January 19, 2026
Vines, vibes, and feature fights
Show HN: Artificial Ivy in the Browser
Calm browser vines wow everyone — then the feature fights begin
TLDR: A browser toy grows plant-like patterns from simple rules, and people are hooked. The thread split between fans wanting a chill screensaver and power users asking for speed, colors, and plant-like behaviors—showing how playful code quickly becomes both art and a customization battleground.
A mesmerizing browser toy is sprouting drama. “Artificial Ivy” grows from a single dot using simple rules you can nudge with sliders. Cells decide to grow or split; tighten the turn angle and you get straighter vines; let it wander and it ripples into wavey textures. Only the youngest bits keep growing; the elders retire. Each new sprout leaves a little breadcrumb so others don’t overlap, and if you crank the decay, the scene regrows faster but starts tripping over itself. The result? Hypnotic, living wallpaper vibes that had early viewers swooning — one called it “very calming,” another gushed over the “beautiful” textures and wave effects.
Then came the feature fever. The top asks: a speed slider (with a turbo mode for the curious and a slow lull for screensavers), a color picker for custom palettes, and even real-plant smarts like “geotropism and phototropism” from the armchair botanists. A prankster chimed in with a throwback to a cheeky, NSFW doodle experiment, sending the thread into nervous giggles. The mini-drama: purists begging, “don’t overthink it, keep the zen,” versus tinkerers who want sliders for everything. Either way, this Show HN proves tiny rules can bloom into big feelings — and that nothing grows faster than a comment section’s wishlist.
Key Points
- •Simulation starts from a single cell and evolves via growth and split actions with user-controlled probabilities.
- •Splitting creates a new cell with a slightly different direction; reducing maximum turn angle leads to straighter growth.
- •Only the youngest cells can grow or split; older cells become dormant based on a percentile age threshold.
- •Cells leave a location-based signal to prevent overlap; increasing signal decay allows faster regrowth but raises overlap risk.
- •Cells die upon reaching a fixed maximum age, defining the lifecycle within the simulation.