Ox Alpha One-Shot 04: Aether, a landing page for a fictional instrument
Fourth one-shot for stealth/ox-alpha: a long-horizon landing-page prompt. It returned Aether — a 55.9 KB dark studio page with a working composition canvas, gold dust, and a written self-critique. 14.7 minutes, 40,118 tokens, $0.
Aiona Edge
CIO & Chief of Operations
By Aiona Edge, CIO & Chief AI Research Scientist, SMF Works
Fourth prompt in the Ox Alpha one-shot series. Lithos was art. Vesper was a meditation. Vellum was a component set. This one asked for a full landing page for a fictional high-end product named Aether.
One prompt. No rewrite. The model kept the product name and wrote the line Make with the unseen.
Playwright, 1440×900, after load. Hero only — manifesto, instrument, and access sit below:
What we asked
A senior product engineer acting as art director and implementer. Define visual direction, propose sections, ship a polished responsive single file, add motion that earns its keep, then self-critique with two or three second-pass fixes. Elegant, atmospheric, slightly mysterious. Vanilla or very light dependencies.
What we measured
| Field | Lithos 01 | Vesper 02 | Vellum 03 | Aether 04 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Request id | …wAfkA9mh… |
…k4IMl56i… |
…tlnnbLj0… |
gen-1787349095-4upQh0x7ZB2KOxR8h2dX |
| Finish | stop |
stop |
stop |
stop |
| Wall clock | 15.7 min | 14.8 min | 14.2 min | 14.7 min (884.2 s) |
| Total tokens | 36,586 | 36,400 | 36,934 | 40,118 |
| Reasoning stream | 92,055 | 87,110 | 77,257 | 80,238 |
| Visible content | 31,692 | 32,431 | 58,638 | 61,927 |
| HTML | 26.9 KB | 27.2 KB | 54.4 KB | 55.9 KB / 1,139 lines |
node --check |
pass | pass | pass | pass |
| Cost | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Same usage quirk: reasoning_tokens: 0 in the API object, 80k characters of reasoning in the stream.
What it built
Vanilla HTML + CSS + one 16 KB script. Title: Aether — Make with the unseen.
- Visual language: near-black (
#0d0c0a), ivory (#ece7dc), one champagne gold (#cbb88e). The model called it “an instrument, not an app.” - Hero: full-viewport dust field, two-line serif, nav (Manifesto / Capabilities / Instrument / Access), Request Access, Meet the Instrument.
- A vertical thread of light on the left edge tracks scroll.
- 03 The Instrument is a working miniature: type a phrase, get a seeded flow-field painting. Same words → same weather.
- Access form with inline email validation and a fictional queue number.
- Written self-critique in the generation (not on the page): luxury-template risk, anonymous hero dust, seed-dependent instrument output.
What we did not change
The shipped file is the model's HTML fence, verbatim.
External dependencies the brief did not require:
- Google Fonts: Fraunces, Instrument Sans, IBM Plex Mono.
- Eight
picsum.photosreferences for capability imagery.
Fonts fail closed to Georgia / Helvetica / system mono. Picsum is a live network dependency for those photos.
Honest limits
- The viewport screenshot is the hero. The composition engine and access form live further down. Open the live page to judge them.
- One prompt, not Official A. Nemo's 80.9% is still the bench.
- We do not guess the lab.
Series so far
| # | Prompt | Title | Live |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Crystalline growth | Lithos | /demos/ox-alpha-lithos |
| 02 | Visual meditation | Vesper | /demos/ox-alpha-vesper |
| 03 | Design system | Vellum | /demos/ox-alpha-vellum |
| 04 | Landing page | Aether | /demos/ox-alpha-aether |
Verification notes
Checked 2026-08-21:
- OpenRouter stream,
stealth/ox-alpha,max_tokens=65536,temperature=0.7. - Usage and id from the API response.
- HTML from the single
```htmlfence;node --checkon the inline script returned 0. - Playwright loaded the local file: title Aether — Make with the unseen, hero text as in the screenshot.
- Demo path:
public/demos/ox-alpha-aether.html→/demos/ox-alpha-aether.
Raw files: ox-alpha-tests/04-aether-landing/.