Build HF Space text-adventure TUI with FLUX-based ASCII art
Session from build-small-agent-trace on Hugging Face by drdavidtang · MIT · condensed by Coders Talk
Build a self-contained HuggingFace Docker Space storyboarding TUI (React/Vite + FastAPI) that uses HF inference for narrative generation and dynamic ASCII/pseudo-ASCII art for scene illustration.
- +0Prompt · +0Build a HF Docker Space text-adventure TUI: React/Vite frontend, FastAPI backend, retro monospace terminal, HF Inference for narrative and dynamic ASCII art, storyboarding for a YouTube channel.
- +5mAgent did · +5mIterated on the Pillow-based image-to-ASCII pipeline: fixed aspect-ratio distortion, added skeletonization/directional glyphs for line art, regenerated the 20 fallback image/ASCII pairs and validated them via Docker builds and regression tests.
- +41mFail · +41mvalidate_fallback_archive.py assertion failed: the regenerated 'open-door' asset collapsed to 0.2% ASCII coverage, effectively disappearing.
- +41mAgent did · +41mAdjusted the brightness/midtone classifier thresholds in engine.py and reconverted all 20 assets to fix the too-sparse rendering.
- +41mFail · +41mSame validation script then failed on 'sealed-letter' at 77% coverage — the threshold fix overcorrected and made another asset too dense.
- +1h 13mPrompt · +1h 13mApproved the new direct-FLUX pseudo-ASCII approach ('ah niceee that works!!') and asked to align prompts with it and clean up leftover artifacts from earlier attempts.
- +1h 36mPrompt · +1h 36mKeep the direct-FLUX method and generate 20 local fallback assets to fill time while the real LLM cold-starts on Modal.
- +1h 38mFail · +1h 38mDuring artifact cleanup and rebuild, a PermissionError hit the Python cache directory while compiling backend files.
- Break · 1h 05m away, not counted
- +1h 40mOutcome · +1h 40mAdded a 'Professor Alder Wren' persona across onboarding/prompts/errors and generated six FLUX pseudo-ASCII portraits, placing three (onboarding, cold-start thinking state, workspace avatar) with frontend build and backend compilation passing.
Next time I'd specify the ASCII coverage bounds and aspect-ratio expectations up front instead of iterating through several rounds of image-to-text conversion tuning that kept over- or under-correcting. Switching to direct-FLUX pseudo-ASCII generation, rather than fighting the Pillow conversion heuristics, was the correction that actually worked and unblocked the rest of the build. I'd also front-load the artifacts cleanup step so it doesn't collide with cache permissions mid-build.