Ember-1 vs Inkling
Ember-1 took 25 min 56 s and $1.78 at list price, Inkling took 8 min 30 s and $0.21 at list price. Ember-1 took 3.1× as long and cost 8.5× as much.
Ember-1
Fireworks · $15.00/M out · 589 HN pts
Inkling
Thinking Machines · $4.05/M out · free route · 4 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 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.
Patchbay is a three-person repair studio in Rotterdam dedicated to vintage synthesizers. We work on analog circuits, replace failing capacitors and resistors, calibrate unstable oscillators, and restore instruments that have been silent for years. Our bench sees early Japanese mono synths, European string machines, American polys, and large modular systems. We treat each repair as a specific problem rather than a routine job, because these machines were built differently and fail differently. The studio grew out of our own need for careful, local repairs. Over time, musicians, collectors, and producers across the Netherlands started bringing us gear they could not trust elsewhere. We open every case with the same approach: diagnose the fault properly, use appropriate parts, and test the result thoroughly. We do not apply quick fixes or ignore underlying issues. Whether your synthesizer suffers from tuning drift, dead voices, noisy outputs, or an unknown electrical fault, we are in Rotterdam to find the cause and return it to reliable working condition.
Specs and numbers
| Ember-1 | Inkling | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Fireworks | Thinking Machines |
| Made in | US | US |
| Released | 24 Sep 2026 | 17 Jul 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $3.00 | free route (list $1.00/M) |
| Price out, per M tokens | $15.00 | free route (list $4.05/M) |
| Context | 1,048,576 tokens | 524,288 tokens |
| Weights | closed | open |
| Hacker News points | 589 | 4 |
| Time for the six prompts | 25 min 56 s | 8 min 30 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $1.78 | $0.21 |
Inkling was cheaper: $1.57 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Inkling was faster: 17 min 26 s less in total, and faster on each of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, both Breakout games play.
Rebuild this screen experiment: Ember-1's rebuild matched the screenshot at 67%, Inkling's 51%. Tea Garden experiment: Ember-1's game passed 5 of 5 checks, Inkling's 5 of 5.