Neural Automata Playground (WebGPU)

A lightweight WebGPU-powered visualizer for experimenting with neural cellular automata.   This project uses a GPU compute shader to apply 5×5 convolution filters over a grid of pixels, allowing real-time updates to the weights and activation functions that control the behavior of the automata.

Hosted on GitHub Pages here

🌀 Show Rings

💜 Show Purple Goo

🌊 Show Neon Wave

🐛 Show Big Worms

Overview

• Each pixel is updated using a 5×5 convolution per color channel (R, G, B).
• You can modify 225 total weights (3 output × 3 input × 5 pixels × 5 pixels) in real time.
• Supports a nearly unlimited variety of activation functions, if you can write it in WGSL you can use it!
• Built with WebGPU and React.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js ≥ 18
• A browser and device with WebGPU support. WebGPU is not enabled by default on some browsers

Installation

git clone https://github.com/Stermere/Neural-Automata-Playground/
cd Neural-Automata-Playground
npm install

Local development server

# Add -- --host to host it on your local network
npm run dev