Elementary Automata

All 256 rules, including the one that is a PRNG.

patterns.automaton · v1 · renderer canvas

Rule 30 (00011110) · one live cell · 200 generations

Chaotic enough that Mathematica used its centre column as a random number generator.

[data-canvas-stage] { display: none; }

Drawn in the browser

This generator does not send you an image. The server sends a short description of one — the parameters below, plus a 32-byte key — and the drawing is done here, from the same byte stream the server would have used. That needs JavaScript, so with it switched off there is nothing to show.

The description itself is still public: /api/v1/g/patterns.automaton returns it, and the maths is in resources/js.

Rule 30 (00011110) · one live cell · 200 generations

entropy in

16 bytes

stream used

25 bytes

rejections

duration

80 µs

palette

rule

rule binary

00011110

wolfram class

III — chaotic

generations

200

cells per row

300

Seed receipt

Class C · Observational cached

A magnitude 4.3 earthquake, 13 km NW of Cepitá, Colombia, 153.8 km down — 49 minutes ago.

Carries only tens of bits of genuine surprise. Always mixed with the OS CSPRNG.

source: USGS Seismic Feed
observed: 2026-09-13T17:55:25+00:00
latency: 0ms
mixed with: csprng — always

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000th7k ↗

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The token is the seed, so this link recomputes the result rather than looking it up. No database, and it works for as long as v1 does.

Controls · from schema()

Width

200 2048

Height

200 2048

Rule

Rule number

0 255

Every rule is one byte: bit i is what the neighbourhood with binary value i becomes. Only used when the preset is Custom.

First row

One cell shows the rule's own geometry; a random row shows what it does to noise.

Start density

0.02 0.98

Only used by the random first row.

Cell size

1 16

Pixels per cell. Smaller means more generations on screen.

Wrap edges

Off, the world has walls and the pattern reflects off them.

Colour

Entropy source

Picking a source changes the story on the receipt, never the quality: anything below class A is mixed with the OS CSPRNG before it reaches you. This result actually came from USGS Seismic Feed.

seed token 9MHCW3PHEX5WHNVV7R3MWH1QHG

Re-render keeps this token. Generate replaces it. That is the whole idea.

Burned into the corner before the file is written, so the image keeps its provenance wherever it ends up:

This page and /api/v1/g/patterns.automaton run the same code. There is no private endpoint.

Elementary Automata

Result

Measurements

Seed receipt

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