Overview
Primordial is an artificial-life sandbox where behavior is not scripted and there is no explicit fitness function. Digital organisms feed, reproduce, mutate, and die, and predator-prey dynamics emerge on their own from local rules. Runs are bit-for-bit reproducible from a seed, so the same world can be replayed and studied exactly.
What it demonstrates
- Emergent complexity from simple local rules, without a fitness objective
- Deterministic simulation design: same seed, same world, every time
- Keeping a heavy real-time sim smooth by rendering off the main thread
Key features
- Real-time ecosystem with prey and predator coevolution
- Live parameter tuning: mutation rate, food supply, energy decay
- Organism inspection with genome and phenotype analysis
- Around 40 telemetry readouts tracking population dynamics
- Bit-for-bit reproducible runs via seed control
- Off-main-thread rendering via Web Worker and OffscreenCanvas
Stack
- Next.js 16, React 19, TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS v4
- Web Worker plus OffscreenCanvas
- Vitest (unit) and Playwright (e2e)