Stack~
18 October 2026 6 min Members ai design failure gimp

We drove GIMP from an AI agent. The art was the failure.

A socket bridge into a real GIMP 3.2.6, a 4,500 × 5,400 print canvas, and a round-trip error of 0.0648/255. The tooling worked. The design did not. Keep the calibration card.

By Clifton Morris

The bridge worked better than the design.

That is the whole post in one line, but it is worth unpacking, because the project is a clean example of a failure that is worth keeping — and of the one artifact from it that I now use for everything.

What we built

The goal was to design print artwork for garments by steering a real image editor from an agent, instead of generating a flat image and hoping.

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The proof pack — attachments

Included with the piece — 29 files, 1.2 MB. Sign in as a member to download.

Round 01 — typographic study 199 KB · sha256 82861a68
Round 01 — back study 182 KB · sha256 ba47db0c
The 0.0648/255 round-trip sheet 142 KB · sha256 fad3847a
The calibration card, previewed on black 100 KB · sha256 3c429d1c
The calibration card as submitted 110 KB · sha256 415d1664
One layer moved +340, −260 113 KB · sha256 f6497a77
Probe B — margins and alpha bbox 110 KB · sha256 547a62d5
The 280 × 368 template profile 93.2 KB · sha256 484fa360
  • Reader brief — put a calibration gate in front of print 00-reader-brief.md · 7.5 KB · sha256 a8c1c4c1
  • The round-trip gate (compare.py) bridge/compare.py · 3.2 KB · sha256 5690ff94
  • The bridge client (gimp_bridge.py) bridge/gimp_bridge.py · 3.3 KB · sha256 2f202c0f
  • The profile resolver (resolve_profile.py) bridge/resolve_profile.py · 5.9 KB · sha256 d18403f4
  • Compositor: back compositor/politics_tee_back.py · 6.9 KB · sha256 e1aef23f
  • Compositor: track 1 entrypoint compositor/politics_tee_track1.py · 6.7 KB · sha256 0006ecb0
  • Compositor: track 1 face compositor/politics_tee_track1_face.py · 8.6 KB · sha256 6a5460be
  • Compositor: track 1 front compositor/politics_tee_track1_front.py · 7.0 KB · sha256 b7b57323
  • Compositor: template module compositor/tee_template.py · 3.2 KB · sha256 7cfcbc2b
  • Compositor: types compositor/tee_types.py · 2.5 KB · sha256 f16fdb33
  • The bridge: protocol and 77 request types docs/doc-bridge.md · 11.9 KB · sha256 99a518c8
  • The compositor: elements to a layered .ora docs/doc-composition.md · 8.2 KB · sha256 94361722
  • The design-session runbook docs/doc-design-session.md · 12.4 KB · sha256 da268aca
  • The environment, as verified docs/doc-environment.md · 7.7 KB · sha256 09d3a1f0
  • Troubleshooting the bridge docs/doc-troubleshooting.md · 12.8 KB · sha256 10bd866b
  • Verification: the numbers, recomputed docs/doc-verification.md · 8.9 KB · sha256 3180baa8
  • Licence — personal use licence.md · 0.5 KB · sha256 cd1f7f1c
  • The apparel print specification print-spec.md · 13.8 KB · sha256 cfbfd537
  • How to reproduce the numbers reproduce.md · 2.6 KB · sha256 ae0fabf3
  • The template as machine-readable JSON template/tee-front-default.json · 11.0 KB · sha256 80d9aa7f
  • The parametric front-print template template/tee-front-default.md · 19.2 KB · sha256 dcdadfea
Revision notes

2026-10-18 — Operator's verdict recorded: the editor thesis does not survive, the calibration and the print template do.