Extinct Code Grew Leopard Spots: AI-assisted evolution of a 90s screensaver

In the late 90s some friends at CMU created Psychodeli — a groovy spiral engine that shipped in After Dark. The whole thing started from one formula: C = sin(pitch · r + sin(θ)). Twenty-five years later I set out to reimagine it with AI support — not vibe coding, but coding the vibe. 1,662 commits later, it's a real-time audio-reactive visualizer running 8,600 lines of GLSL.

I'm a cognitive psychologist not mathematician. But we swapped simple trig for Riemann zeta functions and modular forms, replaced Euclidean distance with L^p norms, and somewhere in there the code grew Turing patterns — leopard spots from pure trigonometry.

The AI journey was epic: 58 abandoned features, 39 reverts, and a throwaway rate that peaked at 18% in August. The essay documents the whole thing — with git stats revealing the 11/25 unlock of new gemini and claude models.

Is this the state of the art in AI music listening?

Been using this for the last month or so on macOS - as a screensaver. Soooo awesome!

Where can I find it?