Aseprite AI Artist
Your coding agent, painting in the Aseprite window you already have open.
Not a generated PNG. Not a file changed behind your back. The document on your screen, one pixel at a time — and every step is one Ctrl+Z.
☔ 500×400 · 72 frames · 20 layers — drawn by Claude Opus 5.5 through this server.
Install · How it draws · Skills · Gallery
✨ What it feels like
"Draw me a 32×32 knight in the PICO-8 palette, then give him a 4-frame idle."
You type that, and watch it happen in Aseprite: a palette, a silhouette, shading, layers, a breathing idle, a tagged cycle. The agent looks at its own work after every step, and at the end tells you what it compromised on.
You stay in charge. Don't like the helmet? Ctrl+Z, or just say so.
Works with Claude Code, omp, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Cursor, VS Code and Windsurf. Best results so far: Claude Opus 5.5.
🚀 Install
You need Aseprite 1.3+ and Node 22.6+ (macOS, Linux or Windows).
1. The Aseprite extension — then quit and reopen Aseprite:
npx @pebbly/aseprite-ai-artist install-extension
2. Your agent:
/plugin marketplace add with-pebbly/aseprite-ai-artist
/plugin install aseprite@aseprite-ai-artist
omp plugin marketplace add with-pebbly/aseprite-ai-artist
omp plugin install aseprite@aseprite-ai-artist
npx @pebbly/aseprite-ai-artist install codex # or gemini, cursor, --all
Your config is backed up first; --dry-run shows the change.
3. Check it — restart your agent, then:
npx @pebbly/aseprite-ai-artist doctor
All ticks means you're ready. Updating? Run step 1 again. Odd setups (Steam, custom folders, Windows paths) are in docs/INSTALL.md.
For CI or a batch of assets, the server can run Aseprite itself with no window:
npx @pebbly/aseprite-ai-artist serve --headless --aseprite /path/to/aseprite
Nothing is on disk until the agent saves, and it never touches a file your editor has open. It is never a fallback: if your window isn't attached, the agent asks instead of quietly switching.
🎨 How it draws
Ask /aseprite:studio for anything and it runs the whole job:
| Stage | What happens | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Connect | Checks Aseprite is attached and reads what's open. If it isn't, it stops — it never edits files behind your back. |
| 2 | Brief | Only for open-ended requests: size, palette, view, light — one message, one answer. |
| 3 | Concept | For anything new: writes the design down and gives you a prompt for an image model. Send back a concept sheet, or say "continue without". |
| 4 | Draw | Silhouette first, written as a text grid (below), then shading. |
| 5 | Animate | Splits limbs onto layers, plans key poses and timing, draws each frame, tags the cycles. |
| 6 | Review | Looks, validates, fixes — two rounds, and it tells you if a third wouldn't help. |
| 7 | Export | Spritesheet + atlas, GIF or PNGs for your engine. |
After every step that changed pixels, it looks at the result before moving on.
🔤 The grid loop
New in 0.5.0. The agent doesn't draw with circles and rectangles — it types the frame out, one character per pixel, and draws that text in one call. To fix something, it reads the canvas back in the same format and changes only the characters that are wrong.
It sees the whole shape while writing it, so silhouettes stay even, limbs keep their length between frames, and an edit never spills into its neighbours. Animation is the same trick: copy the last frame's rows, move the arm, draw.
Early signal, not a measurement: with the same model and prompts, the mage benchmark went 3 → 4/10 and the road 1 → 3/10; the tree stayed at 2 (compare them).
🧰 Skills
studio picks these for you. Call one directly when you know the step you want
— as /aseprite:<name> in Claude Code and omp, or just ask elsewhere.
| Skill | For | Try |
|---|---|---|
🎬 studio |
anything — it plans and runs the rest | /aseprite:studio a fox, 32×32, sleeping loop |
📝 brief |
a vague idea | /aseprite:brief a cosy tavern keeper |
🖼️ concept |
a design or storyboard before drawing | /aseprite:concept a fire mage, 4-frame walk |
📄 new |
a fresh document set up right | /aseprite:new 64×64, PICO-8 |
🎨 palette |
colour: a retro look, ramps, cleanup | /aseprite:palette give this a Game Boy look |
✏️ draw |
making the thing, text included | /aseprite:draw a fox curled up asleep |
🌗 shade |
flat art that needs light | /aseprite:shade light from the upper left |
🦴 rig |
splitting a character for animation | /aseprite:rig split the knight |
🏃 animate |
walk, idle, attack cycles | /aseprite:animate 8-frame walk cycle |
🧱 tileset |
terrain and autotiles | /aseprite:tileset grass-to-dirt, 16px |
🔍 review |
an honest critique | /aseprite:review why does this look off? |
🩹 fix |
changing art without wrecking it | /aseprite:fix make him more menacing |
📦 export |
files for your engine | /aseprite:export spritesheet for Godot |
🗂️ submit |
sharing it in the gallery | /aseprite:submit |
In Claude Code and omp, four specialists take stages off the main agent: palette-smith, rig-builder, animation-director and the read-only pixel-critic.
🏆 Which model?
| Model | Drew | How it went |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | the rainy bookshop up top | Best so far — 72 frames, 20 layers, one session plus a few notes. |
Codex CLI gpt-5.6-terra |
the mascot | Strong, after five rounds of critique. |
| Others | — | Untested. Send us a sprite! |
Scored, repeatable runs live on the benchmark.
🗂️ Gallery and benchmark
Everything drawn with the plugin — with its prompts, models and .aseprite
source — is at pixeli.pebbly.space. The
benchmark puts every model and plugin version through the same three fixed
prompts and scores them against written criteria.
Made something? Ask your agent for /aseprite:submit — it packages the files
and opens the pull request.
🔧 Under the hood
your agent ──MCP──▶ server ──▶ bridge ──▶ Aseprite extension
- 18 tools, grouped by noun (
draw,look,layer,frame,export…) instead of ninety — every tool costs context on every turn. Reference. - A rulebook in
rules/— palettes, shading, outlines, timing — served over MCP, so every client gets the same craft knowledge. - Safe by default. Every action is one undo step. With Aseprite detached,
tools refuse instead of editing files on disk. Everything binds to
127.0.0.1. Details · security.
🛠️ Development
pnpm install && pnpm run build
pnpm test # TypeScript
pnpm run test:extension # the Lua handlers, inside a real Aseprite
pnpm gallery:check # gallery and benchmark data
pnpm web:dev # the site, locally
Read AGENTS.md before changing anything — it lists the rules that aren't negotiable and the Lua gotchas that already cost someone a day.
📜 Licence
MIT — see LICENSE. Aseprite is a trademark of Igara Studio S.A.; this project isn't affiliated with them.