AI Town: Turn Claude Chat History Into a Pixel Art City

AI Town is a web app that transforms Claude conversation export data into a pixel-art city visualization. Each conversation becomes a building sized by message count, and pixel characters wander the streets representing messages. Built with Next.js 16, HTML Canvas, Cloudflare R2, and no database, the app processes ZIP exports entirely client-side for privacy — only anonymized metadata (message counts, timestamps, color seeds) is sent to the server. The post details the technical implementation including a spiral layout algorithm for building placement, a layered Canvas 2D renderer running at 60fps with tile culling, a simple NPC state machine, and dynamic OG image generation. The author also shares lessons learned from using Claude Code as the primary development partner throughout the project.