Flint vs Ember-1
Flint took 10 min 5 s and was free at list price, Ember-1 took 25 min 56 s and $1.78 at list price. Ember-1 took 2.6× as long.
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay began in a small, cluttered workshop in Rotterdam, where solder smoke and old capacitors seem to belong together. We are a three-person studio, which means every synthesizer that comes through our door is handled by one of the same people who started the project. No call center, no hand-off to strangers. We repair vintage synthesizers: the dusty analog beasts, the rare oddities, the ones with missing knobs and mysterious tuning drift. Our work is part electronics, part archaeology, part stubborn love. We listen to the hum before we open the case, and we believe most vintage synths are not dead, just waiting for someone to pay attention. In a city known for moving quickly, we prefer taking our time. Patchbay exists to keep old voices alive, one oscillator, filter, and power supply at a time. If you have a synth that sings, whispers, or hums through the decades, we would be glad to meet it.
Patchbay is a three-person workshop in Rotterdam dedicated to keeping vintage synthesizers alive. We work on the machines that shaped electronic music — analog polysynths, temperamental drum machines, early digital oddities — replacing tired capacitors, rebuilding keybeds, and coaxing silent oscillators back into tune.
Between us we bring decades of experience in electronics, instrument design, and music-making, but what unites us is simpler: we believe these machines were built to be played, not displayed. Every repair happens by hand at our benches, with period-correct components wherever possible and thoughtful modern solutions where reliability demands it. We test everything the only way that matters — by listening.
Whether your Juno has lost a voice, your 808 has lost its kick, or a flea-market find needs a full restoration, we treat each instrument as if it were heading back to a studio, a stage, and a long life of making noise. Because it is.
Specs and numbers
| Flint | Ember-1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Recursive | Fireworks |
| Made in | US | US |
| Released | 21 Oct 2026 | 24 Sep 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | free route (list $0/M) | $3.00 |
| Price out, per M tokens | free route (list $0/M) | $15.00 |
| Context | 262,144 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | open | closed |
| Hacker News points | 36 | 589 |
| Time for the six prompts | 10 min 5 s | 25 min 56 s |
| List price of the six prompts | free | $1.78 |
Flint was free at list price; Ember-1 cost $1.78. Flint was faster: 15 min 51 s less in total, and faster on each of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, Flint's Breakout game loads but doesn't start; Ember-1's plays.
Rebuild this screen experiment: Ember-1's rebuild matched the screenshot at 67%; Flint was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Flint's game passed 5 of 5 checks, Ember-1's 5 of 5.