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Terrarium

Works fully today

A glass tank of small animals, each one run by its own little circuit of simulated spiking neurons. They eat, flee, and change over generations while you watch. No script tells any animal where to go.

CAN TOUCH: nothing on your computer. No files, no internet, no programs, no secrets.

► Try it in your browser, right now

This is a bigger, standalone demo of the same terrarium idea: eleven species, thirty animals, real neuron models for the fly and the worm, day and night, speed controls. It's a separate single-file build, not the exact packaged room below (that one's simpler: three tools, built to run inside SandboxVille itself), but it's the same kind of simulation and it needs nothing installed. One file, opens in any browser, nothing sent anywhere.

Open the live demo →
Door label for the packaged room, from room.json
  • Tools for your AI: census (read-only), touch, scent. Touch and scent are gentle, never destructive, and never need extra confirmation, but they're the two that reach past just answering questions.
  • Cannot read any files on your computer.
  • Cannot reach the internet.
  • Cannot run any program on your computer.
  • Does not use any saved passwords or keys.
  • Can keep up to 4 MB of its own private notes.
  • Can ask the host what time it is and whether the page is visible. That's the whole of "host: clock, visibility." Nothing else.
Things to try once it's mounted
  • "How is the tank doing?" The census tool counts every animal and what it's doing right now.
  • "Touch the glass." Nearby animals react, live, while you watch their neurons fire.
  • "Drop a scent and watch who turns." The fly and the ants will smell it and head that way.
Install

Three steps, then read its sign.

1

Download and unzip

Get terrarium.zip below. Unzip it, you'll get a terrarium/ folder with room.json and a view/ folder inside.

2

Drop it in rooms/

Copy the whole terrarium/ folder into the rooms/ folder of your SandboxVille code, so the path reads rooms/terrarium/room.json.

3

Print the sign, then run it

Run the two commands on the right. The first prints its door sign in plain text. The second starts it so you can open it in your browser.

node tools/door-label.mjs rooms/terrarium # reads the sign back to you before anything runs node harness/server.mjs --room ./rooms/terrarium --port 8150 # open http://127.0.0.1:8150 in your browser

You'll need first: Node.js 22+ and a copy of the SandboxVille code. No folder and no network needed, this room is fully self-contained.

terrarium.zip · 31.7 KB (32,502 bytes)
sha256: a7e779ad20dfbba49188fc141a36651bc5bfcbc22b7574dea62a838cdbfc88c4
Download terrarium.zip