Flint vs Gemini 4 Argon
Flint took 10 min 5 s and was free at list price, Gemini 4 Argon took 13 min 43 s and $0.68 at list price. Gemini 4 Argon took 1.4× as long.
Flint
Recursive · free route · 36 HN pts
Gemini 4 Argon
Google · $10.00/M out · 2,036 HN pts
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.
In a quiet industrial building overlooking the Maas, the air smells of warm dust, solder flux, and ozone. This is Patchbay, a three-person workshop in Rotterdam dedicated to keeping the golden age of electronic music alive. We don’t view vintage synthesizers as museum pieces to be locked behind glass. To us, a Roland Jupiter-8 or an ARP Odyssey is a living, breathing instrument meant to be played, gigged, and pushed to its sonic limits.
Between the three of us, we have spent decades deciphering faded schematics, hunting down obsolete transistors, and cleaning decades of club grime from beneath weighted keys. Rotterdam is a city built on raw electronics and relentless rhythms, and we take pride in keeping its hardware running. Whether you bring us a touring workhorse with a dead voice chip or a garage-find modular rig that hasn’t powered on since 1984, we are here to make it sing again.
Specs and numbers
| Flint | Gemini 4 Argon | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Recursive | |
| Made in | US | US |
| Released | 21 Oct 2026 | 13 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | free route (list $0/M) | $2.00 |
| Price out, per M tokens | free route (list $0/M) | $10.00 |
| Context | 262,144 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | open | closed |
| Hacker News points | 36 | 2,036 |
| Time for the six prompts | 10 min 5 s | 13 min 43 s |
| List price of the six prompts | free | $0.68 |
Flint was free at list price; Gemini 4 Argon cost $0.68. Flint was faster: 3 min 38 s less in total, and faster on 5 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, Flint's Breakout game loads but doesn't start; Gemini 4 Argon's plays.
Rebuild this screen experiment: Gemini 4 Argon's rebuild matched the screenshot at 69%; Flint was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Flint's game passed 5 of 5 checks, Gemini 4 Argon's 5 of 5.





