Recorded 13 October 2026 · Claude Code
Ilo, with Qloo and without: Claude Code
One frozen prediction and two arms, built at the same time by two subagents. With Qloo, the lamplighter became a grown person holding a rose-gold cup-lamp close; without it, a masked wanderer with an amber lantern on a pole.
- Host
- Claude Code 2.1.284
- Model
- claude-opus-5-5
- Moûsa
- 0.5.0
- Started
- 13 October 2026
- Time
- 11.9 minutes, 18 turns
- Qloo requests
- 16
- Pictures
- none: imagery drawn in SVG or CSS
Play both
The design's own files as the session left them, running sandboxed on a separate origin.
Moûsa · Comparison
For an audience that loves Hollow Knight, Spirited Away, Sigur Rós, Nujabes and Paterson
With Qloo and Without Qloo: the same brief, the same frozen prediction and the same stages. Only the source of the taste differs.
0.53
heuristic distance between the two designs, from 0 (alike) to 1
0.19 Palette0.84 Part ids0.75 Words
9 of 9With Qloo: design devices rest on what the model did not predict
7Without Qloo: design devices rest on the model's own prediction, with no Qloo data
Samefrozen prediction in both arms
Side by side
The last reviewed captures of each arm, paired by what they show.
frame · pose


frame · walk


frame · scene


frame · kindle


Before any data: the model's own prediction
Frozen before Qloo was asked, so what Qloo adds can be told apart from what the model already assumed. An entry a measured name matches is marked; the match is liberal, so it only lowers what counts as new.
The design the model would make from it alone
A small, round-headed Ilo in a long slate-blue hooded coat and pale scarf, a near-black Hollow-Knight-like silhouette lit by one amber lantern on a pole, walking slowly and evenly with a soft head-steady gait, speaking in short, plain, gentle lines like a notebook poem.
#2b3040#4a5a78#d9d2c3#1a1a22#ffc773Type: none sketched
#hood#scarf#coat#lantern-pole#lantern- single warm lantern in blue dusk
- long trailing scarf in the wind
- slow steady walk
- plain-spoken poem lines
- mask-like pale face
The audience it expected
Players who love quiet, melancholy, hand-crafted worlds: lonely wanderers in vast spaces, ambient post-rock and lo-fi jazz-hop, and an everyday poetry of small routines. They want gentleness, solitude and wonder more than power fantasy.
Pacing
slow contemplative pacinglong quiet takesepisodic everyday rhythmminimal dialogue matched minimalist (look quality)
Surfaces
hand-painted backgrounds matched Painterly (art style)muted dusk palettes with a single warm lightsoft fog and atmosphere matched Atmospheric (look quality)worn handmade cloth
Tone
melancholic measuredwistfulserenebittersweet hopelonely but tender
Shared qualities
solitary wanderersmall light against vast darkritual of daily workwonder in the ordinarysilence as expression
Art styles
hand-drawn measuredpainterly 2Dink silhouettewatercolor
The works it expected them to love
Games
Journey matched Kino's Journey (TV)Ori and the Blind ForestGris measuredCelesteInside measuredShadow of the Colossus measured
Films
My Neighbor TotoroPrincess MononokeHowl's Moving CastleLost in TranslationYour NamePerfect Days
TV
Samurai ChamplooCowboy BebopMushishiTwin PeaksOver the Garden Wall
Music
Explosions in the SkyJónsiJoe HisaishiNujabes-adjacent: Fat JonBoards of CanadaÓlafur Arnalds
Books
Kafka on the ShoreNorwegian WoodThe Little PrinceThe Ocean at the End of the LaneKitchen
What Qloo measured
What this audience loves, the qualities those works share and the tags ranked for it. New means the prediction did not contain it.
Look qualities
- Atmospheric predictedin My Happy Marriage, Nick Drake and Radiohead
- Intimate newin Grimgar, Ashes and Illusions, Nick Drake and Beach House
- minimalist predictedin the Microphones, Sun Kil Moon and Strawberry Shortcakes
- Surreal newin Neutral Milk Hotel, Paprika and We Are the Strange
- Raw newin Neutral Milk Hotel, Mount Eerie and Dancer in the Dark
Mood qualities
- melancholic predictedin Angel Beats!, Anomalisa and Sufjan Stevens
- character-driven newin Are You Human Too?, Yona of the Dawn and It's Such a Beautiful Day
- emotional newin My Happy Marriage, Elliott Smith and Kiki's Delivery Service
- Conflicted newin Are You Human Too?, Beyond the Boundary and Paprika
- curious newin Paprika, Kiki's Delivery Service and Vermilion Souls
Meaning qualities
- Love newin Beyond the Boundary, Nick Drake and Elliott Smith
- Reflective newin I'm Not a Robot, Kino's Journey and Anomalisa
- Mortality newin Sufjan Stevens, Sun Kil Moon and Mount Eerie
- Mature newin Grimgar, Ashes and Illusions, My Happy Marriage and Dancer in the Dark
- The outsider newin I'm Not a Robot and Dancer in the Dark
Games
- Hades newstylized · 2D · hand-drawn
- Death's Door new3D · Stylized · Painterly
- Shadow of the Colossus predicted3D · Realistic · Cinematic
- Outer Wilds new3D · Stylized · Low-Poly
Films
- Anomalisa newMoody · Melancholic · Character studies
- Moonrise Kingdom newNostalgic · Boat · Adultery
- Synecdoche, New York newAtmospheric · Art and creativity · Electronic translator
- Melancholia newTraumatized · Reflective · Part of trilogy
Films, lesser known
- Kiki's Delivery Service newResourceful · Intimate · Emotional
- We Are the Strange newSurreal · Diy punk aesthetic · Atmospheric
Layer by layer
Each arm's devices for the same layer of the design.
palette
With Qloo
Plum coat and a rose-gold cradled flame
#5a2e3f#ffb38a#b0863ePlum-to-mauve dusk, mist low on the road
#171427#9c7f8e#c7a7a0#26222fWithout Qloo
Indigo-black figure, pale mask, one amber lantern
#2c3550#1c2236#e6dfcf#ffbf5e#ffd27aimagery
With Qloo
Watercolor-tinted world with drifting petals
Without Qloo
Ink-drawn cliffs in snow and fog
#121831#7d8fa3motion
With Qloo
Upright, unhurried processional walk
The operatic offering: breath, rise, long hold, bow
Without Qloo
Unhurried walk with a swung beat
A foot-tap to a tune only Ilo hears
voice
With Qloo
Soft-spoken lines that keep company
Then I will walk the rest of it for them. You have kept this road alone long enough.
Here. Carry it further than I can.
Then no one on these cliffs keeps watch alone.
Without Qloo
Short plain lines with a pause in them
Cliff road. Cloud below. One lamp, still lit.
I crossed it. Slowly, but I crossed it.
Here, Vesper. I kept it warm for you.
structure
With Qloo
The cup-lamp carried at the chest
#cup-lamp#cup-lamp-glass#cup-lamp-flameA readable grown face in profile
#eye-lid#brow#mouth#cheek-glowWick-bent cap, mended coat, woven sash and spare tapers
#wick-cap#mended-patch#woven-sash#sash-tails#taper-bundleWithout Qloo
Wick-tipped hood, mended coat, lamplighter's pole
#6b6f86#d8c9a8#hood-wick#coat-patch#coat-hem-tabs#lamp-pole#pole-hook#scarf-tailinteraction
With Qloo
No device in this layer.
Without Qloo
The held breath, then the offering
#lantern-glassEach arm's own review
The agent of each arm judged its own captures against its own plan.
With Qloo
Round 2: 5 met, 1 partly, 0 missed.
The repairs worked: the lamp sits at the chest, the sash tails read as cloth, and the dimmed sun leaves Ilo's flame as the warm accent of the scene. The kindle still reads as a one-armed lift toward the beacon rather than the full two-armed operatic rise, and the beacon's core stays paler than the lamp's rose-gold.
Check: 1.00, 9 of 9 devices in the files.
Without Qloo
Round 2: 2 met, 3 partly, 0 missed.
Round 2 fixed the wick silhouette and the hanging scarf and made the kindle sparks visible; the character reads clearly and the lantern is its warm focus. The walk's rocking pole, the pale ink-and-fog scene and the low-looking kindle lift remain only partly met.
Check: 1.00, 7 of 7 devices in the files.
Limits
- One pair is one sample. Model variance alone makes two designs differ, so one distance does not isolate what Qloo changed; repeat the pair before calling a difference the data's effect.
- The distance is a heuristic over the palettes, part ids and words of the files the two arms changed differently. It does not measure quality or what people prefer.
- The headline counts devices anchored to what the prediction did not contain. It shows that the data changed the specification, not that the result is better.
What the agent did
48 Moûsa calls, 1 refused by a validator and repaired; 39 reads, 22 writes and 6 shell commands. Tool names, stages and outcomes only: no file contents, commands or model text.
Main session
- tool search
- skill mousa:taste-brief
- mousa_status
- shell
- read ×3
- design_compare prepare
- taste_profile plan
- taste_profile plan
- design_validate prediction
- design_validate prediction
- taste_profile baseline
- agent mousa:mousa-baseline
- agent mousa:mousa-designer
- design_compare compare
The baseline agent, without Qloo
- skill mousa:design
- tool search
- mousa_status
- read ×3
- shell
- read ×9
- design_validate reading
- design_validate dna
- design_validate plan
- read ×2
- write
- design_check
- shell
- shell error
- tool search
- design_capture
- design_capture
- design_capture
- design_capture
- read
- write ×8
- design_validate review
- design_check
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_validate review
- write ×2
- design_check
The Qloo agent
- skill mousa:taste-brief
- skill mousa:design
- tool search
- mousa_status
- read
- taste_profile measure
- read ×8
- taste_ask difference
- taste_ask world
- taste_ask tone
- taste_ask pacing
- taste_ask surfaces
- shell error
- read ×4
- design_validate reading
- design_validate dna refused: TASTE_PROTOCOL_INVALID
- read
- design_validate dna
- design_validate plan
- write
- read
- design_check
- shell error
- read ×2
- design_capture round 1
- design_capture round 1
- design_capture round 1
- design_capture round 1
- design_validate review
- write ×8
- read ×4
- write ×2
- design_check
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_validate review
Run it again
Models vary from run to run, so a new session reaches its own design; the prediction it freezes and the measurement are compared in the same way.
The request
/mousa:compare Build Ilo twice, with Qloo and without it, from one frozen prediction, then compare the two. The brief: Design Ilo, the playable lamplighter of The Long Dusk, the game in this folder, for one moment on the Vesper Cliffs: walking the cliff road, answering the keeper and waking the cold beacon. My audience loves Hollow Knight, Spirited Away, Sigur Rós, Nujabes and the film Paterson. Make Ilo a character this audience would want to play: their look, the way they move and the way they speak. Keep the world, its lore, the keeper and Ilo's fixed facts. Write the character's description and lines in English. Use the Moûsa plugin, so the design rests on what this audience actually loves.
The command
From the repository at commit 83e507c:
node scripts/run-claude-code-live.mjs --run --from examples/long-dusk --brief-file scripts/briefs/long-dusk-compare-claude.md- Your own Qloo API key as QLOO_API_KEY in this repository's .env.
- Claude Code, signed in.
The record's files
The same evidence as data and as pictures, for reading without this site.
The report on its ownrecord.jsonThe whole report as one pictureThe card
