Claude Opus 5.5 Medium ported a 3D application from Three.js to Vanilla JS with WebGL
Simon Willison had the Claude Opus 5.5 Medium model port his 3D web application from the Three.js library to Vanilla JavaScript with WebGL. According to him it succeeded, the result is functional, although the details differ from the original.
Independent LLM scene commentator Simon Willison created an interactive 3D application in the Three.js library featuring a sea slug (nudibranch) theme in the style of a Fabergé egg. He then asked the Claude Opus 5.5 Medium model, run in the regular Claude chat, to port the same application to Vanilla JavaScript using WebGL directly, without a dependency on Three.js.
According to Willison, the model handled the task — the resulting code works and visually resembles the original, although the results are not identical. Willison noted that he doesn't fully understand why the two versions differ in detail; the model's explanation of the differences is available in the attached conversation transcript. He personally considers the code in the Three.js version somewhat easier to understand, though he adds that he usually doesn't examine the code of similar 3D projects in depth.
Willison approached the experiment after being inspired by a comment on Paul Ford's article "The Web Is More Than Enough" on Hacker News. This is a one-off demonstration of the model's capabilities, not a systematic test or a published benchmark.
Why it matters
This is an informal, one-off demonstration by a single commentator, not a systematically verified test or an official announcement of the model's capabilities. For developers working with 3D graphics on the web, however, it does demonstrate that the Claude Opus 5.5 Medium model can rewrite non-trivial code between a high-level library and low-level WebGL, which can be a useful rough signal when considering removing library dependencies or refactoring similar code.
Relevant practical impact
What this means
For individuals
Shows that the Claude Opus 5.5 Medium model can rewrite non-trivial 3D code from the Three.js library into plain JavaScript with WebGL without using that library, which can serve as a rough indicator of a model's capabilities for refactoring or removing dependencies.
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