February 19, 2026
Zen app, spicy thread
Show HN: Chaos Studies – attractors and spatial audio (iOS/Mac/Playdate)
Chaos Studies wants calm vibes; commenters want a web demo
TLDR: Chaos Studies is a calm, motion-and-sound art app for iOS, macOS, and Playdate, pitched as a “presence” break from doomscrolling. The thread cheers the vibe but pushes back: readers want a web demo and note the Playdate build isn’t ready, highlighting the clash between serenity and ship-now culture.
Show HN dropped a mood machine called Chaos Studies—an art-y app that turns math-y motion into music and asks for your presence, not your attention. Think: glowing particles swirling like weather, and sound that shifts as you move it around. On the tiny Playdate handheld, you even control it with a crank. The pitch is pure zen: open it for thirty seconds, breathe, no doomscrolling.
The crowd reaction? Split right down the vibe line. One camp came in clapping, with hemmert basically sprinting to their Playdate, shouting “Beautiful!” and radiating chill. The other camp arrived with classic Hacker News energy: show me a demo, now. Hrimfaxi wanted a web version and flagged that the Playdate button pops up “still under development.” Cue the familiar HN mini-drama: ambition vs. availability, meditation vs. immediacy.
Hot takes bubbled fast. Fans are calling it a “visual fidget” they’ll use between meetings, while skeptics insist that if it’s truly for everyone, it needs a browser demo yesterday. The crank got love, the delays got side-eye, and the overall mood landed somewhere between “ASMR for your eyes” and “why can’t I click it yet?” It’s the internet in a nutshell: serenity meets shipping.
Key Points
- •Chaos Studies is an interactive app for iOS, macOS, and Playdate that visualizes particle motion within an invisible form.
- •Users manipulate the structure via touch gestures (swipe, pinch) to rotate and scale it; particles leave glowing, fading trails.
- •Audio is integrated with motion: low tones map to speed, higher harmonics to complexity, and spatial placement rotates with the form.
- •On Playdate, the crank controls rotation, and visuals are rendered in black and white to emphasize essentials.
- •The app includes dark and light modes and offers varying moods, intended for brief resets or longer, calm engagement.