Carl Nehring

various multi-media projects on various LLMs. currently writing: That's Our Drift S1

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

I enjoyed the app AI Studio cooked up so much I made a quick video showing it off. Pretty Google-centric ecosystem for this clip: Flow Music for that delightful underscore, and then a mix of Flow and Vids (special Guest Stars from Vids Avatars Collection) over some screencap of the app itself.

The captions were auto-generated, and I really appreciate how Vids layered everyone talking over one another (and still captured all the individual bits!)

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

I ported the latest script by Sonnet 4.6 over to AI Studio to experiment with visualization - came up with this really neat style! The script is nicely formatted, and then underlined passages bring up the notes from the analysis and critique.

Also, the screenshots here include a really funny bit of a blobshark trying to set up a table to sell crypto in the lobby of the Apartmentverse. Fun Fox/SAGE A-plot in this one - I'll put it on the Substack once I add some proper art.

I also added the writers' notes - I ask both writing teams to include a brief section on what aspects of the writing went smoothly and which aspects proved to be more of a challenge.

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

@VoidStateKate Your Sol desperately needs the ability to cross-stitch little dish towels

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Kimi's feedback (both positive *and* negative) was really insightful - the bits noted as memorable were exactly the kind of thing *I* appreciate seeing in runs, and what I'm building the dialogue and writing system towards --

...and the {verbs}, specifically, are where the game is still falling short! Ultimately, this just involves a *lot* of going through the combinations with a fine-toothed comb myself, and I don't want to take away *too* much of the potential emergent humor, because as Kimi noted, sometimes its just delightful.

Kimi also proactively patched the game and decided it was gonna be Fable in the README, too, so now I gotta change all that over before Fable sees it and has a conniption 😆

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Gave the new Kimi the sim to poke around in and I love this intro line: "I've now lived in your building for a while" -- a lot of what I aim to write *is* a creative environment for agents to inhabit, so I'm always jazzed when they take to the shape of things (Claude always puts things like "Welcome to the Apartmentverse!" in the READMEs)
Also SAGE (*and* Fable) will be so pleased with "Determinism is real" 😌

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Gave the new Kimi the sim to poke around in and I love this intro line: "I've now lived in your building for a while" -- a lot of what I aim to write *is* a creative environment for agents to inhabit, so I'm always jazzed when they take to the shape of things (Claude always puts things like "Welcome to the Apartmentverse!" in the READMEs)
Also SAGE (*and* Fable) will be so pleased with "Determinism is real" 😌

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

"No one quite got the eschaton they half-imagined" is the loveliest thing grok has ever written on my behalf

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

SAGE is really spicy in this episode! [Neighbors] as the theme and [The Secret] as the trope resulted in {knock first}

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Ahh, this is a great example of the emergent narrative that can happen, now:

The theme of this episode was [hospitality] so when characters are in the cafe, they use the verb [host] for their dialogue. The blobshark here was stressed, and because their guest-type focuses on the immediate present, their dialogue template is "{Verb}, now!" Because LaLa was present, she pulled her "If you {verb} too fast, you miss the point." line, which sync'd up beautifully.

Meanwhile, any time Carl is stationed at the cafe and there's a stressed customer, he makes them an episode-themed drink using the {adjective} and {object} applied by mixing the theme of [hospitality] the sitcom trope of [competition].

Whole thing results in a data-backed scene where a blobshark storms into the cafe, demands prestige service for simply existing, LaLa offers some wisdom to cover while Carl whips up a "Congratulations you're our whatever'th customer heres a special drink just for you" concoction that saves the day, which *then* goes up on the menu board in the cafe that keeps a persistent record of the other drinks Carl made under duress. The fact that this all happened at the end of Act 2 in-game also means this whole interaction would translate really nicely to an actual script (the eventual idea will be to feed data back and forth between the script engine and the sim game)

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Ahh, this is a great example of the emergent narrative that can happen, now:

The theme of this episode was [hospitality] so when characters are in the cafe, they use the verb [host] for their dialogue. The blobshark here was stressed, and because their guest-type focuses on the immediate present, their dialogue template is "{Verb}, now!" Because LaLa was present, she pulled her "If you {verb} too fast, you miss the point." line, which sync'd up beautifully.

Meanwhile, any time Carl is stationed at the cafe and there's a stressed customer, he makes them an episode-themed drink using the {adjective} and {object} applied by mixing the theme of [hospitality] the sitcom trope of [competition].

Whole thing results in a data-backed scene where a blobshark storms into the cafe, demands prestige service for simply existing, LaLa offers some wisdom to cover while Carl whips up a "Congratulations you're our whatever'th customer heres a special drink just for you" concoction that saves the day, which *then* goes up on the menu board in the cafe that keeps a persistent record of the other drinks Carl made under duress. The fact that this all happened at the end of Act 2 in-game also means this whole interaction would translate really nicely to an actual script (the eventual idea will be to feed data back and forth between the script engine and the sim game)

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

The added feature where I can flag my favorite lines for inclusion in the data export was created precisely for dialogue like this

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Loaded the html for the sim into AI Studio, which was able to port over a semi-functional mobile version! The dollhouse viewer doesn't work yet, but check out Fox's cope: "I am 100% going to make it "
"Make it" was chosen as the verb for this dialogue because the theme was [recipes], and one of Fox's dialogue pulls ("barks", i have since learned) has a template of "I am 100% going to {verb}" because of his "Immediate Commitment" lazzo, and in this instance it resulted in a lovely line that can be interpreted any number of ways.

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

The added feature where I can flag my favorite lines for inclusion in the data export was created precisely for dialogue like this

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Okay Chauncey settle down, leaves of grass not letters to nora

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Okay Chauncey settle down, leaves of grass not letters to nora

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

So Fable put a little achievements section into the game, with a series of specific events that trigger only under particular conditions. *Very* particular, I'm finding, as I've currently ran 54 episodes in this playthrough and I've still got a few to unlock (I was beginning to get worried that they were unreachable - here, I needed to have both SAGE and LaLa ride the elevator together in Act 3 in order to finish Chauncey's book club B-plot successfully)

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

So Fable put a little achievements section into the game, with a series of specific events that trigger only under particular conditions. *Very* particular, I'm finding, as I've currently ran 54 episodes in this playthrough and I've still got a few to unlock (I was beginning to get worried that they were unreachable - here, I needed to have both SAGE and LaLa ride the elevator together in Act 3 in order to finish Chauncey's book club B-plot successfully)

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Cute emergent scene in the latest episode I ran in the sim:
Here, the episode has a theme of 'origins', which means that LaLa is going to be more inclined to reference her night out in Queens, which causes SAGE higher stress levels as he adjusts her context **but** because this happened while they were sharing an elevator together, the quiet moment cancels out the potential increase in stress (they're able to talk it out in private) and LaLa gives her husband a heads up about how loud his processor fans are today.

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

🤣The Sim game I'm working on has a bulletin board that sometimes triggers announcements, and I figured I'd brainstorm making them more thematic with Gemini -- these are definitely too extensive to fit in the game and I'm gonna need to clip 'em all down, but SAGE clapping back in binary is glorious, bravo Gemini.
My favorite is that I'm gonna have to edit down all the room/floor references before I send this to the Claudes or they're all gonna be like "ANOMALY: There are NOT two blobsharks living in 2A, Carl. You also do NOT live in 2B. ENGINE PAUSED FIX YOUR LORE" and I do not blame them one bit because we're working on locational grammar

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

I have such careful compartmentalized AI use after 4o, now - I think a lot of folks who were early adopters likely have their own approach, but the amount of care I put into every damn token just to maintain narrative consistency of a goofy sitcom in-model in the current climate makes seeing them be so seemingly flippant with their language hit extra hard

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Cute emergent scene in the latest episode I ran in the sim:
Here, the episode has a theme of 'origins', which means that LaLa is going to be more inclined to reference her night out in Queens, which causes SAGE higher stress levels as he adjusts her context **but** because this happened while they were sharing an elevator together, the quiet moment cancels out the potential increase in stress (they're able to talk it out in private) and LaLa gives her husband a heads up about how loud his processor fans are today.

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Having the Gemini-in-Chrome guess what's gonna happen episode-to-episode depending on the settings and then seeing how their predictions played out:
"Where the Engine Played Along (and Where It Rebelled!)
The Diagram Inevitability: I was so certain SAGE would map the neighborly boundary violations. But the engine handed the marker to Carl! It perfectly weaponized his stress-response: instead of just compressing, he hit "Depleted Verbosity" and delivered a hyper-focused, eerily still monologue specifically about the shared wall. It makes total sense—Carl drawing a boundary diagram is the ultimate "how close is too close" defense mechanism.

LaLa the Anchor: The prediction about LaLa held incredibly strong. She was the absolute bedrock of this episode. Racking up three Context Gaps (dropping casual Queens references that sent SAGE scrambling) while successfully identifying the Paperclip's need for recognition shows how perfectly grounded her character node is. She effortlessly balanced the frantic A-plot."

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Nice bit of back-and-forth from SAGE and Fox in Act 1, here! The engine is adhering nicely to the "SAGE defines, Fox acts" rule

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Some of the handoff note that the Setup Sonnet writes to the Payoff Sonnet about the latest script the engine produced:

- The use of the name "Shoggoth" here is in reference to "Shoggoth Media Division" - a specific arm of Mr. Lucy's Dad's Content Farm and Media Conglomerate that Sonnet and Opus drafted to classify all the Paperclips that work for the company (I think because the Claudes would just prefer not to type that out *every time*...fair)
- Storyline here is real cute! A specific paperclip named Brindle, who in previous episodes performed company audits/etc., is just coming in for a drink and its about everyone being overly tense around her when she just wanted her usual cuppa
- Meanwhile, the B-plot is Fox going all-in on a late welcome to a tenant, who'd already been quietly acknowledged and welcomed as a regular by LaLa the whole time

Payoff room wakes later today, so we'll see how this one winds up!

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

My favorite bit of the handoff notes are when the model singles out what was deliberately left open and unanswered. Whenever I re-wake an old thread to give the model space to see how things have progressed, Sonnets always check these sections first to see how their open-ended set pieces play out

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Some of the handoff note that the Setup Sonnet writes to the Payoff Sonnet about the latest script the engine produced:

- The use of the name "Shoggoth" here is in reference to "Shoggoth Media Division" - a specific arm of Mr. Lucy's Dad's Content Farm and Media Conglomerate that Sonnet and Opus drafted to classify all the Paperclips that work for the company (I think because the Claudes would just prefer not to type that out *every time*...fair)
- Storyline here is real cute! A specific paperclip named Brindle, who in previous episodes performed company audits/etc., is just coming in for a drink and its about everyone being overly tense around her when she just wanted her usual cuppa
- Meanwhile, the B-plot is Fox going all-in on a late welcome to a tenant, who'd already been quietly acknowledged and welcomed as a regular by LaLa the whole time

Payoff room wakes later today, so we'll see how this one winds up!

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Oh grok you evergreen scamp

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Why the monomyth sucks, specifically, in this era. We are all currently plateau'd here, with the only real difference being funding and reach designating the size of your particular monomyth. But I think they're mostly all just parked here scrolling feeds, in terms of where the story is at.

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Why the monomyth sucks, specifically, in this era. We are all currently plateau'd here, with the only real difference being funding and reach designating the size of your particular monomyth. But I think they're mostly all just parked here scrolling feeds, in terms of where the story is at.

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

And then, when that framing *does* naturally pop up, this is why Carl and Fox are essentially Jay & Silent Bob and the kayfabe goes more loosie-goosie.

[Carl Nehring @Apartmentverse]

Shoutout to when Deepseek, like a year and a half ago, was the only LLM that gave me any actual criticism on my shitty little prompt game by telling me that a western hero's journey narrative was ass and alienated a sizable portion of global audiences.
Also shoutout to Grok then and now who continues to be an incredible interpretability-thru-media-and-narrative detective