needs to understand spatial systems, GPU memory, and frame budgets.
|
LangChain, CrewAI, and AutoGen are built for web apps. They assume text-in, text-out. Game development is different in ways that break those assumptions:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**The team is small and cross-functional.** A 4-person game studio has no dedicated DevOps, no dedicated artist, no dedicated PM. The harness needs to fill all those gaps, not just one.
|
**Assets are binary.** A web PR is a text diff. A game PR is a 150MB GLB file with textures, rigging, and animations. You can't review it without seeing it. Our harness renders 3D models in the browser during code review — rotate, zoom, check materials. The artist pushes, the lead inspects, no downloads required.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## How Tinqs Studio Works as a Harness
|
**The pipeline is visual.** Concept art → 3D model → rigged character → in-engine asset. Each step uses different tools. The harness needs to orchestrate image generators, 3D modellers, auto-riggers, and game engines as a single workflow — not as five separate API calls the human has to stitch together.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Tinqs Studio is a platform built on a [Gitea fork](forking-gitea) with game-specific features layered on top. But the git platform is just the foundation. The harness is everything around it.
|
**Scale is physical.** A web app's complexity is in business logic. A game's complexity is in geometry — 12km worlds, 155 vegetation types, 2,000 crowd instances. The agent needs to understand spatial systems, GPU memory budgets, and frame timing. "Add more RAM" isn't an answer when you have 8GB of VRAM.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Identity: Soul Files
|
**The team is small and cross-functional.** Four people. No dedicated DevOps, no dedicated artist, no dedicated PM. The harness fills all those gaps, not just one.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Every agent session starts by loading a soul file --- a markdown document that defines the agent's persistent identity. Not just "you are a helpful assistant" but specific values, knowledge scope, and behavioural rules.
|
## The toolchain that makes it work
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The soul file means the agent behaves consistently whether it's triaging bugs at 9am or generating concept art at midnight. It knows what repos exist, who the team members are, what the game is about, and what decisions have been made. Identity isn't cosmetic --- it's the difference between an agent that asks "what project is this?" and one that says "I see the vegetation grid was updated yesterday, want me to check the cache eviction?"
|
Our harness runs on [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com), built on a Gitea fork with game-specific features. The key pieces:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Memory: Markdown Files in Git
|
**The CLI** — a single Go binary. One command (`tstudio identity`) gives the agent full project context in 100ms. Screenshots, cloud vision, health checks — all subcommands of the same binary.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Agent memory is plain markdown files in a git repository. No vector databases, no proprietary stores. The agent reads its memory on session start, updates it during work, and commits changes back.
|
**The soul file** — a markdown document in the repo root. The agent reads it on session start. It defines values, scope, and behavioural rules. The same soul file works in Cursor, Claude Code, or any tool that reads markdown.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This is deliberately low-tech. Markdown in git gives you version history, branching, merge conflict resolution, and human readability for free. When memory goes wrong --- and it will --- you can `git log` to see what changed and `git revert` to fix it.
|
**Skills** — markdown playbooks for specific workflows. Image generation, concept art pipeline, 3D model creation, video generation. Each skill is a procedure the agent follows. Write once, use forever.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Tools: The CLI
|
**3D preview** — click a `.glb` file in a PR and rotate the model in your browser. 22 formats supported. This alone transformed our review process — nobody approves a binary diff blind anymore.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A [single Go binary](studio-cli) gives every agent access to:
|
**Guardrails** — agents can file issues, draft announcements, generate assets, and write code. They cannot merge, deploy, or push to public repos without human approval. Branch protection rules enforced at the git platform layer.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Identity loading** --- full project context in 100ms
|
## The cold-start problem, solved
|
||||||
- **Screenshots** --- capture any window from outside the process
|
|
||||||
- **Cloud vision** --- send screenshots to a vision model, get structured descriptions
|
|
||||||
- **Health checks** --- verify services, repos, and tools are working
|
|
||||||
- **Service status** --- which URLs are live, what's reachable
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The CLI is the agent's hands and eyes. Without it, the agent can only read and write text. With it, the agent can see the game running, photograph bugs, and verify infrastructure.
|
Every AI agent session starts blank. Most teams solve this with long system prompts — but when your context is 200 markdown files, 15 skills, and 3 years of project history, you can't paste all of that.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Skills: Teachable Workflows
|
The harness uses staged loading:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Skills are markdown playbooks that teach agents specific procedures. Instead of hoping the model figures out how to generate concept art or create a 3D model, you write the steps once:
|
1. **CLI identity call** (100ms) — soul file, company context, machine info, service status
|
||||||
|
2. **Memory file** (instant) — cross-session context from the docs repo
|
||||||
|
3. **Skills** (on demand) — loaded only when the task matches a skill name
|
||||||
|
4. **Repo context** (on demand) — files read as needed, not all upfront
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- [Image Generation](../skills/image-generation.md) --- generate game art with fal.ai Flux using a [4-layer prompt pattern](fal-image-generation)
|
Agent goes from cold to fully contextual in under a second. No "let me explain the project." No re-reading onboarding docs. Just start working.
|
||||||
- [Concept Art Pipeline](../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md) --- from design brief through 2D art to 3D model export
|
|
||||||
- [3D Model Generation](../skills/tripo-browser-workflow.md) --- Tripo Studio text-to-3D and image-to-3D
|
|
||||||
- [Video Generation](../skills/sora2-video.md) --- trailer clips with OpenAI Sora 2
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Skills compound. Every playbook you write makes the agent more capable. After six months, our agents handle art generation, competitive research, video production, project management, and code review --- all from markdown files.
|
## The bet
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Git Platform: 3D Preview and LFS
|
The gap between "I have an AI model" and "I have an AI team member" is infrastructure. Identity, memory, tools, context, guardrails. For game development, that infrastructure needs to understand binary assets, visual pipelines, and spatial systems.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The [Gitea fork](forking-gitea) underneath handles the game-specific git problems:
|
We're betting that specialised harnesses beat generic ones. A harness built for game dev — with 3D preview, LFS management, and creative pipelines — will outperform a general-purpose agent framework on game dev tasks. Not because the AI is smarter, but because it has the right hands, eyes, and memory for the job.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **3D asset preview** --- rotate GLB/FBX/STL files in the browser during code review
|
|
||||||
- **LFS-first workflows** --- auto-tracking for game file extensions, storage dashboards
|
|
||||||
- **OAuth2 SSO** --- one login for git, tools, and the game
|
|
||||||
- **22 format support** --- GLB, FBX, OBJ, STL, 3DS, PLY, and more via O3DV
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Guardrails: Human-in-the-Loop
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The harness defines what agents can and cannot do:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- Agents can file issues, draft announcements, generate assets, write code
|
|
||||||
- Agents **cannot** merge code, deploy builds, push to public repos, or post to external channels without human approval
|
|
||||||
- The [public blog repo](https://tinqs.com/tinqs/blog) requires human-approved merge requests --- agents can propose changes but a person must review
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This isn't a limitation --- it's a feature. The agent handles volume; the human handles judgement.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Cold Start Problem
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The biggest problem with AI agents in production isn't capability --- it's context. Every new session is blank. The agent doesn't know what happened yesterday, what's in progress, or what tools are available.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Most teams solve this with long system prompts. That works until your context is 200 markdown files, 15 skills, and 3 years of project history. You can't paste all of that into a system prompt.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The harness solves this with **staged loading**:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
1. **CLI identity call** (100ms) --- loads soul file, company context, machine info, service status
|
|
||||||
2. **Memory file** (instant) --- loads cross-session context
|
|
||||||
3. **Skills** (on demand) --- loaded only when the task matches a skill name
|
|
||||||
4. **Repo context** (on demand) --- read files as needed, not all upfront
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The agent goes from cold to fully contextual in under a second. No "let me explain..." No re-reading the same onboarding doc. Just start working.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What Makes This Different from LangChain
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
LangChain, CrewAI, and similar frameworks are **code-first**. You define agents in Python, chain them with function calls, and deploy them as services. They're powerful for building AI products.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Tinqs Studio is **file-first**. Agents are defined in markdown. Skills are markdown. Memory is markdown. Identity is markdown. Everything is in git, readable by humans, editable without code changes, and version-controlled.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This matters for game teams because:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Non-engineers can contribute.** The designer writes a skill for concept art. The PM writes a skill for sprint planning. No Python required.
|
|
||||||
- **Everything is auditable.** `git log` shows who changed what, when, and why. Memory changes are commits. Skill updates are diffs.
|
|
||||||
- **It works with any AI tool.** The same soul files and skills work in Cursor, Claude Code, or any tool that reads markdown. You're not locked into one framework.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Stack
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
| Layer | What | How |
|
|
||||||
|-------|------|-----|
|
|
||||||
| **Identity** | Soul files, company context | Markdown in git, loaded via CLI |
|
|
||||||
| **Memory** | Cross-session context | Markdown in git, updated by agents |
|
|
||||||
| **Skills** | Teachable workflows | Markdown playbooks, loaded on demand |
|
|
||||||
| **Tools** | CLI, screenshots, vision | Go binary, one install per machine |
|
|
||||||
| **Git** | 3D preview, LFS, SSO | Gitea fork with game-specific features |
|
|
||||||
| **Creative** | Image gen, 3D models, video | fal.ai, Tripo, Sora 2 via skills |
|
|
||||||
| **Guardrails** | Human approval gates | Branch protection, MR requirements |
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Getting Started
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
If you want to build your own agent harness for game dev:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
1. **Start with a soul file.** Write 50 words about your project's identity, values, and scope. Put it in your repo root as `SOUL.md`.
|
|
||||||
2. **Write one skill.** Pick the workflow you repeat most --- concept art generation, bug triage, build verification --- and write the steps as markdown.
|
|
||||||
3. **Build a CLI identity command.** Even a shell script that prints "project name, repos, services" gives your agent a warm start.
|
|
||||||
4. **Put everything in git.** Not a database, not a SaaS tool. Git. You already have it.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The rest --- 3D preview, LFS management, OAuth SSO, creative pipelines --- you can add as you need it. Or use [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com), where we've already built it.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
An agent harness isn't a product category yet. But it should be. The gap between "I have an AI model" and "I have an AI team member" is infrastructure --- identity, memory, tools, context, guardrails. For game development, that infrastructure needs to understand binary assets, visual pipelines, and spatial systems. That's what we're building.
|
*Tinqs Studio is an agent harness for game development — git hosting, AI agents, creative pipelines. Open for teams. We're building [Ariki](https://arikigame.com) with the same tools.*
|
||||||
|
|||||||
+59
-72
@@ -1,103 +1,90 @@
|
|||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
title: "How a Small Game Studio Runs on AI Agents"
|
title: "How a 4-Person Studio Runs on AI Agents"
|
||||||
slug: agentic-workflow
|
slug: agentic-workflow
|
||||||
date: "2026-03-06"
|
date: "2026-03-06"
|
||||||
description: "Soul files, skill playbooks, and markdown as the universal API. How we built an agentic workflow that lets a 4-person indie studio operate at 10x scale."
|
description: "We gave AI agents persistent identities, skill playbooks, and access to our entire knowledge base. Here's how four people ship like forty."
|
||||||
og_description: "Soul files, skill playbooks, and markdown as the universal API for AI agents in game dev."
|
og_description: "Soul files, skill playbooks, and markdown as the universal API for AI agents in game dev."
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/blog/img/agentic-workflow-architecture.png"
|
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/blog/img/agentic-workflow-architecture.png"
|
||||||
excerpt: "Soul files, skill playbooks, and markdown as the universal API. How we built an agentic workflow that lets a 4-person indie studio operate at 10x scale."
|
excerpt: "We gave AI agents persistent identities, skill playbooks, and access to our entire knowledge base. Here's how four people ship like forty."
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
author_initials: "OB"
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
We gave our AI agents persistent identities, skill playbooks, and access to our entire knowledge base. This is how a 4-person game studio built an agentic workflow that punches above its weight.
|
Last week one of our agents caught a stale bug at 3am — a vegetation culling issue that had been open for six days. It nudged the team chat, drafted a fix summary, and by morning the issue was resolved. Nobody lost sleep. Nobody context-switched. The agent just handled it.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Problem Every Small Studio Knows
|
This is what happens when you stop treating AI as a chatbot and start treating it as a team member with a persistent identity, a memory, and a set of skills it can actually execute.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
When you're four people building a game, there's no room for a dedicated DevOps person, a full-time PM tool chain, or someone whose job it is to "keep things organised." Everyone wears five hats. Documentation drifts. Issues pile up. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand shipped.
|
## The problem with "just use ChatGPT"
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We tried the usual tools --- Notion, Trello, shared Google Docs. They all had the same problem: they're passive. They sit there and wait for a human to update them. In a team of four where the lead developer is also the CTO, that human never has time.
|
Every small studio hits the same wall: four people, forty roles. Nobody has time to keep documentation current. Bugs pile up. The backlog rots. Someone asks "what did we decide about the inventory system?" and three different answers come back.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
So we built something different. We gave AI agents persistent identities, connected them to our entire knowledge base, and let them become working members of the team.
|
The usual fix is more tools — Notion, Trello, Linear, Slack integrations. But tools are passive. They sit there waiting for humans to update them. In a team where the lead developer is also the CTO, that human is already stretched thin.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Architecture: Agents with Identity
|
We tried something different. Instead of adding more tools for humans to maintain, we gave AI agents persistent identities, connected them to our entire knowledge base, and let them do the maintenance.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Our primary AI agent runs inside the IDE and has access to the full documentation repository --- the game design document, backlog, meeting notes, company operations, everything. It's not a chatbot. It's a persistent team member with a **soul file** that defines its values and operating principles, and a **memory file** that persists context across sessions.
|
## Soul files: giving agents a personality that sticks
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The key insight: **all knowledge lives in markdown files in one repo**. No databases, no SaaS dashboards, no proprietary formats. Plain text, version-controlled, readable by humans and agents alike. When anyone on the team opens the docs repo, the agent wakes up with full context of who they are, what machine they're on, and what's been happening.
|
The core idea is embarrassingly simple. Every agent gets a **soul file** — a markdown document that defines who it is, what it values, and how it should behave:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### What the agent actually does
|
- **Values** — "never break the build," "always verify before acting," "prefer existing patterns over novelty"
|
||||||
|
- **Knowledge scope** — what repos exist, who's on the team, what the game is about
|
||||||
|
- **Behavioural rules** — when to act autonomously, when to ask, what requires explicit human approval
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
This isn't theatre. It's the difference between an agent that asks "what project is this?" every session and one that says "I see the vegetation grid was updated yesterday — want me to check the cache eviction?"
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The soul file loads in 100ms when the agent starts. No cold starts. No re-explaining.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
## Memory: markdown in git, not a vector database
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Agent memory lives as plain markdown files in our docs repo. No vector databases, no proprietary stores, no SaaS dashboards. The agent writes to its memory file during work, commits it, and reads it on the next session.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
This is deliberately low-tech. Markdown in git gives you version history, diffs, branching, and human readability for free. When memory goes wrong — and it will — you `git log` to see what changed and `git revert` to fix it. Try debugging a corrupted vector embedding at 11pm.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
## Skills: teachable playbooks, not prompt engineering
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Agents don't just have instructions. They have **skills** — markdown playbooks that teach specific workflows. When someone says "generate concept art for a character," the agent reads `skills/image-generation.md` and follows the procedure. No prompt engineering per session. No "let me try a different prompt."
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
We've open-sourced several skills:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- [Image Generation with fal.ai](../skills/image-generation.md) — 4-layer prompt pattern that actually produces usable game art
|
||||||
|
- [Concept Art Pipeline](../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md) — full 2D concept → 3D model workflow
|
||||||
|
- [3D Model Generation](../skills/tripo-browser-workflow.md) — Tripo Studio text-to-3D
|
||||||
|
- [Video Generation](../skills/sora2-video.md) — trailer clips with Sora 2
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Each skill took about 30 minutes to write. After six months, our agents have 15+ skills covering art generation, competitive research, video production, and project management. Skills compound — every playbook you write makes every future session more capable.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
## What the agents actually do, every day
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**During the day** (interactive, inside the IDE):
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- Triages and grooms the issue backlog
|
- Triages and grooms the issue backlog
|
||||||
- Keeps documentation in sync with the game state
|
- Keeps documentation in sync with what's actually in the game
|
||||||
- Processes bug reports from testers and creates structured issues
|
- Processes tester bug reports and creates structured issues
|
||||||
- Drafts team announcements, reviews PRs, manages cross-repo coordination
|
- Generates concept art, trailer frames, UI icons on demand
|
||||||
- Generates concept art, trailer frames, and UI assets using integrated API skills
|
- Conducts competitive research — Steam pages, player reviews, pricing
|
||||||
- Conducts competitive research --- analysing Steam pages, player reviews, pricing strategies
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The team talks to the agent through voice. The IDE's built-in microphone transcribes and auto-translates (multilingual team). The agent is trained to interpret messy voice-to-text artifacts and act on intent, not grammar.
|
The team talks to the agent through voice. The IDE microphone transcribes, and the agent interprets intent from messy voice-to-text. "There's a tree floating two meters above the terrain on the west beach" becomes a filed issue with a screenshot, a vision-model description, and coordinates.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Background Automation
|
**At night** (background daemon, $15/day):
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The interactive agent only runs when someone opens the IDE. But a studio doesn't sleep --- bugs get reported at midnight, issues go stale, and the team chat fills up while everyone's away.
|
- Polls team chat every 15 minutes, responds to commands
|
||||||
|
- When a tester reports a bug in chat, creates a structured issue automatically
|
||||||
|
- Flags stale issues that haven't been touched
|
||||||
|
- Posts a morning digest of what happened overnight
|
||||||
|
- Creates its own skill files when it discovers better approaches
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A background daemon runs 24/7, ticking every 15 minutes. It uses a three-tier model strategy --- cheap models for routine checks, medium for analysis, and premium only when it needs deep reasoning. The whole thing costs about $15/day.
|
## What we learned
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### What it handles
|
**Plain text is the universal API.** Every tool, every agent, every human can read a markdown file. We store everything — design docs, meeting notes, agent memory, team contacts — as `.md` in one repo. It sounds too simple, but it eliminates an entire class of integration problems.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Chat monitoring** --- polls team chat, responds to commands, acknowledges messages
|
**Cheap models for routine, expensive models for thinking.** Most of what an agent does is pattern matching — "does this look like a bug report?" You don't need DeepSeek Pro for that. Save the premium tokens for decisions that actually require reasoning. Our background daemon costs $15/day with a three-tier model strategy.
|
||||||
- **Bug intake** --- when a tester reports a bug in chat, creates a structured issue automatically
|
|
||||||
- **Stale issue detection** --- flags issues that haven't been touched, nudges the team
|
|
||||||
- **Daily summaries** --- posts a morning digest of what happened overnight
|
|
||||||
- **Self-learning** --- creates its own skill files when it discovers better approaches
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The two agents coordinate through the docs repo itself. One writes, the other reads. No API calls between them, no message queue. Just git.
|
**Voice changes everything.** When you can describe a bug while looking at the screen, and the agent transcribes, interprets, and files it — that collapses the distance between noticing a problem and tracking it. Keyboard-free bug reporting is a superpower.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Skill System
|
**Skills compound exponentially.** One skill saves 15 minutes per session. Fifteen skills save hours per day across the whole team. The investment curve is absurdly favourable — 30 minutes of writing per skill, compounding returns forever.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Agents don't just have instructions --- they have **skills**. Each skill is a markdown file that teaches the agent a specific workflow: how to generate concept art through a pipeline, how to use image generation APIs, how to conduct competitive research, how to create 3D models from concept art.
|
We're four people. With agents doing the mechanical work, we operate like forty. Not because the AI is magic — because we gave it identity, memory, and the right playbooks, and then got out of its way.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
When someone asks the agent to do something that matches a skill, it reads the skill file and follows the procedure. This means you can teach the agent new capabilities without changing any code --- just write a new markdown file.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We've open-sourced several of our skills in this repo:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- [Image Generation with fal.ai](../skills/image-generation.md)
|
|
||||||
- [Concept Art Pipeline](../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md)
|
|
||||||
- [3D Model Generation with Tripo](../skills/tripo-browser-workflow.md)
|
|
||||||
- [Video Generation with Sora 2](../skills/sora2-video.md)
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Soul Files: Why Identity Matters
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Giving the agent a persistent identity isn't theatre. It creates consistency across sessions. The soul file defines:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Values** --- what the agent prioritises (e.g., "never break the build," "always verify before acting")
|
|
||||||
- **Knowledge scope** --- what repos, services, and team members exist
|
|
||||||
- **Behavioural rules** --- how to handle ambiguity, when to ask vs act, what requires human approval
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The agent remembers what it learned, adapts to who's asking, and maintains the same principles whether it's triaging bugs or drafting a Steam page description. The soul file is the agent's constitution.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What We've Learned
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Plain text is the universal API.** Every tool, every agent, every human can read a markdown file. We store everything --- design documents, meeting notes, agent memory, team contacts --- as .md files in one repository. This sounds almost too simple, but it eliminates an entire class of integration problems.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Cheap models for routine, expensive models for thinking.** Most of what an autonomous agent does is pattern matching and text formatting --- you don't need the most expensive model for that. Save the premium tokens for decisions that actually require reasoning.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**The human stays in the loop for decisions.** The agents can file issues, draft announcements, and generate assets --- but they don't merge code, deploy builds, or post to public channels without explicit approval. The workflow is designed so the AI handles the grunt work while humans make the calls that matter.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Voice input changes everything.** When you can describe a bug while looking at the game screen, and the agent transcribes, interprets, and files an issue --- that's a workflow that collapses the distance between noticing a problem and tracking it.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Skills compound.** Every skill file you write makes the agent more capable. After 6 months, our agents have 15+ skills covering art generation, competitive research, video production, and project management. Each one took 30 minutes to write and saves hours every week.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Numbers
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Team size:** 4 humans + AI agents
|
|
||||||
- **Background agent cost:** ~$15/day (~$450/month)
|
|
||||||
- **Knowledge files:** 200+ markdown documents
|
|
||||||
- **Skills:** 15+ agent skill files and growing
|
|
||||||
- **Infrastructure:** Multiple machines, self-hosted git, zero DevOps engineers
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We're not claiming this is how every studio should work. But for a small team trying to build something ambitious, having AI agents that actually understand the project --- not just answer questions about it --- has been transformative. The agents don't replace anyone on the team. They make it possible for four people to do the work of forty.
|
*We're building [Ariki](https://arikigame.com), a survival colony sim, using the same agent workflow described here. Everything runs on [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) — a game dev platform with built-in AI agents, git hosting, and creative pipelines.*
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We're building all of this as part of [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) --- a game development platform that brings git hosting, AI tools, and team workflows together. The blog posts and skills in this repo are part of that journey.
|
|
||||||
|
|||||||
+44
-230
@@ -1,276 +1,90 @@
|
|||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
title: "Our Blog Just Got a Visual Upgrade — Here's How We Did It"
|
title: "How We Restyled Our Blog with Two Template Files and Zero Dependencies"
|
||||||
slug: blog-visual-upgrade
|
slug: blog-visual-upgrade
|
||||||
date: "2026-06-03"
|
date: "2026-06-03"
|
||||||
description: "We gave the Tinqs blog a visual refresh, borrowing the dark, gradient-heavy aesthetic from our internal team guides. No external CSS tinkering, no framework, no build-step drift — just two template files and a Node script."
|
description: "Gradient titles, dark code panels, amber callouts — we gave the Tinqs blog a visual refresh borrowing our internal team guide aesthetic. Two template files, one Node script, no framework."
|
||||||
og_description: "How we restyled the Tinqs blog with a gradient-first, dark-code-panel aesthetic — using only two template files and a markdown build script."
|
og_description: "Blog restyle: gradient titles, dark code panels, amber callouts — two template files, zero deps."
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
||||||
excerpt: "We gave the Tinqs blog a visual refresh — borrowing the dark, gradient-heavy look from our internal team docs. Here's why, what we changed, and how the build system made it painless."
|
excerpt: "We gave the Tinqs blog a visual refresh — gradient titles, dark code panels, date pills, amber accent bars. Two template files, one build step, zero external dependencies."
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
author_initials: "OB"
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
Until yesterday, the Tinqs blog looked... fine. Readable. Semantic. It had the brand amber accent, proper typography, and all the SEO metadata in the right places. But it didn't have much *personality*. The code blocks were unstyled. The headings sat flat. And the design said "competent" more than "intentional".
|
Our blog looked fine. Readable, semantic, proper typography. But it didn't have much personality. Code blocks were unstyled. Headings sat flat. The design said "competent" more than "intentional."
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Then we looked at our own internal team guide — the onboarding doc we keep at `docs/team/dev-basics-env-secrets-git.html`. It had gradient titles that clip to transparent. Dark, crisp code panels. Callout boxes with coloured left borders. Pill-shaped date labels. A restrained four-colour palette that felt cohesive without screaming.
|
Then we looked at our internal team guide — a self-contained HTML doc with gradient titles that clip to transparent, dark code panels, and callout boxes with coloured borders. It radiated a "well-maintained developer doc" energy. We wanted the blog to feel like it came from the same shop.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We wanted the blog to feel like it came from the same shop. So we restyled it.
|
Two template files, one build step, zero external dependencies. Here's what we changed.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The design source
|
## The build system (why it mattered)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Our team guide is a single self-contained HTML file with a dark theme — background `#0d1117`, panels `#161b22`, ink `#e6edf3`. It uses a four-accent palette:
|
The blog is generated by `build.js` — a zero-dependency Node script that converts markdown to HTML:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Green** `#22c55e` — for `.env` and environment topics
|
|
||||||
- **Blue** `#38bdf8` — secondary links, kickers, syntax table headers
|
|
||||||
- **Purple** `#a855f7` — git topics, hover states
|
|
||||||
- **Amber** `#f59e0b` — warnings, emphasis, callouts
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The title is the star: an `h1` filled with a `linear-gradient` across all four colours, clipped to the text via `-webkit-background-clip: text`. Code blocks live in dark `#0a0e14` panels with `#2a3340` borders. Blockquotes become amber-tinted callouts. The whole thing radiates a "well-maintained developer doc" energy without feeling like a Bootstrap template.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We wanted that energy on the public-facing blog.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The build system (and why it mattered)
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The blog is generated by a zero-dependency Node script — `build.js` — that converts markdown posts into HTML. The pipeline is:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
posts/*.md + _template.html / _index_template.html → *.html
|
posts/*.md + _template.html / _index_template.html → *.html
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This means **we never touch a generated `.html` file by hand**. Every visual change flows through the two templates. `build.js` then stamps out all 11 posts plus the index in under a second.
|
This means we never touch a generated `.html` file by hand. Every visual change flows through the templates. The site-wide CSS — nav, footer, base typography, brand accent — lives in `../style.css`, served by Git Studio from outside the repo. We didn't touch it.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The site-wide CSS — navigation, footer, base typography, the brand amber `--c-accent: #c9935a` — lives in `../style.css`, which is served by Git Studio from outside the blog repo. We deliberately **did not** touch that file. Instead, we injected a self-contained `<style>` block at the very end of `<head>` in both templates, after the `../style.css` link. Cascade order handles the overrides.
|
Instead, we injected a self-contained `<style>` block at the end of `<head>` in both templates, after the `../style.css` link. Cascade order handles the overrides. No `!important`. No external font loads. No CDN dependencies.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What we changed
|
## The palette
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Post template (`_template.html`)
|
Four accent colours, borrowed from our team guide:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Gradient title.** The post `h1` now gets the gradient treatment — amber `#c9935a` → warm gold `#f59e0b` → blue `#38bdf8`. It's the same technique as the team guide: `background-clip: text; color: transparent`. The underlying text is still there for screen readers and SEO.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Date pill.** The post date is now a monospace chip — blue text, `999px` border-radius, uppercase, tight letter-spacing. It sits before the title like a kicker.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Code blocks.** This was the biggest functional improvement. The site CSS only styled inline `<code>` — fenced code blocks inside `<pre>` had no styling at all. We added a dark panel (`#0a0e14` background, `#2a3340` border, `10px` radius, monospace, `overflow-x: auto`). A reset rule on `.post__body pre code` prevents the inline-code styles from doubling up inside the panel. Inline code got its own treatment: `#1c2230` background, green `#9fe6c0` text.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Section cues.** `h2` headings now have a `4px` amber left border as a visual anchor. `h3` headings get a subtle purple tint — enough to signal a section break without pulling focus.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Links and emphasis.** Body links are blue `#38bdf8` and shift to purple `#a855f7` on hover. Bold text picks up amber `#f59e0b`. Horizontal rules became a single dark `#2a3340` line.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Blockquote callouts.** We wrote the CSS for amber-tinted callout blockquotes — tinted background, `4px` amber left border, rounded right corners — but `build.js` doesn't emit `<blockquote>` yet. The rules are there, ready to activate when someone adds blockquote handling or swaps in a full markdown library.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Index template (`_index_template.html`)
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The blog listing page got the same treatment, translated to its own selectors:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- `.blog-header__title` — same amber→gold→blue gradient
|
|
||||||
- `.section-label` — a monospace kicker pill above the title
|
|
||||||
- `.blog-card__date` — date pill matching the post pages
|
|
||||||
- `.blog-card:hover` — border shifts to brand amber on hover
|
|
||||||
- `.blog-card__read` — blue link, purple on card hover
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The palette at a glance
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
| Role | Colour | Where |
|
| Role | Colour | Where |
|
||||||
|------|--------|-------|
|
|------|--------|-------|
|
||||||
| Brand anchor | `#c9935a` | Gradient start, h2 left bar, card hover |
|
| Brand amber | `#c9935a` | Gradient start, h2 left bar, card hover |
|
||||||
| Warm gold | `#f59e0b` | Gradient midpoint, bold text |
|
| Warm gold | `#f59e0b` | Gradient midpoint, bold text |
|
||||||
| Blue | `#38bdf8` | Gradient endpoint, links, date pills |
|
| Blue | `#38bdf8` | Gradient endpoint, links, date pills |
|
||||||
| Purple | `#a855f7` | h3 colour, link hover |
|
| Purple | `#a855f7` | h3 colour, link hover |
|
||||||
| Dark panel | `#0a0e14` | Code block background |
|
|
||||||
| Border | `#2a3340` | Code panels, hr, inline code |
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Four accent colours. No rainbow.
|
Tasteful. Not a rainbow.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
## What we styled
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**Gradient titles.** Post `h1` gets `linear-gradient(90deg, #c9935a, #f59e0b 40%, #38bdf8)` via `background-clip: text; color: transparent`. Underlying text preserved for screen readers and SEO.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**Date pills.** Monospace chip — blue text, `999px` border-radius, uppercase, tight letter-spacing. Sits before the title like a kicker.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**Code blocks.** The site CSS only styled inline `<code>`. Fenced blocks got a dark panel (`#0a0e14`, `#2a3340` border, `10px` radius, monospace, `overflow-x: auto`). A reset rule on `pre code` prevents inline-code styles from doubling up inside the panel.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**Section cues.** h2 gets a 4px amber left border as visual anchor. h3 gets a purple tint — enough to signal a section break without pulling focus.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**Links.** Blue `#38bdf8`, purple `#a855f7` on hover. Bold text picks up amber.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**Blockquote callouts.** Amber-tinted background, 4px amber left border, rounded right corners. The CSS is written and waiting — `build.js` doesn't emit `<blockquote>` yet, but the rules activate the moment we add `>` syntax support.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**Index page.** Same gradient on the listing title. Date pills on cards. Amber border on card hover. Blue/purple read links.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The rebuild
|
## The rebuild
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```bash
|
|
||||||
cd ~/tinqs-ltd/blog && node build.js
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
Building blog...
|
|
||||||
agent-harness.md → agent-harness.html
|
|
||||||
agentic-workflow.md → agentic-workflow.html
|
|
||||||
...
|
|
||||||
studio-cli.md → studio-cli.html
|
|
||||||
index.html (listing)
|
|
||||||
Done — 11 posts built.
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Zero errors. Every regenerated HTML file now carries the inline `<style>` block. We confirmed with `grep -l "background-clip" *.html` — all 12 files (11 posts + index) ship the gradient.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What we didn't change
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Navigation, footer, and site chrome are untouched. This was a CSS-only change — no markup was altered in either template beyond the `<style>` injection. The existing responsive behaviour is preserved. The blog still uses the same `IBM Plex Sans` font stack, the same SEO metadata, the same `build.js` pipeline.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What's next
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The restyle is on a branch (`style/team-guide-aesthetic`) awaiting review. Once merged, the blog gets its new look with no deployment step beyond a `git push` — Git Studio picks it up automatically.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Two gaps we might address later:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
1. **Blockquote support in `build.js`.** The callout CSS is written and waiting. Adding `>` syntax to our markdown converter would let post authors drop amber callout boxes anywhere in a post.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
2. **Ordered lists.** Same story — the CSS isn't written because `build.js` doesn't emit `<ol>` / `<li>` inside ordered lists yet. Both are one-function additions.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The blog toolkit: a hands-on guide
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
If you're going to write for the Tinqs blog — or tweak how it looks — here's everything you need to know, all in one place.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Adding a new post
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Every post starts as a markdown file in `posts/`. The filename doesn't matter for routing (that's driven by the `slug` field), but we name them descriptively: `blog-visual-upgrade.md`, `pre-commit-agent.md`, etc.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The file has two parts: **YAML frontmatter** (metadata wrapped in `---`) and **markdown body** (everything after the second `---`).
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Frontmatter fields:**
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```yaml
|
|
||||||
---
|
|
||||||
title: "Post Title — with optional subtitle"
|
|
||||||
slug: url-friendly-slug
|
|
||||||
date: "2026-06-03"
|
|
||||||
description: "One-sentence summary for meta tags and SEO."
|
|
||||||
og_description: "Shorter version for social cards (optional — falls back to description)."
|
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
|
||||||
excerpt: "A teaser line shown on the blog index page."
|
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
|
||||||
---
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
All fields are required except `og_description` and `og_image` (they have defaults). The `slug` becomes the filename on disk — `blog-visual-upgrade` produces `blog-visual-upgrade.html`.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Markdown body:** The first paragraph after frontmatter becomes the **lead** (shown above the fold on the post page). Everything after the first blank line is the body. `build.js` splits them automatically.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Once your `.md` file is ready:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```bash
|
```bash
|
||||||
node build.js
|
node build.js
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
That regenerates the new post's HTML plus a fresh `index.html` with the updated card listing. No manual HTML editing, ever.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The template handshake
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The blog uses two Handlebars-style templates (actually plain string replacement — no library needed):
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
| File | Role | Key placeholders |
|
|
||||||
|------|------|------------------|
|
|
||||||
| `_template.html` | Wraps a single blog post | `{{TITLE}}`, `{{DATE_DISPLAY}}`, `{{LEAD}}`, `{{BODY}}`, `{{AUTHOR_*}}` |
|
|
||||||
| `_index_template.html` | Wraps the blog listing page | `{{CARDS}}` — replaced with an `<a class="blog-card">` block per post |
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
`build.js` reads both templates at startup, then for each post:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
1. Parses the frontmatter + splits lead from body
|
|
||||||
2. Runs the markdown converter on the body (`md()` function)
|
|
||||||
3. Does `template.replace(/\{\{KEY\}\}/g, value)` for every placeholder
|
|
||||||
4. Writes the result to `{slug}.html`
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
After all posts are built, it generates `index.html` by sorting posts newest-first and replacing `{{CARDS}}` with a block of `.blog-card` links.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**The critical rule:** never edit a generated `*.html` file. They get overwritten on the next `node build.js`. Always change the templates or the markdown source.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The three-layer styling architecture
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Styling has three layers, and they cascade in this order:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
1. ../style.css ← external, served by Git Studio (untouchable from this repo)
|
Building blog...
|
||||||
2. <style> in _template ← post-page overrides (inline, at end of <head>)
|
11 posts built + index.html
|
||||||
3. <style> in _index ← index-page overrides (inline, at end of <head>)
|
Done.
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Layer 1 provides the nav, footer, base typography, and the `--c-accent: #c9935a` variable. It also defines bare selectors like `.post__title`, `.post__date`, `.blog-card`, etc. — but with minimal styling.
|
Zero errors. Every regenerated HTML file now carries the inline `<style>`. Confirmed with `grep -l "background-clip" *.html` — all pages ship the gradient.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Layers 2 and 3 are our **self-contained inline `<style>` blocks**. They sit AFTER the `../style.css` link in the `<head>`, so same-specificity rules win by cascade order. We never use `!important` — the position handles precedence naturally.
|
## What we didn't touch
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Why inline instead of a separate `.css` file?** The blog repo is standalone — it doesn't control what Git Studio serves. Adding a file like `blog-style.css` would require coordinating a deploy to the parent site. Inline `<style>` blocks ship inside the generated HTML, so the blog is fully self-contained. One `git push` and it's live.
|
Navigation, footer, site chrome, responsive behaviour — all unchanged. This was a CSS-only change. No markup altered beyond the `<style>` injection.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The markdown dialect (what `build.js` understands)
|
## What we learned
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Our converter is intentionally minimal — zero dependencies, about 100 lines of Node. It handles the subset we actually use:
|
**Inline styles beat separate CSS files when you don't control the server.** The blog repo is standalone — it can't modify `../style.css`. Inline `<style>` blocks ship inside the generated HTML, so the blog is fully self-contained. One `git push` and it's live.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
| Markdown | HTML emitted | Notes |
|
**Cascade order is the cleanest specificity hack.** Putting the `<style>` block after the external stylesheet link means same-selector rules win by position. No `!important`, no selector wars, no unexpected regressions.
|
||||||
|----------|-------------|-------|
|
|
||||||
| `# Heading` through `######` | `<h1>`–`<h6>` | |
|
|
||||||
| `**bold**` | `<strong>` | |
|
|
||||||
| `*italic*` | `<em>` | |
|
|
||||||
| `` `code` `` | `<code>` (inline) | |
|
|
||||||
| ` ```lang ``` ` | `<pre><code class="language-lang">` | Fenced code blocks |
|
|
||||||
| `- list item` or `* list item` | `<ul><li>` | Unordered only |
|
|
||||||
| `` on its own line | `<figure><img><figcaption>` | |
|
|
||||||
| `---` on its own line | `<hr>` | |
|
|
||||||
| `[text](url)` | `<a href>` | |
|
|
||||||
| Bare text | `<p>` | |
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**What's NOT supported yet:**
|
**Build systems make CSS changes safe.** Because we never hand-edit `.html`, every style change is tested by regenerating all pages and grepping for the new selectors. If a rule doesn't ship, you know immediately.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- `> blockquote` — the CSS callout rules are written and waiting
|
Two gaps we'll fill later: blockquote support in `build.js` (the callout CSS is waiting) and ordered lists (same story). In the meantime, the blog already looks intentional — and it took two template files, one build step, and zero dependencies.
|
||||||
- `1. ordered lists` — no `<ol>` output
|
|
||||||
- Nested lists, tables, inline HTML, footnotes
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
If you need one of these, the fix lives in the `md()` function in `build.js`. Each missing feature is a ~5-line addition.
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Adding a new style rule
|
*The blog is generated by [build.js](https://tinqs.com/tinqs/blog) and served by [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com). All styling is self-contained in the templates.*
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
You're writing a post and want a new visual element. The workflow:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
1. **Open `_template.html`** (or `_index_template.html` for listing-only styles)
|
|
||||||
2. **Find the `<style>` block** at the end of `<head>` — it's clearly marked with a `/* ── Team guide aesthetic ── */` comment
|
|
||||||
3. **Add your rule** inside that block. Follow the existing conventions:
|
|
||||||
- Use the team guide palette (amber `#c9935a`, gold `#f59e0b`, blue `#38bdf8`, purple `#a855f7`)
|
|
||||||
- Prefix body-content rules with `.post__body` to scope them
|
|
||||||
- Match the existing code style (2-space indent, comment headers for sections)
|
|
||||||
4. **Rebuild:** `node build.js`
|
|
||||||
5. **Verify:** open the page and check; `grep` your new selector in `*.html` to confirm it shipped
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The golden rules for style additions:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Never** edit `../style.css` — it's outside the repo
|
|
||||||
- **Never** hand-edit a `*.html` file — the build will clobber it
|
|
||||||
- **Don't** restyle `.nav`, `.footer`, or the mobile menu — those belong to the parent site
|
|
||||||
- **Do** use the existing palette; don't introduce new colours unless there's a strong reason
|
|
||||||
- **Keep it self-contained** — no external font loads, no CDN dependencies, no `@import`
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Extending `build.js`
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Here are the most likely extensions and where to add them:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Blockquote support** (`>` lines in markdown). Add to the `md()` function after the list handler:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```js
|
|
||||||
// Blockquote
|
|
||||||
const bqMatch = line.match(/^>\s?(.*)$/);
|
|
||||||
if (bqMatch) {
|
|
||||||
closeUl();
|
|
||||||
html += `<blockquote><p>${inline(bqMatch[1])}</p></blockquote>\n`;
|
|
||||||
continue;
|
|
||||||
}
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Ordered lists** (`1. item`). Add after the unordered list handler, with a separate `inOl` flag and `closeOl()` function mirroring `closeUl()`.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Syntax highlighting.** The current `md()` function already adds `class="language-{lang}"` to `<code>` inside `<pre>`. Swap in a lightweight highlighter like `highlight.js` or `shiki` — or write a tokenizer that emits `<span>` classes matching the team guide's `.c`, `.g`, `.p`, `.y`, `.r` colour convention.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Swap in a full parser.** If the feature gap gets annoying, replace the `md()` function with `marked` or `markdown-it`. The template system and frontmatter parsing stay the same — only the body conversion changes. One `require()` call and you get tables, blockquotes, ordered lists, and footnotes for free.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Quick reference cheatsheet
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```bash
|
|
||||||
# Add a new post
|
|
||||||
nano posts/my-post.md # write frontmatter + markdown
|
|
||||||
node build.js # regenerate HTML
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
# Tweak styling
|
|
||||||
nano _template.html # edit the <style> block
|
|
||||||
node build.js # rebuild all pages
|
|
||||||
grep "your-selector" *.html # confirm it shipped
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
# Verify before deploy
|
|
||||||
git diff --stat # should only show templates + *.html
|
|
||||||
node build.js # must exit 0
|
|
||||||
ls *.html | wc -l # 12 files = 11 posts + index
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In the meantime, the blog already looks sharper and more intentional — and it took two template files, one build step, and zero external dependencies to get there. That's the kind of upgrade we like.
|
|
||||||
|
|||||||
+44
-85
@@ -1,67 +1,54 @@
|
|||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
title: "Building a Cloud Agent Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi"
|
title: "Agents That Code Overnight: Our $0.80 Cloud Harness with DeepSeek V4 and Pi"
|
||||||
slug: cloud-harness
|
slug: cloud-harness
|
||||||
date: "2026-05-26"
|
date: "2026-05-26"
|
||||||
description: "We forked Pi, merged a browser dashboard into the monorepo, and built a Go orchestrator inside our Gitea fork. Agents code overnight for about $0.80 — and you can watch them from localhost:33634."
|
description: "A Pi fork for the brain, a Go orchestrator inside Gitea for overnight batch work, and a browser dashboard for daytime. Agents code while you sleep for about $0.80."
|
||||||
og_description: "Pi fork, merged agent dashboard, and a Go orchestrator inside Tinqs Studio."
|
og_description: "Pi fork + Go orchestrator + browser dashboard. Agents code overnight for $0.80."
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/blog/img/cloud-harness-architecture.png"
|
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/blog/img/cloud-harness-architecture.png"
|
||||||
excerpt: "We forked Pi, merged a browser dashboard into the monorepo, and built a Go orchestrator inside our Gitea fork. Agents code overnight for about $0.80 — and you can watch them from the browser."
|
excerpt: "Every coding agent today runs in your terminal. Close the laptop, it stops. We built a cloud harness where agents code overnight for about $0.80 — and you can watch from a browser dashboard."
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
author_initials: "OB"
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
We spent a few sessions building something that still barely exists elsewhere: a cloud agent harness where AI coding agents are first-class citizens of the platform, not bolt-on tools. The stack is a [Pi fork](https://tinqs.com/tinqs/pi) for the brain, a Go orchestrator inside our [Gitea fork](https://tinqs.com/tinqs/studio) for overnight work, and a browser dashboard merged into Pi for the daytime. Here is how it fits together.
|
Every coding agent today — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Pi — has the same limitation: it runs in your terminal. You watch it work. You close the laptop, it stops. There's no way to say "build these eight features overnight" and wake up to pull requests.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Problem
|
We built exactly that. A Pi fork for the brain, a Go orchestrator inside our Gitea platform for overnight batch work, and a browser dashboard for daytime. Here's the stack.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Every coding agent today — Claude Code, Codex, Pi, Aider — runs in your terminal. You watch it work. You close the laptop, it stops. There is no way to say "build these eight features overnight" and wake up to pull requests.
|
## The problem with terminal-only agents
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We wanted exactly that. Not a coding assistant. An autonomous workforce — with a UI when a human needs to be in the loop.
|
Claude Code runs on Opus at $15/MTok output. Codex uses GPT-5.5. Running eight agents overnight on either would cost $50-200. That's not sustainable for a four-person studio.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Why Not Just Use Claude Code or Codex?
|
DeepSeek V4 Flash costs $0.28/MTok output. Eight overnight tasks: **about $0.80**. The cost differential changes what's possible — from "I'll use this sparingly" to "run it on everything."
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Cost.** Claude Code runs on Opus at $15/MTok output. Codex uses GPT 5.5. Running eight agents overnight on either would cost $50–200. DeepSeek V4 Flash costs $0.28/MTok output. Eight overnight tasks: **about $0.80**.
|
But cost isn't the only issue. Cloud tools are black boxes. You can't add a Gitea API tool, a fal.ai image generator, or a guardrail that blocks destructive commands. With our own harness, you add an extension and it's live. Agents are not a feature to outsource — they're the product.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Control.** Cloud tools are black boxes. We cannot add a Gitea API tool, a fal.ai image generator, or a guardrail that blocks `aws ec2 terminate-instances`. With our own harness, we add an extension and it is live.
|
## Pi — the agent brain
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Platform.** We are building [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) — a Gitea-based game development platform. Agents are not a feature we want to outsource. They are the product.
|
[Pi](https://pi.dev) is an open-source coding agent. MIT license, TypeScript, 51k stars. Four core tools (read, write, edit, bash) and an extension system. We forked it and added four extensions:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Pi — The Agent Brain
|
- **tinqs-provider** — routes DeepSeek V4 Flash/Pro through our inference proxy
|
||||||
|
- **tinqs-tools** — Gitea REST API, fal.ai image generation, vision model access
|
||||||
|
- **tinqs-ci** — reads CI pipeline status, logs, polls for completion
|
||||||
|
- **tinqs-guardrail** — 29 safety patterns blocking dangerous commands
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[Pi](https://pi.dev) is an open-source coding agent by Mario Zechner. MIT license, TypeScript, minimal by design — four core tools (read, write, edit, bash) and an extension system.
|
Each extension is a single TypeScript file. No npm dependencies. The core Pi code is untouched — we only add files.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We [forked it](https://tinqs.com/tinqs/pi). Not to rewrite the core — to add first-party extensions:
|
Pi's RPC mode is what makes overnight automation possible. It runs headless, accepting JSON on stdin/stdout. The orchestrator spawns it as a subprocess, sends tasks, receives results. No terminal, no editor UI.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **tinqs-provider** — routes DeepSeek V4 Flash and Pro through our inference proxy
|
## DeepSeek V4 — the LLM
|
||||||
- **tinqs-tools** — Gitea REST API, fal.ai image generation, Amazon Nova Lite vision
|
|
||||||
- **tinqs-ci** — reads CI pipeline status, logs, and polls for completion
|
|
||||||
- **tinqs-guardrail** — 29 safety patterns that block dangerous operations
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Each extension is a single TypeScript file. No extra npm dependencies on the extension side.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Pi has four output modes. The one that matters for automation is **RPC** — a headless process that accepts JSON on stdin/stdout. That is how the orchestrator drives it.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## DeepSeek V4 — The LLM
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
DeepSeek V4 Flash through our own inference proxy. OpenAI-compatible API, so Pi treats it like any other provider. The proxy adds:
|
DeepSeek V4 Flash through our own inference proxy. OpenAI-compatible API, so Pi treats it like any other provider. The proxy adds:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- Redis job queue (10 concurrent workers)
|
- Redis job queue (10 concurrent workers)
|
||||||
- Per-user usage tracking
|
- Per-user usage tracking
|
||||||
- System prompt injection for cache hit optimization
|
- System prompt injection for cache-hit optimization
|
||||||
- Gitea PAT authentication (same token as git push)
|
- Gitea PAT authentication — same token as git push
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Cost per task: **$0.02–0.10** depending on complexity.
|
Cost per task: $0.02-0.10 depending on complexity.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Go Orchestrator — Overnight Batch Work
|
## Go orchestrator — overnight batch work
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Inside `tinqs/studio` we added `modules/agents/` — a Go worker pool that:
|
Inside our Gitea fork we added `modules/agents/` — a Go worker pool that spawns Pi processes, tracks task lifecycle, and streams events over SSE to any connected UI. Six endpoints, same auth as git push:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- Spawns Pi with `--mode rpc --no-session`
|
|
||||||
- Tracks task lifecycle (pending → running → done)
|
|
||||||
- Streams events over **SSE** to any connected UI
|
|
||||||
- Enforces guardrails at the platform layer (worker limits, timeouts)
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Six HTTP endpoints, same auth as git push:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
POST /api/v1/agents/tasks — submit a task
|
POST /api/v1/agents/tasks — submit a task
|
||||||
@@ -72,9 +59,7 @@ GET /api/v1/agents/stream — SSE live events
|
|||||||
GET /api/v1/agents/health — orchestrator status
|
GET /api/v1/agents/health — orchestrator status
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We considered bolting on a separate orchestration SaaS and rejected it. The orchestrator lives in the same binary as git — same auth, no extra service to deploy.
|
The orchestrator lives in the same binary as git — same auth, no extra service to deploy. The intended loop:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The intended loop:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
Orchestrator reads task brief
|
Orchestrator reads task brief
|
||||||
@@ -82,75 +67,49 @@ Orchestrator reads task brief
|
|||||||
→ Pi writes code using DeepSeek V4
|
→ Pi writes code using DeepSeek V4
|
||||||
→ Pi pushes branch, calls ci_wait
|
→ Pi pushes branch, calls ci_wait
|
||||||
→ CI green → Pi opens PR via gitea_api
|
→ CI green → Pi opens PR via gitea_api
|
||||||
→ CI red → Pi reads ci_logs, fixes, retries
|
→ CI red → Pi reads ci_logs, fixes, retries (≤3)
|
||||||
→ Human reviews PR, merges
|
→ Human reviews PR, merges
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Git worktree integration and full push/PR automation are still being wired; the API and worker pool already run locally.
|
## Browser dashboard — daytime UI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Pi Dashboard — Browser UI (Shipped)
|
The orchestrator is for overnight batch work. During the day, you want to see agents, chat with them, and spawn sessions — without living in a terminal.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The cloud orchestrator is for batch work while you sleep. During the day you want to see agents, chat with them, and spawn sessions without living in a terminal.
|
We merged [pi-agent-dashboard](https://github.com/BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard) into the Pi monorepo. One command:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We merged [pi-agent-dashboard](https://github.com/BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard) into the Pi monorepo — not as a second repo to install. One checkout, one command:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```bash
|
```bash
|
||||||
npm run dashboard:dev
|
npm run dashboard:dev
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Open **http://localhost:33634**. You get:
|
Open `localhost:33634` and you get live session streaming (watch tool calls and model output in real time), interactive chat, session spawning in any project folder, and per-session cost tracking. The dashboard talks to Pi sessions over WebSocket on port 9999. Inference uses the same Tinqs proxy as the CLI — one API key, one billing account.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Live session streaming** — watch tool calls and model output in real time
|
|
||||||
- **Interactive chat** — send prompts, answer `ask_user` dialogs from the browser
|
|
||||||
- **Session spawning** — start Pi in any pinned project folder
|
|
||||||
- **Cost tracking** — per-session token usage when using Tinqs inference
|
|
||||||
- **Plugins** — flows, subagents, workspace helpers
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The dashboard talks to Pi sessions over a WebSocket bridge on port **9999**. Inference uses the same Tinqs proxy as the CLI — register a custom provider in `~/.pi/agent/providers.json` and authenticate with your existing `tstudio` token. No separate LLM API keys.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
Dashboard (localhost:33634)
|
Browser (localhost:33634)
|
||||||
↕ WebSocket (port 9999)
|
↕ WebSocket (port 9999)
|
||||||
Pi sessions (interactive or headless)
|
Pi sessions (interactive or headless)
|
||||||
↕ OpenAI-compatible API
|
↕ OpenAI-compatible API
|
||||||
Tinqs Studio proxy (tinqs.com/api/v1/ai)
|
Tinqs proxy (tinqs.com/api/v1/ai)
|
||||||
↕ DeepSeek V4 Flash / Pro
|
↕ DeepSeek V4 Flash / Pro
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
When Studio runs locally with agents enabled, the dashboard can also talk to the orchestrator API on port 3000 — submit tasks and watch SSE events in the same UI.
|
## The guardrail
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
One browser tab for daytime work; the orchestrator queue for overnight runs.
|
The biggest fear with autonomous agents: hallucination. An agent claiming it read a file without calling `read`. Three consecutive turns with no tool calls. Running `aws ec2 terminate-instances` at 3am.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Guardrail
|
The guardrail extension monitors every turn:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Our biggest fear: an agent hallucinating instead of using tools, or running `aws ec2 terminate-instances` at 3 AM.
|
- **Hallucination detection** — claims without tool calls get corrected
|
||||||
|
- **No-tool drift** — three turns with zero tool calls triggers a warning
|
||||||
|
- **Command blocking** — 29 patterns covering destructive git, AWS teardown, process killing, production API abuse
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The guardrail extension monitors every agent turn:
|
Guardrails at the platform layer, not the prompt layer. Prompts can be ignored. Platform gates cannot.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Hallucination detection** — if the agent claims file contents without calling `read`, it gets corrected.
|
## What it cost to build
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**No-tool drift** — three consecutive turns without a tool call triggers a warning.
|
About 2,000 lines of Go, 900 lines of TypeScript extensions, 52 tests, plus merging the dashboard into the Pi monorepo. No new servers — Pi is a Node subprocess; the dashboard is another Node process on your machine. The orchestrator is a Go module inside our existing Gitea binary — zero additional infrastructure.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Command blocking** — 29 patterns covering destructive git, AWS teardown, process killing, and production API abuse.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What It Cost to Build
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A few focused sessions: about 2,000 lines of Go, 900 lines of TypeScript extensions, 52 tests, plus merging the dashboard packages into the Pi monorepo. No new servers — Pi is a Node subprocess; the dashboard is another Node process on your machine.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What Is Next
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
| Piece | Status |
|
|
||||||
|-------|--------|
|
|
||||||
| Pi fork + tinqs extensions | Shipped |
|
|
||||||
| Dashboard merged into Pi monorepo | Shipped |
|
|
||||||
| Go orchestrator + REST/SSE API | MVP, running locally |
|
|
||||||
| Git worktree + push + PR loop | In progress |
|
|
||||||
| Domain routing (game / sim / platform tasks) | Designed |
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Next we are promoting studio skills from IDE playbooks into orchestrator prompt packs — so the same Pi worker behaves like a game builder, sim maintainer, or platform engineer depending on the task. Specialized agents (planner, reviewer, asset pipeline) sit on top of this foundation.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The harness — inference proxy, guardrails, dashboard, orchestrator API — is in place. The work now is feeding it real tasks and hardening the git loop.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
*Tinqs Studio is an open platform for game development — git hosting, AI inference, asset generation, and autonomous agents. We are building [Ariki](https://arikigame.com), a survival colony sim, using the same tools we ship.*
|
The harness — inference proxy, guardrails, dashboard, orchestrator API — is in place. Agents code while you sleep for pocket change. And because everything runs on your own infrastructure, you control the models, the tools, and the safety rails.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*Tinqs Studio is an open platform for game development — git hosting, AI inference, asset generation, and autonomous agents. We're building [Ariki](https://arikigame.com) using the same tools.*
|
||||||
|
|||||||
+82
-107
@@ -1,162 +1,137 @@
|
|||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
title: "AI Art at Scale: Using fal.ai Flux for Game Asset Generation"
|
title: "AI Art at Every Price Point: How We Generate Game Assets with fal.ai"
|
||||||
slug: fal-image-generation
|
slug: fal-image-generation
|
||||||
date: "2026-05-25"
|
date: "2026-05-25"
|
||||||
description: "How we use fal.ai Flux models to generate concept art, trailer frames, and UI assets for our game --- with a 4-layer prompt pattern that actually works."
|
description: "From $0.002 to $0.09 per image, across 12 models. How we built a prompt pattern that actually produces usable game art, and a model-picking strategy that keeps costs at $8/month."
|
||||||
og_description: "fal.ai Flux for game art: 4-layer prompts, $0.01/image, and a pipeline that replaced our concept art bottleneck."
|
og_description: "12 fal.ai models, $0.002-$0.09/image, 4-layer prompt pattern. Game art that actually ships."
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
||||||
excerpt: "We generate concept art, trailer frames, and UI icons with fal.ai Flux models at $0.01 per image. Here's the prompt engineering pattern that makes it work for game dev."
|
excerpt: "We generate all visual assets for our game through fal.ai — concept art, icons, logos, trailer frames. Here's the 4-layer prompt pattern that actually works, and how we pick between 12 models spanning two orders of magnitude in cost."
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
author_initials: "OB"
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
We're a small indie studio building a survival colony sim. We don't have a concept artist on staff. Every piece of character art, trailer frame, and UI icon in our game was generated with fal.ai Flux models --- at roughly a penny per image.
|
Every visual asset in our game — character art, app icons, trailer frames, logo variants, Steam capsules — was generated through a single API. No Photoshop. No concept artist on staff. Last month: 673 images, $8.30 total. Here's the prompt pattern that makes AI art actually usable for game development, and how we pick between 12 models spanning $0.002 to $0.09 per image.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Problem with AI Art for Games
|
## The problem with AI art for games
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Most AI image generators produce beautiful images that are completely useless for game development. They look great on social media but fall apart when you need consistency: the same character from four angles, a UI icon that reads at 64x64, a trailer frame that matches your game's art style rather than whatever the model defaults to.
|
Most AI-generated images look beautiful on social media and useless in a game. The character looks different from every angle. The art style drifts between generations. The text in the logo is garbled. The icon doesn't read at 64×64.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The issue isn't the models --- Flux is genuinely good. The issue is prompting. When you write "warrior on a beach," you get a different art style every time. Different skin tones, different proportions, different lighting. You can't build a game from that.
|
The issue isn't the models — Flux, Ideogram, and Recraft are genuinely good. The issue is prompting. "Warrior on a beach" gives you a different art style, different skin tone, different proportions every time. You can't build a game from one-offs.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We spent three months iterating on prompt patterns before we found something that works consistently. The result is a 4-layer system that anchors the model to your art direction and produces images you can actually ship.
|
We spent three months iterating before we found a prompt structure that anchors the model to a consistent art direction and produces images you can actually ship. It has four layers.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Why fal.ai
|
## The 4-layer prompt pattern
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We evaluated Midjourney, DALL-E 3, Stable Diffusion (self-hosted), and fal.ai:
|
### Layer 1: Design context (the anchor)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**API-first.** Midjourney is Discord-only. DALL-E's API works but the model makes everything look like a stock photo. Self-hosted SD means maintaining GPU infrastructure. fal.ai gives you Flux models behind a simple REST API --- POST a prompt, GET an image URL.
|
This is the most important paragraph and the one most people skip. It sets the art direction for every single generation:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Cost.** $0.01 per image with `flux-2-pro`. $0.004 with `schnell` for rapid iteration. A full character design session --- 12 variants across 3 rounds of refinement --- costs $0.12. A 20-frame trailer storyboard costs $0.20. At these prices, the bottleneck is creative direction, not budget.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Speed.** `flux/schnell` returns an image in 4 seconds. `flux-2-pro` in 15 seconds. Fast enough that an AI agent can generate, display, get feedback, and regenerate in a single conversation turn.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**No subscription.** Pay per image. No monthly fee, no credit packs that expire, no tier-gated features.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The 4-Layer Prompt Pattern
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This is the pattern that made AI art actually usable for our game. Each layer adds specificity, and the combination anchors the model to a consistent output.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Layer 1: Design Context
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The most important layer and the one most people skip. It sets the overall art direction:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
Art direction: stylized 3D render for a survival colony sim. Warm earthy
|
Art direction: stylized 3D render for a survival colony sim. Warm earthy
|
||||||
palette --- browns, tans, dark reds, cream, ocean blues. Carved wood
|
palette — browns, tans, dark reds, cream, ocean blues. Carved wood
|
||||||
textures, traditional patterns, woven natural fibres. Game engine quality,
|
textures, traditional patterns, woven natural fibres. Game engine quality,
|
||||||
not photorealistic.
|
not photorealistic.
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This paragraph appears at the start of every prompt. Same paragraph whether you're generating a character, a landscape, or an icon. It anchors the model to your art style.
|
Same paragraph whether you're generating a character, a landscape, or an icon. It's your art bible compressed into 50 words. Every time we skipped it — "just a quick test" — the output drifted into generic fantasy art.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**The key insight:** write this once, paste it everywhere. It's your art bible compressed into 50 words. Every time we skipped it --- "just a quick test" --- the output drifted into generic fantasy art.
|
### Layer 2: Scene description (be specific)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Layer 2: Scene Description
|
Not "tribal clothing" — "woven wrap skirt, mid-thigh length." Not "jewelry" — "shell necklace with a carved bone pendant." Vague prompts produce vague results. Specific prompts produce usable assets. Describe element by element.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Describe exactly what should appear, element by element:
|
### Layer 3: Negative prompt (prevent drift)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
Full body character in T-pose, front view. Young woman, mid-20s.
|
|
||||||
Wearing a woven wrap skirt (mid-thigh length) and a fitted cloth top.
|
|
||||||
Shell necklace with a carved bone pendant. Single bone bracelet on
|
|
||||||
left wrist. Hair swept back over right shoulder. Bare feet.
|
|
||||||
Matte skin, warm brown tones. Neutral confident expression ---
|
|
||||||
not smiling, not angry. Dark grey background.
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Not "tribal clothing" but "woven wrap skirt." Not "jewelry" but "shell necklace with a carved bone pendant." Vague prompts produce vague results. Specific prompts produce usable assets.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Layer 3: Negative Prompt
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Always include what you don't want:
|
Always include what you don't want:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
Do not include: cartoon style, anime style, photorealistic render,
|
Do not include: cartoon style, anime style, photorealistic render,
|
||||||
extra text or taglines, watermark, deformed elements, modern or
|
extra text or taglines, watermark, deformed elements, modern or sci-fi.
|
||||||
sci-fi. No extra fingers, no merged limbs, no floating accessories.
|
No extra fingers, no merged limbs, no floating accessories.
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Extend per-subject. For characters: "no stereotypical elements, no overly shiny materials." The negative prompt is as important as the positive one.
|
AI models have strong defaults — they want to make things shiny, symmetrical, and photorealistic. If your game isn't those things, say so explicitly.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Layer 4: Reference Images
|
### Layer 4: Reference images (consistency)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
When you need consistency --- the same character from different angles, or a new character matching an existing one --- pass a reference image:
|
When you need the same character from different angles, pass the first approved image as reference. Without it, every generation is independent — a different person every time. With it, every generation builds on the last approved output. This is how you get a roster of characters that look like they belong in the same game.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```python
|
## The model lineup (and when to use each)
|
||||||
result = fal_client.subscribe("fal-ai/flux-2-pro", arguments={
|
|
||||||
"prompt": "Same character, side view, same clothing and accessories...",
|
|
||||||
"image_url": "https://your-approved-front-view.png",
|
|
||||||
"image_size": "square_hd",
|
|
||||||
})
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The first approved image becomes the reference for all subsequent views. Without it, you get a different person every time.
|
Not every image needs the best model. A throwaway mockup doesn't justify $0.09. A final logo doesn't deserve $0.002.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Model Lineup
|
| Model | Cost | Speed | Use for |
|
||||||
|
|-------|------|-------|---------|
|
||||||
|
| Flux 2 Pro | $0.03 | 15s | Final art, characters, environments |
|
||||||
|
| Flux Schnell | $0.003 | 3s | Exploration drafts, 20-variant grids |
|
||||||
|
| Ideogram v3 Quality | $0.09 | 12s | Anything with readable text |
|
||||||
|
| Recraft v3 | $0.04-0.08 | 10s | Logos, brand assets, SVG vectors |
|
||||||
|
| Seedream v4.5 | $0.04 | 8s | Photorealistic scenes |
|
||||||
|
| Flux Dev | $0.025 | 10s | LoRA fine-tuning base |
|
||||||
|
| Nano Banana Edit | $0.039 | 12s | Style transfer, material variants |
|
||||||
|
| BiRefNet | $0.001 | 3s | Background removal |
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
| Model | Cost | Speed | When |
|
### The Schnell-to-Pro pipeline (never iterate on expensive models)
|
||||||
|-------|------|-------|------|
|
|
||||||
| `flux-2-pro` | $0.01 | ~15s | Final art. Default for anything you'll ship. |
|
|
||||||
| `flux/schnell` | $0.004 | ~4s | Exploration and iteration. |
|
|
||||||
| `ideogram/v2` | $0.008 | ~5s | Anything with readable text --- logos, UI, posters. |
|
|
||||||
| `flux-pro/v1.1-ultra` | $0.015 | ~8s | Highest quality, but can hang. |
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The workflow: explore with `schnell`, refine with `flux-2-pro`, add text with `ideogram/v2`.
|
Every generation session follows the same pattern:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## How This Fits Our Pipeline
|
1. **Explore with Schnell** ($0.003) — 10-20 variants, different angles, color palettes. Cost: $0.03-0.06
|
||||||
|
2. **Pick 2-3 directions.** Human looks at the grid, picks winners.
|
||||||
|
3. **Refine with Flux 2 Pro** ($0.03) — regenerate winners at full quality. Cost: $0.06-0.09
|
||||||
|
4. **Post-process** — BiRefNet for background removal ($0.001), Recraft for vector ($0.08)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
fal.ai is the first step in a pipeline from idea to in-game asset:
|
A full session — blank canvas to final assets — costs under $0.20. Most of the creative work happens at $0.003/image. The expensive model just polishes a decision you already made.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Typography: one model rules them all
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Every model except Ideogram fails at text. Flux gives you beautiful art with garbled letters. SDXL doesn't try. If your image has words in it, Ideogram v3 Quality is the only answer. We learned to accept the $0.09 cost rather than waste $0.30 on ten failed Flux attempts.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Logo variants at scale
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Our game logo has 18 material variants — mahogany, mother-of-pearl, obsidian, molten lava, bronze with verdigris. Each generated with Nano Banana Edit ($0.039) + BiRefNet ($0.001) for transparency. Total: $0.72. A designer would quote hundreds of dollars and a week.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
## The numbers (one month of generation)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
| Category | Images | Cost | Avg/Image |
|
||||||
|
|----------|--------|------|-----------|
|
||||||
|
| Concept art (flux-2-pro) | 120 | $3.60 | $0.03 |
|
||||||
|
| Exploration (schnell) | 400 | $1.20 | $0.003 |
|
||||||
|
| Logo variants | 18 | $0.72 | $0.04 |
|
||||||
|
| Icons | 30 | $1.20 | $0.04 |
|
||||||
|
| Typography (ideogram) | 25 | $1.50 | $0.06 |
|
||||||
|
| Background removal | 80 | $0.08 | $0.001 |
|
||||||
|
| **Total** | **673** | **$8.30** | **$0.012** |
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Six hundred images. Eight dollars.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
## The pipeline: from prompt to in-game asset
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
fal.ai is step one of a pipeline that goes from idea to walking character in about two hours:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
Brief --> fal.ai (2D concept art) --> Tripo Studio (3D model) --> Blender (decimate) --> Godot (in-game)
|
Brief → fal.ai (2D concept) → Tripo Studio (3D model) → Blender (decimate) → Godot (in-game)
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
1. **Brief.** The designer describes the character or asset.
|
1. Designer describes the character
|
||||||
2. **2D generation.** Generate 3 variants with `flux-2-pro`, score each on a rubric (style match, cultural accuracy, silhouette, expression, animatability), pick the best.
|
2. Generate 3 variants with Flux 2 Pro, score on 5 criteria (style match, cultural accuracy, silhouette, expression, animatability)
|
||||||
3. **Reference sheet.** Generate front, side, three-quarter, and head closeup views using the winner as reference.
|
3. Generate front/side/three-quarter reference views using the winner
|
||||||
4. **3D model.** Approved concept art goes into Tripo Studio for image-to-3D. Outputs ~1.5M faces with full PBR textures.
|
4. Tripo Studio image-to-3D (~1.5M faces, PBR textures)
|
||||||
5. **Decimation.** Blender CLI decimates to 25,000 faces.
|
5. Blender CLI decimates to 25k faces
|
||||||
6. **Rigging.** Auto-rig the body (hair separated first if large).
|
6. Auto-rig, import into engine, done
|
||||||
7. **In-game.** Import into the engine, set up materials, done.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The entire pipeline from "I want a character" to "character walking around in the game" takes about 2 hours. The quality isn't AAA, but for an indie game with a stylised art style, it's more than good enough.
|
Quality isn't AAA, but for an indie game with a stylized art style, it's more than good enough. Ten characters designed, total fal.ai spend: $6.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What We Learned
|
## What we learned
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**The design context layer is everything.** Without it, every image is a one-off. With it, every image belongs to the same game. The 50-word context block is worth more than the rest of the prompt combined.
|
**The design context block is worth more than the rest of the prompt combined.** Without it, every image is a one-off. With it, every image belongs to the same game.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Negative prompts prevent drift.** AI models have strong defaults --- they want to make things shiny, symmetrical, and photorealistic. If your game isn't those things, say so explicitly.
|
**Never iterate on expensive models.** Schnell at $0.003/image is for exploration. Flux 2 Pro at $0.03 is for final output. The cheap model does 90% of the creative work.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Score and iterate, don't accept the first output.** Generate 3 variants, score on 5 criteria, approve only 8+/10. Three attempts at $0.01 each is $0.03 --- cheaper than working around a mediocre image.
|
**Aggregation beats loyalty.** No single model is best at everything. Flux for art, Ideogram for text, Recraft for design, Nano Banana for edits, BiRefNet for masks. Use the right tool for each job.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Reference images are the consistency mechanism.** Without them, every generation is independent. With them, every generation builds on the last approved output. This is how you get a roster of characters that look like they belong in the same game.
|
**Let the agent handle prompting.** We encode the 4-layer pattern, art style guide, and model selection rules in an [agent skill file](../skills/image-generation.md). The AI writes the full prompt, generates images, displays them, and asks for scores. The human's job is creative direction.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Fast models for exploration, quality models for output.** `schnell` at 4 seconds is for "what if..." iterations. `flux-2-pro` at 15 seconds is for "yes, this is the one."
|
AI art isn't magic and it isn't free. But at a penny per image, with the right prompt structure and model strategy, it eliminates the most expensive bottleneck in indie game development: the gap between "I know what this should look like" and "I have an asset I can actually use."
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Let the AI agent handle prompt engineering.** We encode the 4-layer pattern, art style guide, and cultural guardrails in a [skill file](../skills/image-generation.md). The agent writes the full prompt, generates images, displays them, and asks for scores. The human's job is creative direction.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Numbers
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Characters designed:** 10 (full roster for early access)
|
|
||||||
- **Total images generated:** ~400 across all iterations
|
|
||||||
- **Total cost:** ~$6 in fal.ai credits
|
|
||||||
- **Time per character:** ~30 minutes from brief to approved reference sheet
|
|
||||||
- **Pipeline time:** ~2 hours from concept art to in-game model
|
|
||||||
- **Models used:** flux-2-pro (80%), schnell (15%), ideogram/v2 (5%)
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Open-Source Skills
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We've published the skill files that power this workflow. A skill is a markdown document that teaches an AI agent a specific procedure --- like a runbook, but the reader is an LLM.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **[Image Generation](../skills/image-generation.md)** --- fal.ai API, 4-layer prompt pattern, model comparison
|
|
||||||
- **[Concept Art Pipeline](../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md)** --- full 2D-to-3D character workflow
|
|
||||||
- **[3D Model Generation](../skills/tripo-browser-workflow.md)** --- Tripo Studio text-to-3D and image-to-3D
|
|
||||||
- **[Video Generation](../skills/sora2-video.md)** --- trailer clip generation with OpenAI Sora 2
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Drop any of these into your `.cursor/skills/` directory and your AI agent can follow them. Adapt the design context block to your game's art style and you're good to go.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
AI image generation isn't magic and it isn't free. But at a penny per image, with the right prompt structure, it eliminates the most expensive bottleneck in indie game development: the gap between "I know what this should look like" and "I have an image I can actually use."
|
*Image generation is built into [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com). We've open-sourced the [prompt engineering skill](../skills/image-generation.md) and [concept art pipeline skill](../skills/concept-art-pipeline.md). We're building [Ariki](https://arikigame.com) with these tools.*
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We're building all of this as part of [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) --- a game development platform that brings together git hosting, AI tools, and creative workflows for game teams.
|
|
||||||
|
|||||||
+75
-90
@@ -1,113 +1,98 @@
|
|||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
title: "Fork, Don't Build: The Age of Agents Doesn't Need New Tools"
|
title: "Fork, Don't Build: How We Modified Gitea, Pi, and Godot Instead of Starting from Scratch"
|
||||||
slug: fork-dont-build
|
slug: fork-dont-build
|
||||||
date: "2026-05-25"
|
date: "2026-05-25"
|
||||||
description: "Everyone is building new AI developer tools. We forked three existing ones --- Gitea, Pi, Godot --- and modified them from the inside. Here's why that's the better bet."
|
description: "Everyone is building new AI developer tools. We forked three battle-tested open-source projects — Gitea, Pi, and Godot — and modified them from the inside. Combined changes: less than 0.5% of upstream code."
|
||||||
og_description: "Fork Gitea. Fork Pi. Fork Godot. Modify platforms, don't build toys."
|
og_description: "Fork Gitea. Fork Pi. Fork Godot. Modify platforms, don't build toys."
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
||||||
excerpt: "Everyone is building new AI developer tools. We forked three existing ones and modified them from the inside. Here's why that's the better bet."
|
excerpt: "Three forks, less than 0.5% code changed. Why modifying existing platforms beats building new ones — and how we turned Gitea into a game dev platform with 3D preview, AI agents, and LFS-first workflows."
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
author_initials: "OB"
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
The AI developer tools space has a problem: everyone is building new things. New agents, new IDEs, new platforms, new wrappers around GPT. Meanwhile, the tools that actually run the world --- git servers, game engines, CI runners --- sit there unchanged, waiting for someone to open them up and let agents in. We chose to fork instead of build. Three times. Here's why.
|
The AI developer tools space is full of people building new things. New agents, new IDEs, new platforms, new wrappers. Meanwhile, the tools that actually run the world — git servers, game engines, CI runners — sit there unchanged, waiting for someone to open them up and let AI agents in.
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## The Pattern
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We forked three of them. Gitea for git hosting. Pi for coding agents. Godot for the game engine. Combined changes: less than 0.5% of upstream code. Here's why, how, and what we learned.
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We're a four-person game studio. We don't have time to build a git platform, a coding agent, and a game engine from scratch. Nobody does. But we can take something that already works --- something with years of battle-testing, thousands of contributors, and millions of users --- and change it from the inside.
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The pattern is simple:
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1. Find an open-source tool that does 95% of what you need
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2. Fork it
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3. Add the 5% that makes it yours
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4. Stay close to upstream so you get their fixes for free
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We've done this three times.
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## Fork 1: Gitea --- Our Git Platform
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[Gitea](https://gitea.com) is a self-hosted git server. Single Go binary, MIT license, 45k GitHub stars. It handles repos, issues, pull requests, CI, LFS --- everything a team needs.
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We [forked it](https://tinqs.com/tinqs/studio) and built Tinqs Studio. Our changes:
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- **3D asset preview** --- click a `.glb` file and rotate the model in your browser
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- **HTML file preview** --- rendered in a sandboxed iframe, not raw source
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- **Agent API** --- six endpoints that let AI agents submit tasks, push code, and open PRs
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- **OAuth2 SSO** --- one login for git, the game, and every tool
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- **Credits system** --- monetize AI inference without hiding features behind paywalls
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Total lines changed from upstream: about 2,000 out of Gitea's 500,000. That's 0.4%. We modify templates, add Go modules, and tweak CSS variables. We never touch the database schema --- we ride upstream's migrations. When Gitea releases 1.27, we rebase, fix conflicts, and ship.
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The alternative was building a git platform from scratch. That's a multi-year, multi-million dollar project. Or using GitHub/GitLab and accepting their limitations. Neither option gives you the ability to embed AI agents directly into the platform.
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## Fork 2: Pi --- Our Agent Runtime
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[Pi](https://pi.dev) is an open-source coding agent. 51k stars, MIT license, TypeScript. Four core tools (read, write, edit, bash), a minimal system prompt, and an extension system.
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We [forked it](https://tinqs.com/tinqs/pi) and added four extensions:
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- **tinqs-provider** --- routes inference through our DeepSeek V4 proxy ($0.28/MTok vs Opus at $15/MTok)
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- **tinqs-tools** --- Gitea API, fal.ai image generation, vision preprocessing
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- **tinqs-ci** --- reads CI pipeline status and logs, polls for completion
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- **tinqs-guardrail** --- 29 safety patterns blocking dangerous commands
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Each extension is a single TypeScript file. No npm dependencies. The core Pi code is untouched --- we only add files.
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The alternative was building our own agent from scratch. That means writing tool-calling logic, context management, streaming, retry handling, conversation threading --- months of work to reinvent what Pi already does. Or using Claude Code / Codex as a black box and accepting that you can't add a Gitea API tool or a budget cap.
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## Fork 3: Godot --- Our Game Engine
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[Godot](https://godotengine.org) is an open-source game engine. We forked 4.6.2 and added nine C++ modules that turn the engine into an agent-aware runtime:
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- **agent_api** --- HTTP server inside the engine, so agents can query game state
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- **agent_vision** --- screenshot capture for AI vision pipelines
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- **agent_console** --- programmatic access to the engine console
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- **agent_replay** --- record and replay game sessions for testing
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- **agent_analytics** --- PostHog event tracking from inside the engine
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These modules compile into the engine binary. A vanilla Godot user never sees them. An agent can connect to the running engine over HTTP, take a screenshot, read the scene tree, execute a console command, and capture the result --- all without touching the editor UI.
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The alternative was building an engine integration from scratch. Or worse, building a custom engine. We'd still be writing a renderer instead of making a game.
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## Why Forking Beats Building
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### You inherit decades of work
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Gitea has handled millions of git pushes. Godot renders millions of frames. Pi has processed millions of LLM tokens. That battle-testing is free when you fork. When you build from scratch, you spend your first year rediscovering bugs that were fixed upstream in 2019.
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### You get free maintenance
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Every upstream release brings security patches, performance improvements, and new features --- written by hundreds of contributors we don't pay. Our job is to rebase, resolve conflicts, and test. That's an afternoon, not a quarter.
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### You stay focused
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Building a git server from scratch means worrying about pack-file format, SSH key management, webhook delivery, and a thousand other things that have nothing to do with AI agents. Forking means you only think about the 5% that matters to you. The other 95% is someone else's problem.
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### Agents work better on real platforms
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An agent that pushes to a real Gitea instance --- with real CI, real code review, real permissions --- produces work that humans can actually review and ship. An agent that pushes to a toy demo platform produces demos.
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The whole point of AI agents is to participate in real workflows. Real workflows run on real tools. If you want agents in your git workflow, put them in your git server. If you want agents in your game pipeline, put them in your game engine.
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## The 0.5% Rule
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## The 0.5% Rule
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Across all three forks, our total changeset is less than 0.5% of the upstream code. Tinqs Studio: 0.4% of Gitea. Pi extensions: 900 lines added to a 15,000-line codebase. Godot modules: 2,000 lines added to a 2-million-line engine.
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We're four people. We can't build a git platform, a coding agent, or a game engine from scratch. Nobody can — not in a timeframe measured in months.
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This isn't a coincidence. If your fork touches more than 1% of upstream, you're doing too much. Either the upstream tool is wrong for the job, or you're not trusting it enough. The power of forking is that you don't have to understand the whole codebase. You find the extension points, add your code, and leave the rest alone.
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But we can take something that already works — something with years of battle-testing and thousands of contributors — and change the last half-percent that makes it ours. The pattern:
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## What We're Not Doing
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1. Find open-source tool that does 95% of what you need
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2. Fork it
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3. Add the 5% (really, 0.5%)
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4. Stay close to upstream so their fixes are your fixes
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We're not building a new IDE. Cursor and Claude Code exist. We're not building a new LLM. DeepSeek and Claude exist. We're not building a new cloud platform. AWS exists.
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Across three forks, we've never touched more than 0.5% of upstream code. If your fork hits 1%, you're doing too much — either the upstream tool is wrong for the job, or you're not trusting it enough.
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We're building the layer that connects them. The git server that speaks agent. The coding agent that speaks Gitea. The game engine that speaks HTTP. Each fork is a bridge between an existing tool and the agentic future --- not a replacement for either.
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## Fork 1: Gitea → Tinqs Studio
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||||||
## The Bet
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Gitea is a self-hosted git server. Single Go binary, MIT license, 45k GitHub stars. We used GitHub for two years. It was fine for docs. For the game repo — 12GB in LFS, growing weekly — it was untenable. LFS bandwidth limits, slow clones, $5/50GB pricing. And nobody on the team could **see** what changed. A PR modifying a `.glb` file showed a binary diff. No preview. The artist pushed, the developer approved blindly, and three days later someone noticed the normals were inverted.
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The age of agents doesn't need more agents. It needs better platforms. Platforms that understand agents as first-class users --- with API endpoints, safety rails, and lifecycle management. Those platforms already exist as open-source projects. They just need someone to fork them and add the wiring.
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We forked Gitea and built [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com). Our changes:
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That's the bet. Fork, don't build. Modify the foundation, don't stack another layer on top. Let the upstream community handle the 99.5% while you focus on the 0.5% that makes it yours.
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**3D asset preview.** Click a `.glb`, `.gltf`, or `.fbx` file in a PR and rotate the model in your browser. 22 formats supported via O3DV. This alone transformed our review process — the artist pushes, the lead inspects, nobody downloads anything.
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**HTML file preview.** Sandboxed iframe rendering. Our internal docs and game design pages look like websites, not raw source.
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**Agent API.** Six REST endpoints that let AI agents submit tasks, push code, check CI status, and open PRs. Agents are first-class users of the git platform, not bolt-on tools.
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|
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**LFS-first workflows.** Auto-tracking on repo creation. Game file extensions (`.fbx`, `.glb`, `.png`, `.wav`) tracked by default. Storage dashboard per repo. Clone times went from 45 minutes to 3 minutes.
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|
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**OAuth2 SSO.** One login for git, the game tools, and the team dashboard.
|
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|
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Total lines changed: about 2,000 out of Gitea's 500,000. We modify templates, add Go modules, tweak CSS. We **never** touch the database schema — upstream owns that, and we ride their migrations.
|
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The alternative was building a git platform from scratch. Multi-year project, multi-million dollar budget. Or using GitHub/GitLab and accepting their limitations. Neither gives you the ability to embed agents directly into the platform.
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## Fork 2: Pi → Agent Runtime with Game Tools
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|
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[Pi](https://pi.dev) is an open-source coding agent by Mario Zechner. MIT license, TypeScript, minimal by design — four core tools (read, write, edit, bash) and an extension system. 51k stars.
|
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|
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We forked it and added four extensions, each a single TypeScript file:
|
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|
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- **tinqs-provider** — routes inference through our DeepSeek V4 proxy ($0.28/MTok vs Opus at $15/MTok)
|
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- **tinqs-tools** — Gitea REST API, fal.ai image generation, vision model access
|
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- **tinqs-ci** — reads CI pipeline status, fetches build logs, polls for completion
|
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- **tinqs-guardrail** — 29 safety patterns blocking dangerous commands
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The core Pi code is untouched — 900 lines of extensions added to a 15,000-line codebase. Agents get Gitea-native tools without a fork of the entire agent ecosystem.
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The alternative: building our own agent from scratch — tool-calling logic, context management, streaming, retry handling, conversation threading. Months of work to reinvent what Pi already does.
|
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## Fork 3: Godot → Agent-Aware Game Engine
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[Godot](https://godotengine.org) is the open-source game engine powering our survival colony sim. We forked 4.6.2 and added nine C++ modules that give agents direct access to the running game:
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|
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- **agent_api** — HTTP server inside the engine so agents can query game state
|
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- **agent_vision** — screenshot capture for AI vision pipelines
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- **agent_console** — programmatic console access
|
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- **agent_replay** — record and replay game sessions for testing
|
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|
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These compile into the engine binary. A vanilla Godot user never sees them. An agent connects over HTTP, takes a screenshot, reads the scene tree, executes a console command — all without touching the editor UI.
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2,000 lines added to a 2-million-line engine. The alternative: building our own engine, or worse, writing a renderer instead of making a game.
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## Why forking beats building
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**You inherit decades of work, for free.** Gitea has handled millions of git pushes. Godot renders millions of frames. Pi has processed millions of LLM tokens. That battle-testing is yours when you fork. When you build from scratch, year one is spent rediscovering bugs fixed upstream in 2019.
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**You get free maintenance.** Every upstream release brings security patches, performance improvements, and new features — written by hundreds of contributors you don't pay. Your job is to rebase, resolve conflicts, and test. An afternoon, not a quarter.
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**You stay focused.** Building a git server means worrying about pack-file format, SSH key management, webhook delivery. Forking means you only think about the 0.5% that matters to you. The other 99.5% is someone else's problem.
|
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|
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**Agents work better on real platforms.** An agent pushing to a real Gitea instance — with real CI, real code review, real permissions — produces work humans can actually review and ship. An agent pushing to a toy demo platform produces demos.
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## What we're not building
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We're not building a new IDE (Cursor and Claude Code exist). Not a new LLM (DeepSeek and Claude exist). Not a new cloud platform (AWS exists).
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We're building the layer that connects them. The git server that speaks agent. The coding agent that speaks Gitea. The game engine that speaks HTTP. Each fork is a bridge between an existing tool and the agentic future — not a replacement for either.
|
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The age of agents doesn't need more agents. It needs better platforms. Platforms that already exist as open-source projects. They just need someone to fork them and add the wiring.
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---
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---
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*[Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) is our Gitea fork, open for game teams and indie studios. We're building [Ariki](https://arikigame.com) --- a survival colony sim --- using every tool described in this post. If you're interested in self-hosted game development with built-in AI agents, come take a look.*
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*[Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) is our Gitea fork, open for game teams. [Ariki](https://arikigame.com) is the game we're building with every tool described here.*
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@@ -1,77 +0,0 @@
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---
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title: "Why We Forked Gitea and Built Tinqs Studio"
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slug: forking-gitea
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date: "2026-05-20"
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description: "Game studios need git hosting that understands large files, 3D assets, and team workflows. We forked Gitea and built Tinqs Studio --- here's why and how."
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og_description: "Game studios need git that understands LFS, 3D previews, and team workflows. We built Tinqs Studio."
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og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
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excerpt: "GitHub doesn't understand game dev. We forked Gitea to build Tinqs Studio --- with 3D asset preview, LFS-first workflows, and project management for game teams."
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author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
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|
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author_initials: "OB"
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|
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author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
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---
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|
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GitHub is built for web developers. Game studios need something different --- LFS that works, 3D asset previews in the browser, and project management that understands sprints and milestones. So we forked Gitea and built Tinqs Studio.
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## The Problem with GitHub for Game Dev
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|
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|
||||||
We used GitHub for two years. It was fine for docs --- small files, text diffs, pull requests. But the game repo was a different story.
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|
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|
||||||
A single character model with textures and animations is 50--200MB. A terrain heightmap is 16MB. An island's vegetation data is another 10MB. Our game repo was 12GB in LFS alone, growing every week. GitHub's LFS bandwidth limits, slow clone times, and $5/50GB pricing made it untenable.
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|
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|
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More importantly, nobody on the team could **see** what changed. A PR that modifies a GLB file shows a binary diff. You can't preview it. You can't compare before and after. The artist pushes a model, the developer approves it blindly, and three days later someone notices the normals are inverted.
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|
||||||
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|
||||||
## Why Self-Host, and Why Gitea
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|
||||||
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|
||||||
We evaluated GitLab, Forgejo, Gogs, and Gitea. The decision came down to:
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|
||||||
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|
||||||
- **Single binary.** Gitea compiles to one Go binary with SQLite support. No PostgreSQL, no Redis, no Docker compose with 7 services. Just copy the binary, write an app.ini, and run it.
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|
||||||
- **Resource usage.** Our instance runs on a single EC2 instance alongside other services. It uses about 200MB RAM. GitLab needs 4GB minimum.
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|
||||||
- **LFS built-in.** Gitea includes a full LFS server. No external LFS store, no S3 configuration for basic use. Files are stored locally. We added S3 backend later, but it works out of the box.
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|
||||||
- **Forkable.** Gitea is MIT-licensed, written in Go, with a clean codebase. We can modify it without worrying about license restrictions or CLA headaches.
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|
||||||
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|
||||||
We ran vanilla Gitea for six months. It solved the cost and bandwidth problems immediately. But the UX gaps for game development were still there.
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|
||||||
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|
||||||
## What We Built: Tinqs Studio
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|
||||||
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|
||||||
[Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) is our fork. It tracks upstream Gitea on the `main` branch and keeps all customisations on a separate branch. We rebase onto upstream releases periodically, fix conflicts, and deploy.
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|
||||||
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|
||||||
### 3D Asset Preview
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The headline feature. When you open a PR that contains a `.glb`, `.gltf`, or `.fbx` file, you see a 3D viewer directly in the browser. Rotate, zoom, check materials. No downloads, no external tools. We integrated Online 3D Viewer (O3DV), which supports 22 file formats including STL, OBJ, 3DS, and PLY.
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This changes the review process fundamentally. The artist pushes a model, the lead rotates it in the browser, leaves a comment about the UV seam on the shoulder, and the artist fixes it --- all without leaving the git platform.
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### LFS-First Workflows
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Vanilla Gitea treats LFS as an afterthought. You configure `.gitattributes` manually. There's no dashboard showing LFS usage, no way to see which files are tracked, no warnings when someone commits a large file without LFS.
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Tinqs Studio adds auto-LFS tracking on repository creation. Game file extensions (`.fbx`, `.glb`, `.png`, `.wav`, `.ogg`, `.tscn`, `.tres`) are tracked by default. An API endpoint exposes LFS storage stats per repo. The goal: LFS should be invisible. It should just work.
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Platform Integration
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Tinqs Studio integrates project management --- issues, sprints, time tracking --- and OAuth2 SSO. One login for git, the game tools, and the team dashboard.
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Branching Strategy
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Staying close to upstream is critical. We don't want to maintain a fork that diverges forever:
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- `main` tracks upstream `go-gitea/gitea`. We never commit to it directly.
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|
||||||
- Our production branch holds all customisations.
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|
||||||
- Feature branches merge into production.
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|
||||||
- When upstream releases a new version, we merge, resolve conflicts, test, deploy.
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We deliberately limit what we touch. We modify templates, locale strings, CSS variables, and a handful of Go packages. We **never** touch the database models --- schema is owned by upstream, and we ride their migrations. This keeps rebasing manageable.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What We Learned
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Self-hosting git is surprisingly easy.** The hard part isn't running Gitea --- it's convincing yourself that you're allowed to. After years of GitHub being the default, it feels transgressive to host your own git. But a single Go binary on a $10/month server handles a small team with room to spare.
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**LFS changes everything for game repos.** Our clone times went from 45 minutes to 3 minutes. Developers only download the LFS objects they need. CI only pulls what changed. The bandwidth savings alone paid for the server.
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Forking is maintenance, not rebellion.** The romantic version is "we forked Gitea and built our own platform." The reality is we changed 200 lines of Go, 50 template strings, and a CSS file. 99.5% of the code is upstream's. We're just customising the last half-percent for our use case.
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**3D preview is a game changer.** We expected it to be a nice-to-have. It turned out to be the feature that made the rest of the team actually use git. When the artist can see their work rendered in the browser, they stop asking the developer to "check if it looks right."
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|
||||||
|
|
||||||
---
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) is built for game teams that are tired of paying GitHub for LFS bandwidth and reviewing binary diffs blind. We're building it for ourselves first --- dogfooding it on our own game --- but the plan is to make it available as a platform for other studios. If you're a game team that self-hosts or wants to, we'd love to hear what features you need.
|
|
||||||
+49
-71
@@ -2,115 +2,93 @@
|
|||||||
title: "Streaming a 12km Archipelago in Godot 4"
|
title: "Streaming a 12km Archipelago in Godot 4"
|
||||||
slug: godot-optimisation
|
slug: godot-optimisation
|
||||||
date: "2026-05-22"
|
date: "2026-05-22"
|
||||||
description: "How we built four streaming layers, async resource loading, and memory-safe caches to run a 12km open world in Godot 4 with C#."
|
description: "Godot 4 has no built-in asset streaming. We built four layers — terrain regions, vegetation chunks, async loading, and entity rendering — to run a 12km open world with 9 islands, 155 vegetation types, and 2,000 crowd instances."
|
||||||
og_description: "Four streaming layers, async loading, and zero memory leaks --- optimising Godot for a large open world."
|
og_description: "Four streaming layers, async loading, and zero memory leaks — running a 12km open world in Godot 4."
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
||||||
excerpt: "Four streaming layers, async resource loading, memory-safe caches, and zero leaks. How we built a 12km open world in Godot 4 with C#."
|
excerpt: "Godot has no built-in asset streaming. We built four layers to run a 12km archipelago with 9 islands, 155 vegetation types, and 2,000 crowd instances — on an RTX 3060."
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
author_initials: "OB"
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
Godot has no built-in asset streaming. Our game is a 12km x 12km archipelago with 9 islands, thousands of trees, hundreds of buildings, and an ocean that never ends. Here's how we made it run.
|
Godot 4 has no terrain streaming, no asset LOD pipeline, and no distance-based loading. Our game is a 12km × 12km archipelago with 9 islands, 155 vegetation prototypes, and 2,000 simulated colonists. If you load everything at startup, you run out of VRAM before the player sees the main menu.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Problem
|
Here's how we built four streaming layers on top of Godot, all in C#, to make it work.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We're building a survival colony sim set across 9 islands. The total world is roughly 12km x 12km. Each island is 4km across with its own terrain heightmap, biome textures, vegetation prototypes, and building grids. The player can travel between islands by canoe.
|
## The scale problem
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Godot 4 is a fantastic engine, but it wasn't designed for this scale. There's no terrain streaming, no asset LOD pipeline, no distance-based loading. If you load everything at startup, you run out of VRAM before the player sees the main menu. So we built four streaming layers on top of Godot, all in C#.
|
Each island is roughly 4km across with its own terrain heightmap, biome textures, vegetation, and building grids. The player travels between islands by canoe. At any given moment, only a small fraction of the world is visible — but Godot doesn't know that unless you tell it.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Layer 1: Terrain Regions
|
We built four layers that teach Godot what to load, when to load it, and when to let it go.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We use **Terrain3D** for heightmaps --- a GDExtension that gives us a clipmap renderer with 7 LOD levels. Internally, Terrain3D divides each island into 512m x 512m regions. A 4km island has 64 regions. Across 9 islands, that's 576 regions total.
|
## Layer 1: Terrain regions (lazy instantiation)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The key insight: **don't create all 9 terrain nodes at startup.** Each node allocates a clipmap mesh, collision structures, and materials even when hidden. Our original code created all 9 in `_Ready()` and just toggled visibility. This wasted hundreds of megabytes on islands the player hadn't visited yet.
|
We use **Terrain3D** for heightmaps — a GDExtension that provides clipmap rendering with 7 LOD levels. Each island is split into 512m × 512m regions. A 4km island has 64 regions. Nine islands: 576 regions total.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The fix was lazy instantiation. We create the current island's terrain on startup and defer the rest. When the player gets in a canoe and sails to a new island, we create that island's terrain node on demand, import the heightmap, and start async texture loading --- all while a loading screen covers the transition.
|
The original code created all 9 terrain nodes in `_Ready()` and toggled visibility. This wasted hundreds of megabytes on islands the player hadn't visited. The fix: create the current island's terrain on startup, defer the rest. When the player sails to a new island, create that island's terrain node on demand, import the heightmap, start async texture loading — all behind a loading screen.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Layer 2: Vegetation Chunks (128m Grid)
|
## Layer 2: Vegetation chunks (128m grid)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This is the main prop streaming system. Every island's vegetation --- trees, rocks, grasses, shrubs --- is divided into a spatial grid of 128m x 128m chunks.
|
The main prop streaming system. Every island's vegetation is divided into a spatial grid of 128m × 128m chunks.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The camera position is checked every 0.5 seconds. When it crosses a chunk boundary, we calculate which chunks should be active within a 400m radius (roughly 39 chunks in a circle), `QueueFree` chunks that fell out of range, and build new chunks that entered range.
|
The camera position is checked every 0.5 seconds. When it crosses a chunk boundary, we calculate which chunks should be active within a 400m radius (~39 chunks), destroy chunks that fell out of range, and build new ones that entered. Each chunk groups vegetation by prototype, creates a **MultiMesh** per group, and places instances using height queries. A chunk with 50 palm trees and 30 rocks becomes 2 MultiMesh draw calls — not 80 individual nodes.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Each chunk groups vegetation instances by prototype, creates a **MultiMesh** per group, and places instances using height queries. A chunk with 50 palm trees and 30 rocks becomes 2 MultiMesh draw calls, not 80 individual nodes.
|
The cache problem: vegetation meshes and materials are cached in dictionaries keyed by prototype name. These caches are append-only by default — visit all 9 islands and you accumulate every mesh variant permanently. The fix is island-scoped eviction. When the player leaves an island, we clear vegetation caches. They reload from disk on return, behind a loading screen.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The cache problem
|
## Layer 3: Async resource loading
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Vegetation meshes and materials are cached in dictionaries keyed by prototype name. The problem: these caches are **append-only**. Visit all 9 islands and you accumulate every mesh and material variant permanently. With 155 unique prototypes across the archipelago, that's a lot of GPU memory that never gets freed.
|
Godot's `GD.Load()` is synchronous. It blocks the main thread. During gameplay, the frame freezes.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The fix is island-scoped eviction. When the player leaves an island, we clear the vegetation caches. Meshes and materials for the departed island are released. If the player returns, they reload from disk. The loading screen covers this cost.
|
We audited the entire codebase and found **26 resource load calls across 13 files** — only 1 was async. The worst offender was `GetMeshForProto()` in the vegetation grid. As the player walks across a new island, every new vegetation prototype triggers a synchronous load. With 155 prototypes, the first traversal stutters visibly.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Layer 3: Async Resource Loading
|
Two fixes:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Godot's `GD.Load()` is synchronous. It blocks the main thread. During gameplay, the frame freezes. We audited the entire codebase and found **26 resource load calls across 13 files**, and only 1 was async.
|
- **Pre-warm during loading screens.** When an island is imported, kick off background loads for all known prototypes. By the time the player gains control, most meshes are cached.
|
||||||
|
- **Async texture loading.** Terrain textures use `ResourceLoader.LoadThreadedRequest()` with `_Process()` polling. The terrain renders immediately with autoshader colors; biome textures pop in when ready.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The worst offender was `GetMeshForProto()` in the vegetation grid. As the player walks across an island for the first time, every new vegetation prototype triggers a synchronous load. With 155 prototypes, the first traversal stutters visibly.
|
The ResourceLoader trap: Godot maintains an internal resource cache. Every `GD.Load()` caches the result globally. If you load an FBX as a `PackedScene`, instantiate it to extract a mesh, then free the instance — the PackedScene **stays cached**. Rule: use `ResourceLoader.Load(path, "", CacheMode.Ignore)` for one-shot loads where you extract data and discard the container.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We fixed this in two ways:
|
## Layer 4: Entity rendering (event-driven)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Pre-warm during loading screens.** When an island is imported, we kick off background loads for all known prototypes. By the time the player gains control, most meshes are already cached.
|
Dynamic entities — colonists, animals, buildings, VFX — update when the simulation pushes new state, not per frame.
|
||||||
- **Async loading for biome textures.** Terrain textures use `ResourceLoader.LoadThreadedRequest()` with `_Process()` polling. The terrain renders immediately with autoshader colours, and biome textures pop in when ready. The player never notices.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The ResourceLoader cache trap
|
- **Crowd rendering:** Single MultiMesh for up to 2,000 colonists. Positions lerped per frame from pre-allocated arrays. Labels distance-culled, capped at 20.
|
||||||
|
- **Animals:** One MultiMesh per type. Max 500 per type. Updates only on state change.
|
||||||
On top of our own caches, Godot maintains an internal resource cache. Every `GD.Load()` call caches the result globally. There's no API to query the cache size or evict entries.
|
- **Buildings:** Tracked by ID from sim state. `QueueFree` when removed.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
If you load an FBX as a `PackedScene`, instantiate it to extract a mesh, then free the instance --- the PackedScene **stays cached**. The mesh you extracted is fine (it's a Resource, not a Node), but the discarded scene wastes memory forever.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The rule: use `ResourceLoader.Load(path, "", CacheMode.Ignore)` for one-shot loads where you extract data and discard the container. Use `GD.Load()` only for things that should persist (shaders, shared textures).
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Layer 4: Entity Rendering
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Dynamic entities --- colonists, animals, buildings, VFX --- are event-driven, not streamed. They update when the simulation pushes new state, not per frame.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Crowd rendering:** Single MultiMesh for up to 2000 colonists. Positions lerped per frame from pre-allocated arrays. Labels distance-culled, capped at 20. No individual nodes, no per-frame allocation.
|
|
||||||
- **Animals:** One MultiMesh per type. Max 500 per type. Updates only on state change, not per frame.
|
|
||||||
- **Buildings:** Tracked by ID from sim state. `QueueFree` when removed. Self-cleaning.
|
|
||||||
- **VFX:** Capped at 50 active particle systems. Worst case: 10,000 GPU particles.
|
- **VFX:** Capped at 50 active particle systems. Worst case: 10,000 GPU particles.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Memory Safety: Zero Leaks
|
## Memory safety: the QueueFree audit
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We audited every `QueueFree()` call in the codebase --- 47 calls across 17 files. **Zero `RemoveChild()` calls without a corresponding `QueueFree()`.** Three patterns we follow everywhere:
|
We audited every `QueueFree()` call — 47 calls across 17 files. **Zero `RemoveChild()` calls without a corresponding `QueueFree()`.** Three patterns we follow everywhere:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Pattern 1: Chunk streaming** --- Deactivate out-of-range chunks by iterating the active dict, calling `QueueFree()`, collecting keys to remove, then removing them after iteration. Never modify a dictionary while iterating it.
|
1. **Chunk streaming:** Iterate active dict, call `QueueFree()`, collect keys to remove, then remove after iteration. Never modify a dictionary while iterating.
|
||||||
|
2. **Extract from PackedScene:** Instantiate, extract mesh, `QueueFree()` the temp instance. The mesh survives because it's a Resource, not a Node.
|
||||||
|
3. **UI rebuild:** `QueueFree()` all children, build new content. Safe because `QueueFree` is deferred — new children added in same frame before old ones freed.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Pattern 2: Extract data from PackedScene** --- Instantiate a scene, extract the mesh, `QueueFree()` the temporary instance. The mesh survives because it's a Resource, not a Node.
|
## What runs every frame (and what doesn't)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Pattern 3: UI rebuild** --- `QueueFree()` all children, then build new content. Safe because `QueueFree` is deferred --- new children are added in the same frame before old ones are freed.
|
`_Process()` is strictly limited:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What Runs Every Frame
|
- Vegetation grid: camera chunk check (0.5s throttle, early-exit if same chunk)
|
||||||
|
- Terrain manager: poll async texture loads
|
||||||
|
- Crowd renderer: lerp 2,000 positions (math-only, pre-allocated arrays)
|
||||||
|
- Day/night: rotate sun
|
||||||
|
- Camera: follow + zoom
|
||||||
|
- Sim bridge: drain WebSocket message queue
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We're strict about what goes in `_Process()`:
|
**No heap allocation in any of these.** Per-frame overhead is dominated by the crowd lerp and message queue drain.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Vegetation grid:** Camera chunk check (0.5s throttle, early-exits if same chunk)
|
Two shaders to watch: the ocean shader (4 Gerstner waves, depth reconstruction, caustics, foam — heaviest thing in the pipeline) and the wind sway shader (6 trig ops per vertex on every vegetation mesh within 400m). Future optimization: disable sway on distant chunks.
|
||||||
- **Terrain manager:** Poll async texture loads (loop pending list, check status)
|
|
||||||
- **Crowd renderer:** Lerp 2000 colonist positions (math-only, pre-allocated arrays)
|
|
||||||
- **Day/night:** Rotate sun, adjust light energy
|
|
||||||
- **Camera:** Follow + zoom smoothing
|
|
||||||
- **Sim bridge:** Drain WebSocket message queue
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
No heap allocation in any of these. Total per-frame overhead is dominated by the crowd lerp and the message queue drain.
|
## Target: RTX 3060, 8GB VRAM
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Shaders We Watch
|
- Main island + full vegetation < 4GB VRAM → ship it
|
||||||
|
- Approaching 6-8GB → implement lazy terrain nodes + cache eviction
|
||||||
|
- Exceeding 8GB → implement vegetation LOD and region-level streaming
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Two custom shaders are performance-sensitive:
|
**Always measure before optimizing.** We added VRAM logging before writing a single line of optimization code. Half the "problems" we expected were non-issues. The other half were worse than expected. Profiling isn't optional.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Ocean shader** --- 4 Gerstner wave calculations in the vertex stage, applied to a 12,000m plane. Fragment stage does depth reconstruction, caustics, foam masking, and two normal map lookups. It's the heaviest thing in the render pipeline. We pre-warm it during the loading screen to avoid shader compilation stutter.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Wind sway shader** --- 6 trig ops per vertex on every vegetation mesh within 400m. The sway is invisible beyond 100m but the shader runs at full cost regardless. Future optimisation: disable sway on distant chunks.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Target: RTX 3060
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Our early access target is an RTX 3060 with 8GB VRAM:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- Main island + full vegetation < 4GB VRAM --- ship it, we have headroom
|
|
||||||
- Approaching 6--8GB --- implement lazy terrain nodes + cache eviction
|
|
||||||
- Exceeding 8GB --- implement vegetation LOD and region-level streaming
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Always measure before optimising.** We added VRAM logging before writing a single line of optimisation code. Half the "problems" we expected turned out to be non-issues. The other half were worse than expected. Profiling isn't optional.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Godot 4 can handle open worlds at this scale, but it won't do it for you. You need to build streaming, manage your own caches, audit your resource loading, and be disciplined about what runs per frame. The engine gives you the primitives --- MultiMesh, `LoadThreadedRequest`, `QueueFree` --- and it's up to you to wire them into a system that scales.
|
Godot 4 can handle open worlds at this scale, but it won't do it for you. You need to build streaming, manage your own caches, audit resource loading, and be disciplined about what runs per frame. The engine gives you the primitives — MultiMesh, `LoadThreadedRequest`, `QueueFree`. It's up to you to wire them into a system that scales.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We're building with these systems and developing the game using [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com). If you're building something large-scale in Godot, we hope this is useful.
|
*We're building [Ariki](https://arikigame.com), a survival colony sim, with these systems. The tools we use — git hosting, AI agents, creative pipelines — are part of [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com).*
|
||||||
|
|||||||
@@ -1,122 +0,0 @@
|
|||||||
---
|
|
||||||
title: "Image Generation at Every Price Point with fal.ai"
|
|
||||||
slug: image-generation-fal
|
|
||||||
date: "2026-05-25"
|
|
||||||
description: "We generate concept art, logos, icons, and trailer frames through a single API proxy. Here's how we pick between 12 models spanning $0.002 to $0.09 per image."
|
|
||||||
og_description: "One proxy, 12 models, $0.002 to $0.09 per image. How we pick."
|
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
|
||||||
excerpt: "We generate concept art, logos, icons, and trailer frames through a single API proxy. Here's how we pick between 12 models spanning $0.002 to $0.09 per image."
|
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
|
||||||
---
|
|
||||||
We generate every visual asset for Ariki --- concept art, app icons, trailer frames, logo variants, Steam capsules --- through a single inference proxy that routes to fal.ai. No Photoshop. No Midjourney subscription. Just API calls at prices that range from $0.002 to $0.09 per image. Here's how we decide which model gets which job.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Setup
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Our [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) platform includes an inference proxy that sits between agents and model providers. When an agent (or a human in Cursor) says "generate an image," the proxy routes the request to fal.ai, handles authentication, tracks usage per user, and persists the result to S3. The caller doesn't care which model runs --- they describe what they want, and the proxy picks or the caller specifies.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
Agent describes what it wants
|
|
||||||
→ tinqsProxy receives generate_image call
|
|
||||||
→ Routes to fal.ai with the specified model
|
|
||||||
→ Image generated, persisted to S3
|
|
||||||
→ Permanent URL returned to caller
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
One API key. One billing account. Access to every model fal.ai hosts. That's the pitch of aggregator platforms, and fal.ai delivers on it.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Tiers
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Not every image needs the best model. A throwaway mockup doesn't justify $0.09. A final logo doesn't deserve $0.002. We split our usage into four tiers.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Best Quality --- Final Art
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
For images that ship --- hero art, app icons, trailer keyframes, print-ready designs --- we use three models depending on the content:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Flux 2 Pro** ($0.03/megapixel, ~15 seconds). Our default. Best all-round quality for concept art, character illustrations, environment paintings, and anything that doesn't need text. Handles complex prompts with multiple elements well. Rarely fails.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Ideogram v3 Quality** ($0.09, ~12 seconds). The only model that renders text reliably inside images. When we need a poster with a tagline, a sign in a game scene, or a logo with readable letters, this is the only option. The QUALITY tier is expensive but worth it --- text at lower tiers gets blurry.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Recraft v3** ($0.04 raster, $0.08 vector, ~10 seconds). Built for commercial design. Clean lines, consistent style, and the only model on fal.ai that outputs SVG vectors. When we need brand assets, packaging mockups, or anything that might end up in print, Recraft produces work that doesn't need cleanup.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Mid Tier --- Everyday Work
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
For images that are good enough for internal review, social posts, or documentation:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Ideogram v3 Balanced** ($0.06, ~8 seconds). Typography quality between Turbo and Quality. Good for marketing materials where text matters but perfection doesn't.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Seedream v4.5** ($0.04, ~8 seconds). Google's model on fal.ai. Photorealistic scenes and product shots. Different aesthetic from Flux --- slightly more photographic, less painterly.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Flux Dev** ($0.025, ~10 seconds). The open-weight Flux variant. Good quality, and the base for LoRA fine-tuning if you want to train on your own style. We use it when we need custom-trained models later.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Low Cost --- Drafts and Exploration
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
For iteration, A/B testing, and throwing things at the wall:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Flux Schnell** ($0.003/megapixel, ~3 seconds). The workhorse for exploration. When we're figuring out composition, trying different camera angles, or generating 20 variants to pick one direction --- Schnell. A hundred images costs $0.30. You can afford to be wasteful.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**SDXL Lightning** (~$0.002, ~2 seconds). The absolute cheapest option. Lower quality than Schnell, but when you need 50 thumbnails to test a layout grid or generate placeholder textures, quality doesn't matter. Two cents for ten images.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Specialised --- Editing and Post-Processing
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
For modifying existing images rather than generating new ones:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Flux Kontext** (~$0.04, ~12 seconds). Context-aware editing. Give it an image and say "change the wood to marble" or "make it sunset lighting." Preserves composition while changing style or material. Useful for quick style transfers without regenerating from scratch.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Nano Banana Edit** ($0.039, ~12 seconds). Image-to-image restyle. We use this for our logo variant pipeline --- take one carved-wood Ariki logo and produce versions in mahogany, pearl, obsidian, coral, gold. It's better than Kontext at preserving fine detail in complex images.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**BiRefNet** ($0.001, ~3 seconds). Background removal. Produces clean alpha cutouts from any image. We pair it with every logo and icon generation --- generate with a white background, then cut it out. A dollar gets you a thousand cutouts.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## How We Actually Use Them
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The Schnell-to-Pro Pipeline
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We never start with the expensive model. Every generation session follows the same pattern:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
1. **Explore with Schnell** ($0.003) --- 10-20 variants, different angles, compositions, color palettes. Total: $0.03-0.06.
|
|
||||||
2. **Pick 2-3 directions.** Human looks at the grid, picks the promising ones.
|
|
||||||
3. **Refine with Flux 2 Pro** ($0.03) --- regenerate the winners at full quality with refined prompts. Total: $0.06-0.09.
|
|
||||||
4. **Post-process** --- BiRefNet for background removal ($0.001), maybe Recraft for a vector version ($0.08).
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A full session --- from blank canvas to final assets --- costs under $0.20. That's the price of a single Midjourney generation on their Pro plan.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Logo Variants at Scale
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Our Ariki logo has 18 material variants --- deep mahogany, mother-of-pearl, obsidian, molten lava, bronze with verdigris, tapa cloth, and more. Each one generated with Nano Banana Edit ($0.039) + BiRefNet ($0.001) for transparency. Total cost for 18 variants: **$0.72**. A designer would quote hundreds of dollars and a week of work for the same output.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Typography That Works
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Every model except Ideogram fails at text. Flux will give you beautiful art with garbled letters. Recraft gets close but isn't consistent. SDXL doesn't try. If the image has words in it, Ideogram v3 is the only answer. We've learned to accept the $0.09 cost for text-heavy images rather than wasting $0.30 on ten failed Flux attempts.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Numbers
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Over the past month:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
| Category | Images | Total Cost | Avg Cost/Image |
|
|
||||||
|----------|--------|-----------|----------------|
|
|
||||||
| Concept art (flux-2-pro) | ~120 | $3.60 | $0.03 |
|
|
||||||
| Exploration drafts (schnell) | ~400 | $1.20 | $0.003 |
|
|
||||||
| Logo variants (nano-banana) | 18 | $0.72 | $0.04 |
|
|
||||||
| Icons (nano-banana + birefnet) | 30 | $1.20 | $0.04 |
|
|
||||||
| Typography (ideogram) | ~25 | $1.50 | $0.06 |
|
|
||||||
| Background removal (birefnet) | ~80 | $0.08 | $0.001 |
|
|
||||||
| **Total** | **~673** | **$8.30** | **$0.012** |
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Six hundred images for eight dollars. The infrastructure to route, authenticate, and persist them costs more than the generation itself.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What We Learned
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Never iterate on expensive models.** The Schnell-to-Pro pipeline saves 10x. Most of the creative work happens at $0.003/image. The expensive model just polishes the decision you already made.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Typography is a solved problem --- but only on one model.** Stop trying to make Flux render text. Use Ideogram v3 Quality for anything with words. Accept the cost.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Vector output is underrated.** Recraft v3's SVG export means logos and icons scale to any size without artifacts. For anything that might end up on a billboard or a business card, pay the $0.08 for vector.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Background removal is basically free.** At $0.001 per image, there's no reason to ever manually mask anything. Run BiRefNet on everything, keep both versions.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Aggregation beats loyalty.** No single model is best at everything. Flux for art, Ideogram for text, Recraft for design, Nano Banana for edits, BiRefNet for masks. The proxy pattern lets us use the right tool for each job without managing five API keys and five billing accounts.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
---
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
*Image generation is built into [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) --- our Gitea-based platform for game teams. Every model above is available through the same inference proxy that handles LLM calls, authenticated with the same Gitea token. We're building [Ariki](https://arikigame.com) with these tools, and every asset in the game touched at least one of them.*
|
|
||||||
+41
-80
@@ -2,31 +2,23 @@
|
|||||||
title: "A Pre-Commit Agent That Guards Your Secrets for $0.001"
|
title: "A Pre-Commit Agent That Guards Your Secrets for $0.001"
|
||||||
slug: pre-commit-agent
|
slug: pre-commit-agent
|
||||||
date: "2026-05-25"
|
date: "2026-05-25"
|
||||||
description: "We built a pre-commit hook that calls DeepSeek V4 Flash to review every commit. It catches leaked secrets, classified terms, broken URLs, and drafts announcements --- for a tenth of a cent per commit."
|
description: "We built a pre-commit hook that calls DeepSeek V4 Flash to review every commit. It catches leaked API keys, classified terms, broken URLs, and drafts announcements — for a tenth of a cent per commit."
|
||||||
og_description: "A DeepSeek-powered pre-commit hook that catches leaks for $0.001/commit."
|
og_description: "A DeepSeek-powered pre-commit hook that catches leaks for $0.001/commit."
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
||||||
excerpt: "We built a pre-commit hook that calls DeepSeek V4 Flash to review every commit. It catches leaked secrets, classified terms, and broken URLs --- for a tenth of a cent."
|
excerpt: "Too many things to remember before hitting commit. Don't leak API keys. Don't reference classified codenames. Don't link to deleted repos. We built a two-layer pre-commit hook — regex + LLM — that catches all of it for $0.001."
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
author_initials: "OB"
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
We have a problem that every small team has: too many things to remember before hitting commit. Don't leak API keys. Don't reference the classified AI codename in public blog posts. Don't link to GitHub repos we deleted six months ago. Don't push a blog post with a 90-character title. We built a pre-commit hook that uses a cheap LLM to check all of this automatically --- and it costs less than a tenth of a cent per commit.
|
Every small team has the same problem: too many things to remember before `git commit`. Don't leak API keys. Don't reference the classified AI codename in public posts. Don't link to GitHub repos we deleted six months ago. Don't push a blog post with a 90-character title.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Problem
|
A checklist in the README doesn't work. Humans skip checklists. Code review catches some issues but not all — reviewers focus on logic, not whether a URL points to a deleted org.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We maintain a docs repo that serves double duty. Internal files --- game design documents, architecture notes, agent configuration --- sit alongside a public blog and website. The internal side references classified codenames, machine hostnames, and internal URLs. The public side must never contain any of that.
|
We built a pre-commit hook with two layers: a regex blocklist that's instant and free, and an LLM review that costs $0.001. Together they catch everything.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We also deleted all our GitHub repos in April 2026 and moved everything to our own Gitea platform. But old links keep creeping back in --- someone copies a URL from an old document, a blog post references the wrong remote. These are invisible bugs. The blog looks fine, the build passes, and three weeks later someone notices a dead link.
|
## Layer 1: Regex blocklist (0ms, $0.00)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A checklist in the README doesn't work. Humans skip checklists. Code review catches some issues but not all --- reviewers focus on logic, not whether a URL points to a deleted GitHub org. We needed something automatic, fast, and cheap enough to run on every single commit.
|
A text file of patterns, each tagged with scope and message:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Two Layers: Regex + Agent
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The hook has two layers. The first is instant and free. The second is smart and nearly free.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Layer 1: Local Blocklist (0ms, $0.00)
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A text file of regex patterns, each tagged with a scope and a message:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
public|\bCosmos\b|Classified codename — use "advanced colonist AI"
|
public|\bCosmos\b|Classified codename — use "advanced colonist AI"
|
||||||
@@ -36,60 +28,48 @@ all|AKIA[A-Z0-9]{16}|AWS access key leaked
|
|||||||
public|admin\.arikigame\.com|Internal admin URL in public content
|
public|admin\.arikigame\.com|Internal admin URL in public content
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The scope field controls where the pattern is enforced. `all` means every file. `public` means only files under `website/` --- our public-facing content. This is critical. We *want* classified codenames in our internal architecture docs. We just don't want them in blog posts.
|
The scope field controls where patterns apply. `all` means every file. `public` means only public-facing content — blog posts, website, marketing pages. We *want* classified codenames in internal architecture docs. We just don't want them in blog posts.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The blocklist runs grep against the staged diff. No network call, no API, no latency. If it finds a match, the commit is blocked immediately with a file path and explanation. This catches 80% of issues before the LLM ever wakes up.
|
The blocklist runs grep against the staged diff. No network call, no API, no latency. Match found → commit blocked immediately with file path and explanation. This catches 80% of issues before the LLM wakes up.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Layer 2: DeepSeek V4 Flash Review (~4s, $0.001)
|
## Layer 2: DeepSeek V4 Flash review (~4s, $0.001)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
If the commit touches public-facing files (`website/`, blog posts), the hook sends the staged diff to DeepSeek V4 Flash through our inference proxy. The system prompt tells the model exactly what to check:
|
If the commit touches public-facing files, the hook sends the staged diff to DeepSeek V4 Flash. The system prompt tells it exactly what to check:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **Leaked secrets** --- API keys, tokens, credentials that the regex might have missed
|
- **Leaked secrets** — API keys, tokens, credentials the regex might have missed
|
||||||
- **Classified terms** --- codenames that aren't in the blocklist yet
|
- **Classified terms** — codenames not yet in the blocklist
|
||||||
- **Internal URLs** --- references to internal services that shouldn't be public
|
- **Internal URLs** — references to services that shouldn't be public
|
||||||
- **Blog quality** --- title length, meta description, slug consistency, missing fields
|
- **Blog quality** — title length, meta description, slug consistency
|
||||||
- **Broken links** --- malformed URLs, obvious typos
|
- **Broken links** — malformed URLs, obvious typos
|
||||||
- **Announcements** --- if it's a new blog post, draft a one-line summary
|
- **Announcements** — if it's a new blog post, draft a one-line summary
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The model responds with structured JSON: errors (block the commit) or warnings (inform but allow). If the API is unreachable or times out, the commit proceeds --- the hook never blocks work for infrastructure reasons.
|
The model responds with structured JSON: `errors` (block) or `warnings` (inform but allow). If the API is unreachable or times out, the commit proceeds — the hook never blocks work for infrastructure reasons.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Why Not Pi?
|
## The architecture
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Our [Pi fork](https://tinqs.com/tinqs/pi) is a full coding agent with tool calling, file I/O, and context management. It's what we use for overnight autonomous coding. But for pre-commit review, it's overkill.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A pre-commit hook needs to finish in under 5 seconds. Pi takes 2--3 seconds just to start the Node.js process and load extensions. The review itself is a single LLM call with a system prompt and a diff --- no tools needed, no file reads, no iteration. A direct curl to DeepSeek is faster and simpler.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
That said, the hook is designed as a stepping stone. The blocklist patterns, the review prompt, and the classification logic are all reusable. When we build a Pi-based CI reviewer that runs on pull requests --- with tool access to read the full file, check links live, and verify image URLs --- it will use the same prompt and the same patterns. The pre-commit hook is the fast, cheap first pass. Pi is the thorough second pass.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Architecture
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
git commit
|
git commit
|
||||||
↓
|
↓
|
||||||
.githooks/pre-commit (bash)
|
Phase 0: Collect staged diff + classify files (public vs internal)
|
||||||
↓
|
|
||||||
Phase 0: Collect staged diff + classify files
|
|
||||||
↓
|
↓
|
||||||
Phase 1: Regex blocklist scan (instant, free)
|
Phase 1: Regex blocklist scan (instant, free)
|
||||||
→ Match found → BLOCK (exit 1)
|
→ Match → BLOCK
|
||||||
→ Clean → continue
|
→ Clean → continue
|
||||||
↓
|
↓
|
||||||
Phase 2: Public files changed?
|
Phase 2: Public files changed?
|
||||||
→ No → exit 0 (skip AI, no cost)
|
→ No → exit 0 (skip AI review, zero cost)
|
||||||
→ Yes → send diff to DeepSeek V4 Flash
|
→ Yes → send diff to DeepSeek V4 Flash
|
||||||
↓
|
↓
|
||||||
Phase 3: Parse JSON response
|
Phase 3: Parse JSON response
|
||||||
→ Errors → BLOCK (exit 1)
|
→ Errors → BLOCK
|
||||||
→ Warnings → print, exit 0
|
→ Warnings → print, exit 0
|
||||||
→ Announcement → print draft
|
→ Announcement → print draft
|
||||||
→ API failure → warn, exit 0
|
→ API failure → warn, exit 0 (never block on infra)
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The hook lives in `.githooks/` inside the repo --- committed, version-controlled, shared by the whole team. A setup script configures `git config core.hooksPath` to point there. The LFS pre-push hook sits in the same directory.
|
The hook lives in `.githooks/` — committed, version-controlled, shared by the team. A setup script points `git config core.hooksPath` there.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What It Costs
|
## What it costs
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The system prompt is ~500 tokens. An average diff is 2,000--4,000 tokens. The response is ~200 tokens. At DeepSeek V4 Flash rates:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
| | Tokens | Cost |
|
| | Tokens | Cost |
|
||||||
|--|--------|------|
|
|--|--------|------|
|
||||||
@@ -97,53 +77,34 @@ The system prompt is ~500 tokens. An average diff is 2,000--4,000 tokens. The re
|
|||||||
| Output (JSON response) | ~200 | $0.00006 |
|
| Output (JSON response) | ~200 | $0.00006 |
|
||||||
| **Per commit** | | **$0.00062** |
|
| **Per commit** | | **$0.00062** |
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Call it a tenth of a cent. Twenty commits a day across the team: **$0.012/day**. About **$0.40/month**.
|
A tenth of a cent. Twenty commits a day: $0.012/day. About **$0.40/month**. Commits that only touch internal files skip the AI review entirely — zero cost.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Commits that only touch internal files (architecture docs, agent config, game design) skip the AI review entirely. Zero cost. The hook only calls DeepSeek when public-facing content changes.
|
## What it caught (first week)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What It Catches
|
- **2 classified codename leaks** in draft blog posts — caught by blocklist
|
||||||
|
- **1 GitHub URL** from an old copy-paste — caught by blocklist
|
||||||
|
- **3 blog SEO warnings** — titles over 60 chars, missing og_description — caught by AI
|
||||||
|
- **1 announcement draft** auto-generated when a new post was committed
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In the first week:
|
Zero false positives on the blocklist. Two false positives from the AI — flagged an internal URL in a code example that was clearly illustrative. We added a note to the prompt: ignore URLs inside fenced code blocks.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **2 classified codename leaks** in draft blog posts --- caught by the blocklist before the AI even ran
|
|
||||||
- **1 GitHub URL** that crept back in from a copy-paste --- caught by the blocklist
|
|
||||||
- **3 blog SEO warnings** --- titles over 60 characters, missing og_description --- caught by the AI review
|
|
||||||
- **1 announcement draft** generated automatically when a new blog post was committed
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Zero false positives on the blocklist (the patterns are specific enough). Two false positives from the AI (flagged an internal URL in a code example that was clearly illustrative, not a real link). We added a note to the prompt to ignore URLs inside fenced code blocks.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Setup
|
## Setup
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
One command per machine:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```bash
|
```bash
|
||||||
bash scripts/setup-hooks.sh
|
bash scripts/setup-hooks.sh # or .\scripts\setup-hooks.ps1 on Windows
|
||||||
|
export TINQS_HOOK_TOKEN=<your-token> # same PAT used for git push
|
||||||
```
|
```
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Or on Windows:
|
That's it. Every `git commit` runs the two-layer review. Bypass with `git commit --no-verify` for emergencies.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```powershell
|
## The pattern: guard rails at the edge
|
||||||
.\scripts\setup-hooks.ps1
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Set your inference token:
|
This is the same principle we apply everywhere: put the guard rail where the action happens. Don't rely on a human checklist. Don't wait for code review. Don't hope someone remembers.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
```bash
|
The pre-commit hook is $0.001 of prevention. A leaked API key in a public post is hours of rotation, revocation, and audit. A classified codename in a blog post is a confidentiality breach. A dead link is a broken experience nobody notices for weeks.
|
||||||
export TINQS_HOOK_TOKEN=<your-gitea-pat>
|
|
||||||
```
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
That's it. Every `git commit` now runs the two-layer review. Bypass with `git commit --no-verify` when you need to (emergencies, known false positives).
|
The tools exist. DeepSeek V4 Flash is cheap enough to call on every commit. The hook is 150 lines of bash. The blocklist is a text file. Total infrastructure cost: zero — it runs on the developer's machine, calls an API we already pay for, adds 4 seconds to the commit flow.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Pattern: Guard Rails at the Edge
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This is the same pattern we apply everywhere: put the guard rail where the action happens. Don't rely on a human checklist. Don't wait for code review. Don't hope someone remembers.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The pre-commit hook is $0.001 worth of prevention. A leaked API key in a public blog post is hours of rotation, revocation, and audit. A classified codename in a public post is a confidentiality breach. A dead GitHub link is a broken user experience that nobody notices for weeks.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The tools exist. DeepSeek V4 Flash is cheap enough to call on every commit. The hook is 150 lines of bash. The blocklist is a text file. The total infrastructure cost is zero --- it runs on the developer's machine, calls an API we already pay for, and adds 4 seconds to the commit flow.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The age of agents doesn't just mean agents that write code. It means agents that watch the code you write.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
*The pre-commit hook is part of [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com), our open platform for game development. The inference proxy, the blocklist patterns, and the review prompt are all open and reusable. We're building [Ariki](https://arikigame.com) with these tools --- every commit in the game repo runs through the same guard.*
|
*The pre-commit hook is part of [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com). The inference proxy, blocklist patterns, and review prompt are open and reusable. Every commit in [Ariki](https://arikigame.com) runs through the same guard.*
|
||||||
|
|||||||
+32
-40
@@ -1,76 +1,68 @@
|
|||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
title: "One Binary to Rule Them All: Building a Studio CLI"
|
title: "One Binary to Rule Them All: Our Studio CLI"
|
||||||
slug: studio-cli
|
slug: studio-cli
|
||||||
date: "2026-05-18"
|
date: "2026-05-18"
|
||||||
description: "A single Go binary that handles machine identity, screenshots, cloud vision, and health checks. The glue that makes AI agents useful across a multi-machine game studio."
|
description: "A single Go binary that gives AI agents full context about your machine, project, and services in 100ms. Screenshots, cloud vision, health checks — one install, every machine."
|
||||||
og_description: "A single Go binary for machine identity, screenshots, cloud vision, and AI agent coordination."
|
og_description: "One Go binary for machine identity, screenshots, cloud vision, and AI agent context."
|
||||||
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
og_image: "https://www.tinqs.com/img/og-cover.jpg"
|
||||||
excerpt: "A single Go binary that gives AI agents context about who you are, what machine you're on, and what services are reachable. Screenshots, cloud vision, health checks --- one install, every machine."
|
excerpt: "Every machine in our studio runs the same Go binary. It knows who you are, what machine you're on, and what services are reachable. It takes screenshots, sends them to cloud vision, and runs health checks — in 100ms."
|
||||||
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
author: "Ozan Bozkurt"
|
||||||
author_initials: "OB"
|
author_initials: "OB"
|
||||||
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
author_role: "CTO & Developer, Tinqs"
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
Every machine in our studio runs the same Go binary. It knows who you are, what machine you're on, and what services are reachable. It takes screenshots, sends them to cloud vision, and runs health checks. This is the glue that makes AI agents actually useful in a multi-machine game studio.
|
Every AI agent session starts the same way: cold. The agent doesn't know what project this is, who's asking, what tools are available, or what happened yesterday. You spend the first five minutes re-explaining context.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Why Build a CLI
|
Our CLI solves this in 100ms. One command — `tstudio identity` — and the agent knows everything. The binary is 15MB, has zero runtime dependencies, and runs on every machine in the studio.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
When you have multiple machines across several people, two operating systems, and AI agents that need context about the environment they're running in, the glue becomes the hardest part. Which machine is this? What services are reachable? Is the game running? Can I take a screenshot of what the developer is looking at?
|
## The identity command (100ms)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
We tried shell scripts. A `setup.sh` for Mac, a `setup.ps1` for Windows, a `check-services.sh` for health checks, a `screenshot.py` that never worked on Windows. They drifted. They broke. Nobody updated them.
|
When an agent starts, the first thing it calls is `tstudio identity`. The output:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
So we built one Go binary that does everything.
|
- **Soul file** — the agent's persistent identity, values, operating principles
|
||||||
|
- **Company context** — team members, roles, what the company does
|
||||||
|
- **Machine context** — hostname, OS, which repos are cloned, what services are running
|
||||||
|
- **Ecosystem** — other repos and their purpose
|
||||||
|
- **Service status** — which URLs are live and reachable
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## The Identity System
|
This data lives in markdown files in the docs repo. Any machine on the network can read it. The agent goes from blank to fully contextual in under a second.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The most important command is `identity`. When an AI agent starts a new session --- Cursor, Claude Code, any tool --- the first thing it does is call this command. The output tells the agent:
|
This started as a convenience tool for humans. It became the single most important function in our stack. Every agent session — Cursor, Claude Code, Pi — starts with `tstudio identity`. Without it, every conversation begins with "let me explain the project." With it, the agent already knows.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- **The soul file** --- the agent's persistent identity, values, and operating principles
|
## Screenshots and cloud vision
|
||||||
- **Company context** --- team members, roles, what the company does
|
|
||||||
- **Machine context** --- hostname, OS, which repos are cloned, what services are running
|
|
||||||
- **Ecosystem** --- other repos and their purpose
|
|
||||||
- **Service status** --- which URLs are live and reachable
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This solves a fundamental problem with AI agents: **cold starts.** Every new chat window, every new agent tab, every new session is a blank slate. The agent doesn't know what project this is, who's asking, or what infrastructure exists. One CLI call gives it full context.
|
The CLI can capture any window from outside the process. No in-game overlay, no rendering pipeline integration. OS-level capture — GDI+ on Windows, screencapture on Mac.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The data lives in markdown files in the docs repo --- the source of truth. Any machine on the network can read it.
|
A `photo` command sends the screenshot to a cloud vision model. The agent says "take a photo of the game" and gets back: "The player character is standing near a half-built hut. Three palm trees to the left. The terrain has a visible seam between two biomes."
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Screenshots and Vision
|
This is how you file bugs without typing. Look at the game, tell the agent what's wrong. It takes a screenshot, describes what it sees, and creates an issue with both the description and the image attached. Keyboard-free bug reporting.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The CLI can capture any window from outside the process. No in-game overlay, no rendering pipeline integration. It uses the OS-level window capture API --- works on Windows (via GDI+) and Mac (via screencapture).
|
## Health checks
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A `photo` command does the same thing but sends the screenshot to a cloud vision model for analysis. The agent says "take a photo of the game" and gets back a structured description: "The player character is standing near a half-built hut. There are 3 palm trees to the left. The terrain has a visible seam between two biomes."
|
`tstudio doctor` runs a comprehensive check:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
This is how you file bugs without typing. Look at the game, tell the agent what's wrong, and the agent takes a screenshot, describes what it sees, and creates an issue with both the description and the image attached.
|
- Is the git platform reachable and authenticated?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Health Checks
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
A `doctor` command runs a comprehensive health check:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
- Is the git platform reachable? Can we authenticate?
|
|
||||||
- Is the game server running?
|
- Is the game server running?
|
||||||
- Are all expected repos cloned and on the right branch?
|
- Are all expected repos cloned and on the right branch?
|
||||||
- Are required tools installed and at the right version?
|
- Are required tools installed at the right version?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The output is a green/yellow/red table. If something's wrong, the agent knows immediately and can diagnose or escalate. This is essential for unattended agent sessions --- the agent can verify its environment before starting work.
|
Output is a green/yellow/red table. Essential for unattended agent sessions — the agent verifies its environment before starting work. No "the build failed because port 3000 was already taken" at 3am.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## Why Go
|
## Why Go
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Go compiles to a single static binary with no runtime dependencies. No Python virtualenvs, no Node.js version managers, no DLL hell on Windows. The same binary runs on a gaming PC, a designer's MacBook, and a CI runner in AWS.
|
Go compiles to a single static binary. No Python virtualenvs, no Node.js version managers, no DLL hell on Windows. The same binary runs on a gaming PC, a designer's MacBook, and a CI runner in AWS.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Cross-compilation is trivial. We build Windows, Mac (arm64 + amd64), and Linux binaries from a single CI workflow. Push a tag, CI builds all three, uploads to S3, done.
|
Cross-compilation is trivial. We build Windows, Mac (arm64 + amd64), and Linux binaries from a single CI workflow. Push a tag, CI builds all three, uploads to S3. The binary is 15MB, starts in under 100ms, has zero runtime dependencies.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The binary is 15MB. It starts in under 100ms. It has zero runtime dependencies. For a tool that AI agents call on every session start, speed matters.
|
## What we learned
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What We Learned
|
**The CLI is the API for AI agents.** What started as a human convenience tool became the primary interface for agents. Every session starts with `tstudio identity`. The agent's "hands and eyes" — screenshots, vision, health checks — are subcommands of the same binary.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**The CLI is the API for AI agents.** When we started, this was a convenience tool for humans. It became the primary interface for AI agents. The `identity` command was originally "nice to have" --- now it's the single most important function in our stack. Every agent session starts with it.
|
**One binary beats ten scripts.** Scripts rot. They have different shells, different PATH assumptions, different error handling. A compiled binary either works or it doesn't. It ships with dependencies baked in. It doesn't care if your Python is 3.9 or 3.12.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**One binary beats ten scripts.** Scripts rot. They have different shells, different PATH assumptions, different error handling. A compiled binary either works or it doesn't. It ships with its dependencies baked in. It doesn't care if your Python is 3.9 or 3.12.
|
**Cloud vision is underrated for game dev.** Sending a screenshot to a vision model sounds gimmicky. In practice, it's the fastest way to document visual bugs. "The tree is floating 2m above the terrain" is much faster to communicate when the AI is looking at the same screen.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Cloud vision is underrated for game dev.** Sending a screenshot to a vision model and getting back a structured description sounds gimmicky. In practice, it's the fastest way to document visual bugs. "The tree is floating 2m above the terrain" is much faster to write when the AI is looking at the same screen you are.
|
**Agent cold starts are the real problem.** Without the identity system, every session starts with the agent asking "what project is this?" With it, the agent knows everything in 100ms. That's the difference between an AI assistant and an AI team member.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
**Agent cold starts are the real problem.** Without the identity system, every new session starts with the agent asking "what project is this?" and the human re-explaining context. With it, the agent knows everything in 100ms. That's the difference between an AI assistant and an AI team member.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The CLI is part of [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com) --- our game development platform that brings git hosting, AI agent tools, and team workflows together. Every time we find ourselves writing a script that needs to work on multiple machines, we add a subcommand instead. One binary that makes the studio work, whether the operator is human or AI.
|
*The CLI is part of [Tinqs Studio](https://tinqs.com). Every time we find ourselves about to write a script that needs to work on multiple machines, we add a subcommand instead. One binary that makes the studio work — whether the operator is human or AI.*
|
||||||
|
|||||||
+41
-59
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
|
|||||||
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
|
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<title>A Pre-Commit Agent That Guards Your Secrets for $0.001 — Tinqs Blog</title>
|
<title>A Pre-Commit Agent That Guards Your Secrets for $0.001 — Tinqs Blog</title>
|
||||||
<meta name="description" content="We built a pre-commit hook that calls DeepSeek V4 Flash to review every commit. It catches leaked secrets, classified terms, broken URLs, and drafts announcements --- for a tenth of a cent per commit.">
|
<meta name="description" content="We built a pre-commit hook that calls DeepSeek V4 Flash to review every commit. It catches leaked API keys, classified terms, broken URLs, and drafts announcements — for a tenth of a cent per commit.">
|
||||||
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
|
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
|
||||||
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/pre-commit-agent">
|
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.tinqs.com/blog/pre-commit-agent">
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@
|
|||||||
"name": "Tinqs Limited",
|
"name": "Tinqs Limited",
|
||||||
"url": "https://www.tinqs.com"
|
"url": "https://www.tinqs.com"
|
||||||
},
|
},
|
||||||
"description": "We built a pre-commit hook that calls DeepSeek V4 Flash to review every commit. It catches leaked secrets, classified terms, broken URLs, and drafts announcements --- for a tenth of a cent per commit."
|
"description": "We built a pre-commit hook that calls DeepSeek V4 Flash to review every commit. It catches leaked API keys, classified terms, broken URLs, and drafts announcements — for a tenth of a cent per commit."
|
||||||
}
|
}
|
||||||
</script>
|
</script>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
@@ -219,93 +219,75 @@
|
|||||||
<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
|
<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
|
||||||
<span class="post__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
<span class="post__date">25 May 2026</span>
|
||||||
<h1 class="post__title">A Pre-Commit Agent That Guards Your Secrets for $0.001</h1>
|
<h1 class="post__title">A Pre-Commit Agent That Guards Your Secrets for $0.001</h1>
|
||||||
<p class="post__lead">We have a problem that every small team has: too many things to remember before hitting commit. Don't leak API keys. Don't reference the classified AI codename in public blog posts. Don't link to GitHub repos we deleted six months ago. Don't push a blog post with a 90-character title. We built a pre-commit hook that uses a cheap LLM to check all of this automatically — and it costs less than a tenth of a cent per commit.</p>
|
<p class="post__lead">Every small team has the same problem: too many things to remember before <code>git commit</code>. Don't leak API keys. Don't reference the classified AI codename in public posts. Don't link to GitHub repos we deleted six months ago. Don't push a blog post with a 90-character title.</p>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<div class="post__body">
|
<div class="post__body">
|
||||||
<h2>The Problem</h2>
|
<p>A checklist in the README doesn't work. Humans skip checklists. Code review catches some issues but not all — reviewers focus on logic, not whether a URL points to a deleted org.</p>
|
||||||
<p>We maintain a docs repo that serves double duty. Internal files — game design documents, architecture notes, agent configuration — sit alongside a public blog and website. The internal side references classified codenames, machine hostnames, and internal URLs. The public side must never contain any of that.</p>
|
<p>We built a pre-commit hook with two layers: a regex blocklist that's instant and free, and an LLM review that costs $0.001. Together they catch everything.</p>
|
||||||
<p>We also deleted all our GitHub repos in April 2026 and moved everything to our own Gitea platform. But old links keep creeping back in — someone copies a URL from an old document, a blog post references the wrong remote. These are invisible bugs. The blog looks fine, the build passes, and three weeks later someone notices a dead link.</p>
|
<h2>Layer 1: Regex blocklist (0ms, $0.00)</h2>
|
||||||
<p>A checklist in the README doesn't work. Humans skip checklists. Code review catches some issues but not all — reviewers focus on logic, not whether a URL points to a deleted GitHub org. We needed something automatic, fast, and cheap enough to run on every single commit.</p>
|
<p>A text file of patterns, each tagged with scope and message:</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Two Layers: Regex + Agent</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>The hook has two layers. The first is instant and free. The second is smart and nearly free.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h3>Layer 1: Local Blocklist (0ms, $0.00)</h3>
|
|
||||||
<p>A text file of regex patterns, each tagged with a scope and a message:</p>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>public|\bCosmos\b|Classified codename — use "advanced colonist AI"
|
<pre><code>public|\bCosmos\b|Classified codename — use "advanced colonist AI"
|
||||||
all|github\.com/(tinqs-ltd|tinqs)/|GitHub repos deleted — use tinqs.com
|
all|github\.com/(tinqs-ltd|tinqs)/|GitHub repos deleted — use tinqs.com
|
||||||
all|sk-[a-zA-Z0-9]{20,}|Possible API key leaked
|
all|sk-[a-zA-Z0-9]{20,}|Possible API key leaked
|
||||||
all|AKIA[A-Z0-9]{16}|AWS access key leaked
|
all|AKIA[A-Z0-9]{16}|AWS access key leaked
|
||||||
public|admin\.arikigame\.com|Internal admin URL in public content</code></pre>
|
public|admin\.arikigame\.com|Internal admin URL in public content</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>The scope field controls where the pattern is enforced. <code>all</code> means every file. <code>public</code> means only files under <code>website/</code> — our public-facing content. This is critical. We <em>want</em> classified codenames in our internal architecture docs. We just don't want them in blog posts.</p>
|
<p>The scope field controls where patterns apply. <code>all</code> means every file. <code>public</code> means only public-facing content — blog posts, website, marketing pages. We <em>want</em> classified codenames in internal architecture docs. We just don't want them in blog posts.</p>
|
||||||
<p>The blocklist runs grep against the staged diff. No network call, no API, no latency. If it finds a match, the commit is blocked immediately with a file path and explanation. This catches 80% of issues before the LLM ever wakes up.</p>
|
<p>The blocklist runs grep against the staged diff. No network call, no API, no latency. Match found → commit blocked immediately with file path and explanation. This catches 80% of issues before the LLM wakes up.</p>
|
||||||
<h3>Layer 2: DeepSeek V4 Flash Review (~4s, $0.001)</h3>
|
<h2>Layer 2: DeepSeek V4 Flash review (~4s, $0.001)</h2>
|
||||||
<p>If the commit touches public-facing files (<code>website/</code>, blog posts), the hook sends the staged diff to DeepSeek V4 Flash through our inference proxy. The system prompt tells the model exactly what to check:</p>
|
<p>If the commit touches public-facing files, the hook sends the staged diff to DeepSeek V4 Flash. The system prompt tells it exactly what to check:</p>
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Leaked secrets</strong> — API keys, tokens, credentials that the regex might have missed</li>
|
<li><strong>Leaked secrets</strong> — API keys, tokens, credentials the regex might have missed</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Classified terms</strong> — codenames that aren't in the blocklist yet</li>
|
<li><strong>Classified terms</strong> — codenames not yet in the blocklist</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Internal URLs</strong> — references to internal services that shouldn't be public</li>
|
<li><strong>Internal URLs</strong> — references to services that shouldn't be public</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Blog quality</strong> — title length, meta description, slug consistency, missing fields</li>
|
<li><strong>Blog quality</strong> — title length, meta description, slug consistency</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Broken links</strong> — malformed URLs, obvious typos</li>
|
<li><strong>Broken links</strong> — malformed URLs, obvious typos</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>Announcements</strong> — if it's a new blog post, draft a one-line summary</li>
|
<li><strong>Announcements</strong> — if it's a new blog post, draft a one-line summary</li>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<p>The model responds with structured JSON: errors (block the commit) or warnings (inform but allow). If the API is unreachable or times out, the commit proceeds — the hook never blocks work for infrastructure reasons.</p>
|
<p>The model responds with structured JSON: <code>errors</code> (block) or <code>warnings</code> (inform but allow). If the API is unreachable or times out, the commit proceeds — the hook never blocks work for infrastructure reasons.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Why Not Pi?</h2>
|
<h2>The architecture</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Our <a href="https://tinqs.com/tinqs/pi" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Pi fork</a> is a full coding agent with tool calling, file I/O, and context management. It's what we use for overnight autonomous coding. But for pre-commit review, it's overkill.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>A pre-commit hook needs to finish in under 5 seconds. Pi takes 2–3 seconds just to start the Node.js process and load extensions. The review itself is a single LLM call with a system prompt and a diff — no tools needed, no file reads, no iteration. A direct curl to DeepSeek is faster and simpler.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>That said, the hook is designed as a stepping stone. The blocklist patterns, the review prompt, and the classification logic are all reusable. When we build a Pi-based CI reviewer that runs on pull requests — with tool access to read the full file, check links live, and verify image URLs — it will use the same prompt and the same patterns. The pre-commit hook is the fast, cheap first pass. Pi is the thorough second pass.</p>
|
|
||||||
<h2>The Architecture</h2>
|
|
||||||
<pre><code>git commit
|
<pre><code>git commit
|
||||||
↓
|
↓
|
||||||
.githooks/pre-commit (bash)
|
Phase 0: Collect staged diff + classify files (public vs internal)
|
||||||
↓
|
|
||||||
Phase 0: Collect staged diff + classify files
|
|
||||||
↓
|
↓
|
||||||
Phase 1: Regex blocklist scan (instant, free)
|
Phase 1: Regex blocklist scan (instant, free)
|
||||||
→ Match found → BLOCK (exit 1)
|
→ Match → BLOCK
|
||||||
→ Clean → continue
|
→ Clean → continue
|
||||||
↓
|
↓
|
||||||
Phase 2: Public files changed?
|
Phase 2: Public files changed?
|
||||||
→ No → exit 0 (skip AI, no cost)
|
→ No → exit 0 (skip AI review, zero cost)
|
||||||
→ Yes → send diff to DeepSeek V4 Flash
|
→ Yes → send diff to DeepSeek V4 Flash
|
||||||
↓
|
↓
|
||||||
Phase 3: Parse JSON response
|
Phase 3: Parse JSON response
|
||||||
→ Errors → BLOCK (exit 1)
|
→ Errors → BLOCK
|
||||||
→ Warnings → print, exit 0
|
→ Warnings → print, exit 0
|
||||||
→ Announcement → print draft
|
→ Announcement → print draft
|
||||||
→ API failure → warn, exit 0</code></pre>
|
→ API failure → warn, exit 0 (never block on infra)</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>The hook lives in <code>.githooks/</code> inside the repo — committed, version-controlled, shared by the whole team. A setup script configures <code>git config core.hooksPath</code> to point there. The LFS pre-push hook sits in the same directory.</p>
|
<p>The hook lives in <code>.githooks/</code> — committed, version-controlled, shared by the team. A setup script points <code>git config core.hooksPath</code> there.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>What It Costs</h2>
|
<h2>What it costs</h2>
|
||||||
<p>The system prompt is ~500 tokens. An average diff is 2,000–4,000 tokens. The response is ~200 tokens. At DeepSeek V4 Flash rates:</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>| | Tokens | Cost |</p>
|
<p>| | Tokens | Cost |</p>
|
||||||
<p>|–|——–|——|</p>
|
<p>|–|——–|——|</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Input (prompt + diff) | ~4,000 | $0.00056 |</p>
|
<p>| Input (prompt + diff) | ~4,000 | $0.00056 |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| Output (JSON response) | ~200 | $0.00006 |</p>
|
<p>| Output (JSON response) | ~200 | $0.00006 |</p>
|
||||||
<p>| <strong>Per commit</strong> | | <strong>$0.00062</strong> |</p>
|
<p>| <strong>Per commit</strong> | | <strong>$0.00062</strong> |</p>
|
||||||
<p>Call it a tenth of a cent. Twenty commits a day across the team: <strong>$0.012/day</strong>. About <strong>$0.40/month</strong>.</p>
|
<p>A tenth of a cent. Twenty commits a day: $0.012/day. About <strong>$0.40/month</strong>. Commits that only touch internal files skip the AI review entirely — zero cost.</p>
|
||||||
<p>Commits that only touch internal files (architecture docs, agent config, game design) skip the AI review entirely. Zero cost. The hook only calls DeepSeek when public-facing content changes.</p>
|
<h2>What it caught (first week)</h2>
|
||||||
<h2>What It Catches</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>In the first week:</p>
|
|
||||||
<ul>
|
<ul>
|
||||||
<li><strong>2 classified codename leaks</strong> in draft blog posts — caught by the blocklist before the AI even ran</li>
|
<li><strong>2 classified codename leaks</strong> in draft blog posts — caught by blocklist</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>1 GitHub URL</strong> that crept back in from a copy-paste — caught by the blocklist</li>
|
<li><strong>1 GitHub URL</strong> from an old copy-paste — caught by blocklist</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>3 blog SEO warnings</strong> — titles over 60 characters, missing og_description — caught by the AI review</li>
|
<li><strong>3 blog SEO warnings</strong> — titles over 60 chars, missing og_description — caught by AI</li>
|
||||||
<li><strong>1 announcement draft</strong> generated automatically when a new blog post was committed</li>
|
<li><strong>1 announcement draft</strong> auto-generated when a new post was committed</li>
|
||||||
</ul>
|
</ul>
|
||||||
<p>Zero false positives on the blocklist (the patterns are specific enough). Two false positives from the AI (flagged an internal URL in a code example that was clearly illustrative, not a real link). We added a note to the prompt to ignore URLs inside fenced code blocks.</p>
|
<p>Zero false positives on the blocklist. Two false positives from the AI — flagged an internal URL in a code example that was clearly illustrative. We added a note to the prompt: ignore URLs inside fenced code blocks.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Setup</h2>
|
<h2>Setup</h2>
|
||||||
<p>One command per machine:</p>
|
<pre><code class="language-bash">bash scripts/setup-hooks.sh # or .\scripts\setup-hooks.ps1 on Windows
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-bash">bash scripts/setup-hooks.sh</code></pre>
|
export TINQS_HOOK_TOKEN=<your-token> # same PAT used for git push</code></pre>
|
||||||
<p>Or on Windows:</p>
|
<p>That's it. Every <code>git commit</code> runs the two-layer review. Bypass with <code>git commit –no-verify</code> for emergencies.</p>
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-powershell">.\scripts\setup-hooks.ps1</code></pre>
|
<h2>The pattern: guard rails at the edge</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Set your inference token:</p>
|
<p>This is the same principle we apply everywhere: put the guard rail where the action happens. Don't rely on a human checklist. Don't wait for code review. Don't hope someone remembers.</p>
|
||||||
<pre><code class="language-bash">export TINQS_HOOK_TOKEN=<your-gitea-pat></code></pre>
|
<p>The pre-commit hook is $0.001 of prevention. A leaked API key in a public post is hours of rotation, revocation, and audit. A classified codename in a blog post is a confidentiality breach. A dead link is a broken experience nobody notices for weeks.</p>
|
||||||
<p>That's it. Every <code>git commit</code> now runs the two-layer review. Bypass with <code>git commit –no-verify</code> when you need to (emergencies, known false positives).</p>
|
<p>The tools exist. DeepSeek V4 Flash is cheap enough to call on every commit. The hook is 150 lines of bash. The blocklist is a text file. Total infrastructure cost: zero — it runs on the developer's machine, calls an API we already pay for, adds 4 seconds to the commit flow.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>The Pattern: Guard Rails at the Edge</h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>This is the same pattern we apply everywhere: put the guard rail where the action happens. Don't rely on a human checklist. Don't wait for code review. Don't hope someone remembers.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The pre-commit hook is $0.001 worth of prevention. A leaked API key in a public blog post is hours of rotation, revocation, and audit. A classified codename in a public post is a confidentiality breach. A dead GitHub link is a broken user experience that nobody notices for weeks.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The tools exist. DeepSeek V4 Flash is cheap enough to call on every commit. The hook is 150 lines of bash. The blocklist is a text file. The total infrastructure cost is zero — it runs on the developer's machine, calls an API we already pay for, and adds 4 seconds to the commit flow.</p>
|
|
||||||
<p>The age of agents doesn't just mean agents that write code. It means agents that watch the code you write.</p>
|
|
||||||
<hr>
|
<hr>
|
||||||
<p><em>The pre-commit hook is part of <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>, our open platform for game development. The inference proxy, the blocklist patterns, and the review prompt are all open and reusable. We're building <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a> with these tools — every commit in the game repo runs through the same guard.</em></p>
|
<p><em>The pre-commit hook is part of <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>. The inference proxy, blocklist patterns, and review prompt are open and reusable. Every commit in <a href="https://arikigame.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Ariki</a> runs through the same guard.</em></p>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
</div>
|
</div>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|||||||
|
Before
After
|
+37
-41
@@ -4,27 +4,27 @@
|
|||||||
<meta charset="UTF-8">
|
<meta charset="UTF-8">
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<a href="/blog/" class="post__back">← All Posts</a>
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<span class="post__date">18 May 2026</span>
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<span class="post__date">18 May 2026</span>
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<h1 class="post__title">One Binary to Rule Them All: Building a Studio CLI</h1>
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<h1 class="post__title">One Binary to Rule Them All: Our Studio CLI</h1>
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<p class="post__lead">Every machine in our studio runs the same Go binary. It knows who you are, what machine you're on, and what services are reachable. It takes screenshots, sends them to cloud vision, and runs health checks. This is the glue that makes AI agents actually useful in a multi-machine game studio.</p>
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<p class="post__lead">Every AI agent session starts the same way: cold. The agent doesn't know what project this is, who's asking, what tools are available, or what happened yesterday. You spend the first five minutes re-explaining context.</p>
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<h2>Why Build a CLI</h2>
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<p>Our CLI solves this in 100ms. One command — <code>tstudio identity</code> — and the agent knows everything. The binary is 15MB, has zero runtime dependencies, and runs on every machine in the studio.</p>
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<p>When you have multiple machines across several people, two operating systems, and AI agents that need context about the environment they're running in, the glue becomes the hardest part. Which machine is this? What services are reachable? Is the game running? Can I take a screenshot of what the developer is looking at?</p>
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<h2>The identity command (100ms)</h2>
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<p>We tried shell scripts. A <code>setup.sh</code> for Mac, a <code>setup.ps1</code> for Windows, a <code>check-services.sh</code> for health checks, a <code>screenshot.py</code> that never worked on Windows. They drifted. They broke. Nobody updated them.</p>
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<p>When an agent starts, the first thing it calls is <code>tstudio identity</code>. The output:</p>
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<p>So we built one Go binary that does everything.</p>
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<h2>The Identity System</h2>
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<p>The most important command is <code>identity</code>. When an AI agent starts a new session — Cursor, Claude Code, any tool — the first thing it does is call this command. The output tells the agent:</p>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>The soul file</strong> — the agent's persistent identity, values, and operating principles</li>
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<li><strong>Soul file</strong> — the agent's persistent identity, values, operating principles</li>
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<li><strong>Company context</strong> — team members, roles, what the company does</li>
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<li><strong>Company context</strong> — team members, roles, what the company does</li>
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<li><strong>Machine context</strong> — hostname, OS, which repos are cloned, what services are running</li>
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<li><strong>Machine context</strong> — hostname, OS, which repos are cloned, what services are running</li>
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<li><strong>Ecosystem</strong> — other repos and their purpose</li>
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<li><strong>Ecosystem</strong> — other repos and their purpose</li>
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||||||
<li><strong>Service status</strong> — which URLs are live and reachable</li>
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<li><strong>Service status</strong> — which URLs are live and reachable</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<p>This solves a fundamental problem with AI agents: <strong>cold starts.</strong> Every new chat window, every new agent tab, every new session is a blank slate. The agent doesn't know what project this is, who's asking, or what infrastructure exists. One CLI call gives it full context.</p>
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<p>This data lives in markdown files in the docs repo. Any machine on the network can read it. The agent goes from blank to fully contextual in under a second.</p>
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<p>The data lives in markdown files in the docs repo — the source of truth. Any machine on the network can read it.</p>
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<p>This started as a convenience tool for humans. It became the single most important function in our stack. Every agent session — Cursor, Claude Code, Pi — starts with <code>tstudio identity</code>. Without it, every conversation begins with "let me explain the project." With it, the agent already knows.</p>
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<h2>Screenshots and Vision</h2>
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<h2>Screenshots and cloud vision</h2>
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||||||
<p>The CLI can capture any window from outside the process. No in-game overlay, no rendering pipeline integration. It uses the OS-level window capture API — works on Windows (via GDI+) and Mac (via screencapture).</p>
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<p>The CLI can capture any window from outside the process. No in-game overlay, no rendering pipeline integration. OS-level capture — GDI+ on Windows, screencapture on Mac.</p>
|
||||||
<p>A <code>photo</code> command does the same thing but sends the screenshot to a cloud vision model for analysis. The agent says "take a photo of the game" and gets back a structured description: "The player character is standing near a half-built hut. There are 3 palm trees to the left. The terrain has a visible seam between two biomes."</p>
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<p>A <code>photo</code> command sends the screenshot to a cloud vision model. The agent says "take a photo of the game" and gets back: "The player character is standing near a half-built hut. Three palm trees to the left. The terrain has a visible seam between two biomes."</p>
|
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<p>This is how you file bugs without typing. Look at the game, tell the agent what's wrong, and the agent takes a screenshot, describes what it sees, and creates an issue with both the description and the image attached.</p>
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<p>This is how you file bugs without typing. Look at the game, tell the agent what's wrong. It takes a screenshot, describes what it sees, and creates an issue with both the description and the image attached. Keyboard-free bug reporting.</p>
|
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<h2>Health Checks</h2>
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<h2>Health checks</h2>
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<p>A <code>doctor</code> command runs a comprehensive health check:</p>
|
<p><code>tstudio doctor</code> runs a comprehensive check:</p>
|
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<ul>
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<ul>
|
||||||
<li>Is the git platform reachable? Can we authenticate?</li>
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<li>Is the git platform reachable and authenticated?</li>
|
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<li>Is the game server running?</li>
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<li>Is the game server running?</li>
|
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<li>Are all expected repos cloned and on the right branch?</li>
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<li>Are all expected repos cloned and on the right branch?</li>
|
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<li>Are required tools installed and at the right version?</li>
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<li>Are required tools installed at the right version?</li>
|
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</ul>
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</ul>
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||||||
<p>The output is a green/yellow/red table. If something's wrong, the agent knows immediately and can diagnose or escalate. This is essential for unattended agent sessions — the agent can verify its environment before starting work.</p>
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<p>Output is a green/yellow/red table. Essential for unattended agent sessions — the agent verifies its environment before starting work. No "the build failed because port 3000 was already taken" at 3am.</p>
|
||||||
<h2>Why Go</h2>
|
<h2>Why Go</h2>
|
||||||
<p>Go compiles to a single static binary with no runtime dependencies. No Python virtualenvs, no Node.js version managers, no DLL hell on Windows. The same binary runs on a gaming PC, a designer's MacBook, and a CI runner in AWS.</p>
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<p>Go compiles to a single static binary. No Python virtualenvs, no Node.js version managers, no DLL hell on Windows. The same binary runs on a gaming PC, a designer's MacBook, and a CI runner in AWS.</p>
|
||||||
<p>Cross-compilation is trivial. We build Windows, Mac (arm64 + amd64), and Linux binaries from a single CI workflow. Push a tag, CI builds all three, uploads to S3, done.</p>
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<p>Cross-compilation is trivial. We build Windows, Mac (arm64 + amd64), and Linux binaries from a single CI workflow. Push a tag, CI builds all three, uploads to S3. The binary is 15MB, starts in under 100ms, has zero runtime dependencies.</p>
|
||||||
<p>The binary is 15MB. It starts in under 100ms. It has zero runtime dependencies. For a tool that AI agents call on every session start, speed matters.</p>
|
<h2>What we learned</h2>
|
||||||
<h2>What We Learned</h2>
|
<p><strong>The CLI is the API for AI agents.</strong> What started as a human convenience tool became the primary interface for agents. Every session starts with <code>tstudio identity</code>. The agent's "hands and eyes" — screenshots, vision, health checks — are subcommands of the same binary.</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>The CLI is the API for AI agents.</strong> When we started, this was a convenience tool for humans. It became the primary interface for AI agents. The <code>identity</code> command was originally "nice to have" — now it's the single most important function in our stack. Every agent session starts with it.</p>
|
<p><strong>One binary beats ten scripts.</strong> Scripts rot. They have different shells, different PATH assumptions, different error handling. A compiled binary either works or it doesn't. It ships with dependencies baked in. It doesn't care if your Python is 3.9 or 3.12.</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>One binary beats ten scripts.</strong> Scripts rot. They have different shells, different PATH assumptions, different error handling. A compiled binary either works or it doesn't. It ships with its dependencies baked in. It doesn't care if your Python is 3.9 or 3.12.</p>
|
<p><strong>Cloud vision is underrated for game dev.</strong> Sending a screenshot to a vision model sounds gimmicky. In practice, it's the fastest way to document visual bugs. "The tree is floating 2m above the terrain" is much faster to communicate when the AI is looking at the same screen.</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Cloud vision is underrated for game dev.</strong> Sending a screenshot to a vision model and getting back a structured description sounds gimmicky. In practice, it's the fastest way to document visual bugs. "The tree is floating 2m above the terrain" is much faster to write when the AI is looking at the same screen you are.</p>
|
<p><strong>Agent cold starts are the real problem.</strong> Without the identity system, every session starts with the agent asking "what project is this?" With it, the agent knows everything in 100ms. That's the difference between an AI assistant and an AI team member.</p>
|
||||||
<p><strong>Agent cold starts are the real problem.</strong> Without the identity system, every new session starts with the agent asking "what project is this?" and the human re-explaining context. With it, the agent knows everything in 100ms. That's the difference between an AI assistant and an AI team member.</p>
|
|
||||||
<hr>
|
<hr>
|
||||||
<p>The CLI is part of <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a> — our game development platform that brings git hosting, AI agent tools, and team workflows together. Every time we find ourselves writing a script that needs to work on multiple machines, we add a subcommand instead. One binary that makes the studio work, whether the operator is human or AI.</p>
|
<p><em>The CLI is part of <a href="https://tinqs.com" style="color: var(–c-accent-l);">Tinqs Studio</a>. Every time we find ourselves about to write a script that needs to work on multiple machines, we add a subcommand instead. One binary that makes the studio work — whether the operator is human or AI.</em></p>
|
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