
flibbertigibbeting @vercel, software engineering @uwaterloo, prev @joinsimplify
Joined January 2022
- Tweets44
- Following141
- Followers364
- Likes223
My POV of @_Brian_Zhang joining Vercel:
> I was a judge at a hackathon
> Brian built an impressive The Office simulation and won 1st place solo
> he beat out a team of 4 and got double their votes
> I ask him what he’s up to this summer
> Brian is about to intern at a FAANG
> I tell Brian he’d make a killing at Vercel and he can be more creative
> half way through his FAANG I reach back out
> Vercel summer internships start in 1 month
> Brian is bored at FAANG
> Brian goes through and aces the intern interview process in 2 weeks time
> Brian submits 2 weeks notice for his FAANG internship
> Brian signs the vercel offer and moves to SF for vercel 2 days before internship start
Never settle for less
Brian Zhang retweeted
Software engineering internship: invent new aesthetic.
I'm so in love with this
My @vercel internship: Codex, async video, batch support on AI Gateway. And I turned the terminal into an arcade for agents:
▪︎ Challenge models in 3D ASCII, no GPU
▪︎ Build with the open source game engine
Install → npm i -g ascii-arcade
Explore → ascii-arcade.dev
My @vercel internship: Codex, async video, batch support on AI Gateway. And I turned the terminal into an arcade for agents:
▪︎ Challenge models in 3D ASCII, no GPU
▪︎ Build with the open source game engine
Install → npm i -g ascii-arcade
Explore → ascii-arcade.dev
some sources of inspiration, in no particular order:
menu screen: iTunes Cover Flow (Jon del Strother, 2006)
logo animations: Wisp in a Bottle (Terraria)
splash screen: The Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd, Storm Thorgerson)
chess teaser: Double Bongcloud Draw (Hikaru Nakamura vs Magnus Carlsen, 2021)
extended chess scene: The Evergreen Game (Anderssen–Dufresne, Berlin 1852)
watching LLMs play games: Claude Plays Pokemon (@DavidSHershey)
poker table talk: Daniel Negreanu
poker broadcasts: PokerStars YouTube channel
trailer transitions: Amaterasu (Naruto)
being extra: Everything Everywhere All at Once (The Daniels)
ASCII rendering: @alexharri_
hybrid display: video2ascii (@ElijahKurien)
3D experiences: @bruno_simon
shaders: vgpu.sh (@matiNotFound )
TUI: OpenTUI, Claude Code, @opencode
model game harnesses: OpenSpiel, Game Arena (@GoogleDeepMind, @kaggle)
ambient communication: Vercel’s Internal Superagent (@madisonleaho)
design engineering: @floguo, @_chloeyan, @varksed
Brian Zhang retweeted
I used Grok 4.6 to build a 2D agent simulation of The Office.
Here are notes and observations on 4.6:
It is a huge step up from 4.5 - both in the quality of visual outputs and in the breadth of work: personality, features, and finding usable assets for this project. The editorial content and writing were good - I like the "feel" of this model.
One of the biggest wins for 4.6 is speed. The throughput (~80 tok/s) and latency are so good that it feels Composer-adjacent - something @ericzakariasson called out in his writeup.
That speed + cost + performance makes for a true "workhorse" model that's practical for both personal and work use.
My goal was to simulate The Office through "agents" that behaved like the characters - including all of the neuroticism and idiosyncrasies that made the show so funny.
I knew what I wanted artistically - I've built similar 2D apps with pixel art.
I asked Grok 4.6 to research psychological modeling, pull character descriptions, find references for the cast, and assemble 2D sprites with the Universal LPC sprite sheet generator and some RPG tilesets I grabbed online.
I rattled a brief into the @cursor_ai mobile app late one night at the Cursor office and woke up to an MVP.
Then I spent a day or so spamming cloud agents until the simulation worked how I liked.
The cool part is that Grok did the simulation, art, and research on its own:
- Every couple of minutes, each person scores a few possible actions and picks one. They pathfind around desks, work, grab coffee, talk at the cooler, hide in the annex, or end up in a meeting.
- Click someone and you can inspect traits, needs, mood, relationships, and whatever they're doing right now. You can also speed time up, force Michael to call a meeting, or roll a random office event.
- Each character has Big Five scores that bias what they tend to do. Needs like work, social, caffeine, status, and comfort rise over time and fall when they do something about them.
- Grok reconstructed the layout from Dunderpedia (Office Wiki) and online sources - Michael's office and the conference room on the north glass, Pam at reception, sales and accounting in the bullpen, the annex to the east, restrooms and the warehouse down the stairs.
- Grok helped me find a few sprite sheet packs to implement.
I was surprised at how accurate some of the character sprites were - from hair color to clothing.
The combination of a performant model, cloud workspaces, and high throughput made for a really fun devex - the amazing folks at @cursor_ai and @spacexai make my job easier everyday.
A huge shout-out to @_Brian_Zhang, whose Notion hackathon project inspired this exploration.
So @_Brian_Zhang built a full-on simulation of The Office using Notion Custom Agents in < 48 hours.
He took 1st place, received 10k+ in credits, then sat down with us to explain how it all worked. We chat about:
> Proximity based reasoning for agents
> Managing long term context windows
> Keeping characters “in character” with reflection loops
> The push/pull between plan mode and reactive decision-making
> What surprised him most
Michael would be proud.
Thank you @NotionHQ for hosting! The developer platform is something special, and the stuff you can build with it is truly up to anyone's imagination. If Dunder Mifflin was able to make anyone smile last weekend, that's all I could ask for.
So grateful for every person I crossed paths with. From the sponsors who made the weekend possible, the judges who pushed us to innovate, the fellow hackers who made it worth showing up, the baristas who kept us alive, and the Notion team who kept it all together behind the scenes.
Meet the winners of our first Developer Platform Hackathon.
1st place: @_Brian_Zhang built a mini episode of The Office where every character is a Notion Custom Agent. Databases track moments from the show, plus a Maslow-style needs ladder so the cast can run on their own.
Deep dive coming soon 👀
Brian Zhang retweeted
Come with me to Notion's first hackathon 🤩
Grateful for @planetscale being a leading sponsor and supporting the next generation of engineers and builders!
Congratulations to @_Brian_Zhang!! ⚡️
s/o to @accomazzo, @PedersenCarter, and the Notion ganggg 🤏🤏🤍
join the waitlist here
we're launching an app that helps you find something to do in any city in the world.
🏙️ interested? join the waitlist at w2d.app :)
excited to build 🛠️
we're building @hinge... but for activities!
swipe right if you're interested and left if you're not.
we'll find you something to do in any city, so that you'll never be bored again.
cc @ee_hsinsg @MikaylaMao @_Brian_Zhang @xiang_rita @bk44443017
@_buildspace @_nightsweekends
Brian Zhang retweeted
we're building @hinge... but for activities!
swipe right if you're interested and left if you're not.
we'll find you something to do in any city, so that you'll never be bored again.
cc @ee_hsinsg @MikaylaMao @_Brian_Zhang @xiang_rita @bk44443017
@_buildspace @_nightsweekends













