Scrawl-canvas Alternatives

Scrawl-canvas reviews and mentions

• Generative Art over the Years
  8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Apr 2026

  > I spent a fair amount of time with p5 etc, but the results always felt limited and brittle.

  I wrote a JS canvas library[1] partly because existing libraries of the time (2013) didn't do what I wanted a canvas library to do. Things like animated gradients and patterns, etc. I'm still working on the library today - so thats 12+ years of my spare time gone!

  Generative art - such as challenges like Genuary[2] - is a key tool for giving me ideas on how to develop the library further. I keep CodePens of some of my better efforts[3] around as a set of extra tests to check for breaking changes as I fiddle with the library.

  [1] - https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas

  [2] - https://genuary.art/

  [3] - https://codepen.io/collection/RzzMjw

• Dithering – Part 1
  8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Oct 2025

  I responded in that post (though not to you, and probably not what you're after) with a link to my JS canvas library's "reduce palette" filter. It includes both supplying an array of colors to act as the palette, and setting the required number of colors for which the filter can calculate a "commonest colors" palette, calculating color distances in the OKLAB color space - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/filters-027.html

  If anyone wants to see the filter code, it in the GitHub repo here: https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas/blob/064469928a3...

• How Well Do Coding Agents Use Your Library?
  6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 13 Aug 2025

  I've done a lot of work recently to make my library more "LLM Friendly", but I'm not willing at this time to sign up to a service which I don't know I'd ever use again just to run a test on your behalf. If you want to run the test on my library then its GitHub can be found here: https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas

• HTML-in-Canvas
  10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Aug 2025
• AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?
  5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Jul 2025

  This is why I've had to spend a huge amount of my free coding time this year documenting my canvas library[1][2] in a way that can (potentially[3]) be used as LLM training data instead of, well, developing my library with new and exciting (to me) features.

  On the silver lining side, it's work that I should have been doing anyway. It turns out that documenting the features of the library in a way that makes sense to LLMs also helps potential users of the library. So, win:win.

  [1] - Telling the LLM training data Overlords about the capabilities of the library is in itself a major piece of work: https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas/blob/v8/LLM-summ...

  [2] - The Developer Runbook was long-overdue documentation, and is still a work-in-progress: https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/documentation

  [3] - Nothing is guaranteed, of course. Training data has to be curated so documentation needs to have some rigour to it. Also, the LLMs tell me it can take 6-12 months for such documentation to be picked up and applied to future LLM model iterations so I won't know if my efforts have been successful before mid-2026.

• Show HN: The Scrawl-canvas developer Runbook
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 24 May 2025

  The advancement of LLMs, and the profound changes that they have unleashed in the way developers approach coding tasks, feel at times like a tsunami. This came to a head when I realised that people trying to use my Javascript library for working with the canvas element were encountering a fundamental problem: LLMs simply don't know about, or comprehend, the purpose of the library or how to work with it to deliver projects/products.

  My solution to this problem is to document everything I can think of about the library. Maybe if I can get enough coherent data into future LLM training data, they will (eventually) stop hallucinating such garbage code for users trying to use the library. I also used this new data, alongside some structured investigations of the library with two LLM products, to come up with a summary document[1] which users can feed into an LLM session to at least correct the worst assumptions current LLM iterations make about the library.

  I don't expect to see any useful results emerge from this work for at least 12-18 months. But the work has to be done. I think this sort of documentation is yet another burden on the solo developer working on a pet side-project in the open software space ... but I see no other solution for the radically changed developer environment we suddenly face.

  [1] - https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas/blob/v8/LLM-summ...

• Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2025)
  121 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Mar 2025
• Wheel Reinventor's Principles
  3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 21 Mar 2025

  I decided to reinvent SVG Filters because Safari won't let them be used with HTML canvas elements[1] ... well, at least that's the official reason.

  Unofficially I just wanted a decent filter engine[2] that worked well with my canvas library, and there were things like SVG "filter chaining" which I really liked the idea of - but could they be done in a simpler way[3]? Also: proving to nobody that canvas filters can be done (fairly) efficiently without the need for WebGL shaders (because: why not?). And then I discovered I really like coding up filter functions and went a bit mad with them[4][5] and now the hole is so deep the only option left for me is to keep digging ...

  [1] - Though I think that's changing this year? May already have changed - but I'm not gonna un-reinvent my filters even if the Safari folks have shipped the fix!

  [2] - https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas/blob/v8/source/h...

  [3] - Why do the SVG filter primitives need to be so complicated to work with?

  [4] - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/canvas-007.html

  [5] - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/filters-103.html

• Show HN: LLM-docs, software documentation intended for consumption by LLMs
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Mar 2025

  Oh! Recently I had the experience of working with someone who was using LLMs to build something using my JS canvas library. The code the LLM was producing for this person was ... sub-optimal. Over-complicated. Not a surprise to me as my library is very niche and the only documentation around it is the docs/lessons I've written myself. So now I'm in the middle of an exercise to write documentation[1] that tries to explains everything (that I can remember) that the library does.

  The problem is, I've no idea how useful that documentation would be for LLM consumption - does anyone know of an "Idiot's Guide to writing documentation for LLM consumption" so I can review my work to date and improve the docs going forward?

  [1] - In this branch. I'm writing the documentation in .md files which get converted into .html files (using Sundown) during a build step: https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas/pull/119/files

• Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2025)
  105 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Feb 2025

  I'm writing a Developer Runbook[1] for my JS canvas library. Partly because, now I've reached my 7th decade, I need to record as many of the questionable architectural and coding decisions I've made as the library has evolved. But mainly in the vague hope that maybe the extra data will help our new LLords and Masters make less stupid decisions when they make code suggestions to innocent developers on how to use my library in their code.

  [1] - https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas/blob/write-initi...

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