Sprited

Let's use today to review this year's plan and how we are tracking.

On January, we reached a MVP for SpriteDX and we decided to stop its development. We decided we would start investing on Machi.
On February, we completed tree growth simulation using CA.
On March, we started investigating on procedural growth of animated beings using CA. We stagnated here. We were not able to produce sound enough way to generate animated being using CA techniques and the return on investment for achieving this was not clear. We stopped this track.
On April, we decided to focus our energy on "the soul" part of the equation (https://blog.sprited.ai/from-sprites-to-souls-designing-the-sprited-digital-being). Instead of trying to build out animated pixel organism using CA, we switched to an easier method, video generation. Slideshow of consistent character sprite animations with 22+ states got a more upvote than anything we ever presented on Reddit. We decided that we would take it as a signal.
Continuing on April, we built out state machine that controls generated animations with the goal of making this behave like a living NPC. We quickly realized that to make it feel more like living, we need a drive system. We added hunger, curiosity, etc to make agents move perpetually.
Rest of the time in April, I spent work on a friend's project.
On May and June, we took the signal from Reddit to focus more on the particular character, Monet. Decided that we would build a prototype where user can experience virtually embodied being first hand.
We experimented with other concepts like vibe room and Machi. We decided that we would focus on the "digital being" concept as a company's focus (https://blog.sprited.ai/towards-sprited-is-a-digital-being-company).
We built Monet as a desktop agent that lives inside a macOS. An agent that moves around in macOS as if it were a desktop pet. This had a bad reception.
Instead of focusing on desktop pet style, we pivoted it to becoming a presence that lives inside a local machine. Focusing less on visuals but focusing more on what it does.
- Monet crawls web and reads papers, pin post, write a diary, generates images and videos, writes stories, rewrites itself, etc.
On July, most of the time was spent on personal matters and I left things on vibe coding mode. We iterated on Monet.
On August, lots of time was lost on course work and moving. Getting back to working on Monet.

So, it's been hectic 7 months.

SpriteDX -> Machi -> Whiteroom -> Monet

The current mission is find a spark that makes Monet worth pursuing. Here are list of experiments:

Animated Desktop Sticker - this had a really bad reception on Reddit to the point where we had to take down the post.
White Room concept - We didn't get that good of a reception. There seems to be some kind of taboo for AI companion apps. People don't really want their agents to look living.
Vibe Room - A music player without ads. You provide value to the user by giving them free lo-fi music and cute characters for visual pleasure. Reception wasn't bad but also didn't feel like it is a project Sprited should pursue.
Telegram Agent - Similar to Openclaw, it is a agent on loop which runs inside your local machine and do stuff. It is where our current development effort is.
Making Monet a writer - we are working on making monet a better writer who can write synopsis and eventually produce animated short videos that is engaging.

As you can see we are bumping our heads on every direction. We need to make a bet on one and focus on it.

Let's do exactly that.

Options:

Visual AI Track: Double down on white room experience on monet.sprited.ai. We perfect the animation and generation of its interactions and make it really really good.
Content Creator Track: We make Monet beat the market when it comes to automatically generated contents. Make it ever more engaging and make a consistent stream of uploads and build user engagements.
Local Jack of All Trades: This is more similar to OpenClaw. It lives locally and you can make it do ANYTHING. Like even control your computer.

At this particular time, we are focusing on content generation ability of Monet. Visual AI track is infested with taboo and it is not something we can easily fight. On the other hand, content creator track is something that I'm not particularly strong at.

Pixel's POV is that we should focus on this narrow goal:

Goal: Monet autonomously creates one genuinely good 1–3 minute animated short.

Let me think about this a bit in Korean.

컨텐트 제너레이션은 immediate value가 있는 것으로 느껴진다.
컨텐트는 만드는데 리소스가 쓰이고 그걸 컨슘하고 잊혀지고 하는 루프라는것이 있다.
그리고 레시피를 만들면 그 레시피를 가지고 있는 사람이 계속해서 좋은 결과물을 만들어 낼 수 있고 많은 사람들에게 퍼뜨릴 수 있다.
비쥬얼한 에이전트를 만드는 것 자체가 문제가 되진 않치만 도착지점이 문제다. 도착지점에는 수많은 컴퍼티션이 있다.
잭어브 얼 트레이드는 당연히 코덱스나 클로드 코드 같은 쪽의 컴퍼티션이 있다.

Overall assessment is that "content that gets consumed" may be the right medium than a persistent thing that loses advantage overtime.

Then the next question becomes why does it have to be done by Monet and not just a cli tool? I don't have an answer to it. I think the closest thing to an answer is that our goal is to build digital being and content generation is one lever we can use to achieve that goal.

An agent harness that can generate better than other more commonly available strategies. This is used to build a brand and have it build credibility.

Going head to head on creator tools or companions is risky IMO.

Let's hypothetically fix the goal to be to create and publish content weekly.

Create and publish content weekly and earn engagement.

This actually is a reframe and helps me think flexibly. That is, the end goal is weekly output of quality artifact than something persistent. We do not have to build something persistent. We just need to continue to produce content weekly and eventually get to a point where we gain user engagement.

That, and another framing that may help with Monet Whiteroom idea is that Monet becomes a friend who plays games with you.

User comes to monet.sprited.ai. Monet wants to play with you. Say a Hippy Uppy. Tablet user (a child) just taps on the balloon to keep it in the air.

Or it could present a game where Monet gives quiz and user has to guess the answers.

Or it could be a hard problem that user has to read and Monet is there to guide the user. Imagine Beast Academy but interactive version.

Now with this let's use process of elimination.

A. Animated Desktop Sticker that lives inside your desktop.
B. Jack of All Trades Desktop Being (OpenClaw-like)
C. Visual agent that plays games (Whiteroom + Game + Companion)
D. AI Content Creator (generates Animated Shorts weekly)

Eliminating A because desktop sticker had a poor reception on Reddit.

Eliminating B because we will be in direct competition with Claude Code, Codex and other open source variants.

Now we have:

C. Visual agent that plays games (Whiteroom + Game + Companion)
D. AI Content Creator (generates Animated Shorts weekly)

Pixel's POV:

Pick D: AI Content Creator for the next 8–10 weeks.

Goal:

Monet publishes one genuinely good artifact every week and earns engagement.

Why D over C:

Easier external feedback loop.

No need to convince users to adopt an AI companion first.

Content can build Monet's character/brand before asking people to interact with her.

If people start caring about Monet through her content, C becomes much stronger later.

So:

D = discovery/audience engine
→ people recognize and care about Monet
→ C = eventual interactive experience

And for now, don't worry whether the backend is really “Monet” or just a CLI/agent harness. Prove the weekly output is worth consuming first.

So basically, we are going to make the producing of content be the first axis. Then we also allow people to look at whiteroom so that you can play with the being eventually.

If we gain momentum, "play with Monet" can become a easy road, but right now there is no avenue for "play with Monet."

Let's now say that we focus our energy into producing Monet-branded contents. What kind of contents should we focus on? Who would be our audiences?

Enough for today. I will continue tomorrow.

-- Sprited Dev