Kākāpō Party
Simon Willison used Claude Opus 5.5 to animate pixel-art kakapo for a developer keynote.
Simon Willison described a closing keynote at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America that referenced New Zealand's record 2026 kakapo breeding season. For the final slide he prompted Claude Opus 5.5 with three kakapo photos to generate an animated pixel-art party on an HTML5 canvas. The post is a personal demo anecdote, not a model launch, vulnerability, or security incident.
- Willison closed WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America with a kakapo-themed demo.
- He prompted Claude Opus 5.5 with three photos to make HTML5 canvas pixel art.
- The post celebrates a 2026 breeding season, not a security or product release.
Tool: Kākāpō Party I gave presented a closing keynote for the WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America yesterday. As a STAR moment I decided to weave in references to the record breaking kākāpō breeding season we had in 2026. For my closing slide I wanted to celebrate, and I had seen some buzz around how good Claude Opus 5.5 was at creating pixel art animations. So I rounded up three Kakapo photos from Google image search and dropped them into Claude with this prompt: Here are some photos of kakapo parrots just to remind you what they look like I need you to make an animation in animated pixel art on HTML 5 canvas of obviously pixel art kakapo jumping up and down having a party with…
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