pxl: Pixel Art as Code
/pxl-pixel-art
An Agent Skill and zero-dependency CLI: the agent writes a compact .px.js file and gets PNGs, sprite sheets with JSON, animated GIFs and a live viewer.
- GitHub stars
- 374 (GitHub stars as of 2026-10-23)
- License
- MIT
- Last commit
- 2026/10/15
- By
- crsolver
Listed from the author's README. GameSkill has not run this end to end yet. Agent support and install steps are as documented by the author.
Install
git clone https://github.com/crsolver/claude-pxl.git ~/.claude/skills/pxl-pixel-artFor one project only, clone into .claude/skills/pxl-pixel-art instead.
npx github:crsolver/claude-pxl build art.px.jsPoint the agent at SKILL.md and tell it the CLI is node <path to pxl>/bin/pxl.js, or use the npx form.
Commands are copied from the project's README. Check the repository before running anything on your machine.
What you get
- A DSL with palettes and ramps, text-grid sprites, mirroring, auto-outline and palette-swap variants
- Primitives and brushes: rects, lines, circles, gradients, dithering, noise, tilemaps and a pixel font
- Animation as frame patches over a base sprite, exported as strips, JSON tags and GIFs
- Sprite sheets with TexturePacker-style JSON
- pxl serve: a live browser viewer that replays the painting step by step on every save
- Optional lighting: lamps, glow and normal-based relief
Good fit
- Game sprites, tiles, icons and small animated scenes that need to stay editable as code
- Recolors and variants: one line per palette swap
Not for
- Painting by hand: art is written as code, not drawn
Try this prompt
Draw a 16x16 slime sprite with a red recolor and a 4-frame idle animation, then put both in a sprite sheet.About this skill
pxl turns pixel art into code an agent can write and fix. A .px.js file defines a palette with one-character color keys and draws sprites as text grids. The CLI renders them to PNGs, sprite sheets with JSON and animated GIFs. With mirroring, auto-outline and palette swaps, an agent can draw half a sprite and get the full sprite plus its recolors.
The repository is itself the skill. SKILL.md describes the workflow, reference.md has the full API, and lighting.md is only loaded when needed. Errors point at file:line:col with "did you mean" hints, so the agent can fix its own mistakes. Ask it to start pxl serve to watch the art being painted in your browser.
Related
- Aseprite AI Artist drives Aseprite itself, for editing
.asepritefiles and layers. - Aseprite Draw and Aseprite Animate cover the same tasks inside Aseprite.
Requirements
- Node.js 22.18 or newer
Topics
FAQ
Works well with
Skills the author points to as related or as the better fit for neighbouring tasks.
Aseprite AI Artist
Your coding agent paints pixel art in the Aseprite window you already have open: draws, checks its work, animates and exports.
Aseprite Draw
Draw a sprite from silhouette to finished pixels, in the order that catches mistakes while they are still cheap — block in, check the silhouette, shade, outline, verify.
Aseprite Animate
Build an idle, walk, run or attack cycle from key poses, set timing that reads as motion rather than a metronome, tag it, and review it as a filmstrip.
Similar skills
Universal Modder
Skills, tools and a fal MCP that let Claude Code mod PC games you own: recon, reverse engineering, generated assets, in-game testing.
sprite-gen
Generate clean 2D game sprites and animation atlases: state rows, alpha cleanup, frame extraction, runtime atlases.
Create Game Assets
Plan, generate, source, normalize, and validate cohesive visual game assets.
Shader Programming
Write game shaders from cross-engine fundamentals — the vertex→fragment pipeline, coordinate spaces, UV math, and common 2D/3D effects (tint, UV scroll, dissolve, outline, fresnel rim, vignette) in GLSL with HLSL equivalents.