`pixelart`

Pixel art the way the shipmates logo is made — a limited palette upscaled by a whole-number factor with nearest-neighbour, never smoothed.

Render pixel art — a static PNG or an animated GIF — from a small JSON spec of a character grid and a limited palette, upscaled by a whole-number factor with nearest-neighbour and no smoothing. This is the technique behind the shipmates logo, made reusable. Reach for it whenever a task calls for a small hard-edged asset in that style — an icon, sprite, favicon, badge, or twinkling animation — rather than a photographic image or a vector. Never a slash command; the crew reach for it implicitly when the intent calls for one.

What it does

pixelart turns a small JSON spec — a limited palette plus a grid of single-character rows — into a crisp pixel-art asset: a static PNG, or an animated GIF when the spec carries frames. It is a self-contained Python renderer that provisions its one dependency (Pillow) itself the first time it runs, so a run produces the image deterministically — nothing to install — rather than leaning on a model to imagine one.

It reproduces the technique behind the shipmates logo, which is a 48×48 grid on ~39 colours scaled up ×14 with nearest-neighbour and no smoothing. Every upscale here is Image.NEAREST, so each logical pixel becomes a solid block — hard-edged and aliased on purpose, never a gradient. It is a tool, not a command: the crew reach for it on their own when the natural artifact is an icon, sprite, favicon, or badge in that style.

Examples

A few things pixelart can produce, each from a small spec of its own. If you've set prefers-reduced-motion, any animation shows its final frame instead.

A pixel-art sunset seascape: a banded amber sky, a glowing low sun with its light glittering on a deep-blue sea, a small sailboat in silhouette on the horizon, and a few birds. — A sunset voyage — a banded sky, a glowing sun glittering on the sea, and a sailboat on the horizon, in ~40 colours.

A pixel-art ringed gas giant: a banded amber planet shaded like a lit sphere with a dark limb, encircled by a thin tilted ring, over a dark starfield. — A ringed gas giant — a banded atmosphere shaded as a lit sphere, a tilted ring, and a starfield.

A pixel-art night scene: a glowing moon and stars over three depth-layered mountain silhouettes, a snow-capped central peak, and two pine trees. — A moonlit mountain night — depth-layered ridges, a clean snow cap, and pines under a glowing moon.

An animated pixel-art sailboat bobbing on scrolling waves under a warm sky, the low sun glittering on the water. — A sailboat bobbing on scrolling waves — the animated cousin of the static seascape, an eight-frame loop.

An animated pixel-art lighthouse at night, its lamp sweeping a bright warm beam back and forth across a starry sky above a shimmering sea. — A lighthouse sweeping its beam across the night — a bright additive light cone over a shimmering sea.

An animated pixel-art night sky with a crescent moon and twinkling stars, a shooting star streaking across with a glowing tail. — A shooting star crossing a twinkling sky past a crescent moon — a glowing tail, looped over eight frames.

How the crew reach for it

Tools are opt-in. Add it at install time with shipmates install --harness <name> --with-tools pixelart, or omit the flag and pick it from the interactive list. Once installed it sits alongside the crew as a capability they invoke implicitly; there is no slash command to type.

The renderer and its instructions travel together, so wherever the tool lands the agent has both the pixelart.py script and the spec format it needs to drive it — a grid and palette for a still, or frames and durations for an animation, with --poster to drop a reduced-motion still beside a GIF.

Reference

Name: pixelart
Description: Render pixel art — a static PNG or an animated GIF — from a small JSON spec of a character grid and a limited palette, upscaled by a whole-number factor with nearest-neighbour and no smoothing. This is the technique behind the shipmates logo, made reusable. Reach for it whenever a task calls for a small hard-edged asset in that style — an icon, sprite, favicon, badge, or twinkling animation — rather than a photographic image or a vector. Never a slash command; the crew reach for it implicitly when the intent calls for one.
Bundled files: pixelart.py
Install: shipmates install --harness <name> --with-tools pixelart

Where this lives

This page is generated from toolbox/pixelart/tool.md. Opt in at install with --with-tools pixelart and the installer copies the tool — instructions and bundled files — into the harness's skills tree.

View toolbox/pixelart/tool.md on GitHub

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