Show HN: A desktop fly drawn to the scent of vibecode
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- DesktopFly renders a procedural 3D fruit fly on a macOS overlay, with behavior driven by a 668-neuron, ~19,000-synapse circuit from the FlyWire v783 (FAFB) connectome simulated at 1 kHz using a leaky-integrate-and-fire model.
- The fork's new twist gives the fly a sense of 'smell' by scanning the disk for vibecode markers (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .cursor/rules, .kiro/steering, and ~40 more), with each open project emitting odor strength scaled by how many marked repos it contains.
- Escape behavior is not scripted: cursor approach feeds the real LC4 and LPLC2 looming-detector neurons, and the fly only flees when the Giant Fiber spikes through ~1,200 synapses of feedforward inhibition — yielding ~4 ms latency that matches the real animal.
- The interactive brain window displays 23,210 of 139,255 FlyWire neuron soma positions colored by super-class, and clicking a region optogenetically stimulates the ~60 nearest circuit neurons for 400 ms, with the fly reacting to whatever the downstream real wiring produces.
- The app requires no permissions or entitlements, running on macOS 13+ with Swift 5.9+; it senses cursor position, window frames, click-as-tap events, and thermal state entirely through permission-free APIs on a click-through overlay.
- Body-to-brain feedback closes the loop: gait rhythm drives the circuit's proprioceptive neurons in phase with the legs, fast cursor motion stimulates wind-sensing partners, window top edges act as landing ledges, and a circadian rhythm produces dawn/dusk activity peaks, midday siesta, and night sleep.
- The data is openly licensed: code is MIT while derived data files are CC BY-NC 4.0, and the project cites Dorkenwald et al., Nature 634, 124–138 (2024) and Schlegel et al., Nature 634, 139–152 (2024) as the underlying connectome sources.
Why it matters: For hobbyist developers and neuroscience tinkerers, a permission-free macOS build packages a 668-neuron, ~19,000-synapse FlyWire circuit into a live 1 kHz simulation — demonstrating that the published adult Drosophila connectome can now run interactively on a consumer laptop with no specialized hardware or supercomputer access.
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