PixelLabRat

A local, project-based desktop app and MCP server for generating style-consistent pixel art with the PixelLab API.

Point it at a project, describe what you want, and it keeps every asset — characters, objects, tilesets, UI, animations — on the same visual style. There's an embedded Claude assistant for hands-off art direction, and the whole thing doubles as an MCP server so you can drive it from Claude Code.

It's built for game dev, where you end up needing dozens of matching sprites and don't want each one to look like it came from a different game.

What it does

• Per-project style contract. A style description, perspective and transparency settings, and up to four reference images that get applied to every generation automatically. Generate until you like a look, promote it to a reference, and everything after that matches it.

• The full PixelLab toolset, wrapped so it's actually usable from one prompt:

  • Text-to-pixel-art (Pixflux) and style-matched generation

  • Characters with up to 8 directional rotations, and animations per direction

  • Objects (8-direction, or single-view with a candidate picker)

  • Tilesets — top-down and sidescroller — plus standalone isometric tiles

  • UI elements (buttons, bars, panels, icons)

  • Image ops: background removal, upscale-to-pixel-art, rotate, resize, text-described edits, and inpainting with a mask you paint by hand

• Asset library with review. Everything lands as a draft you can approve, reject, rate, or promote to a style reference. Click any thumbnail to see it big; animations play back full size.

• An embedded assistant ("Art-Director"). A Claude agent that drives the same actions you do and keeps a per-project STYLE_GUIDE.md as memory. It uses your Claude Code login or subscription if you have one, so no separate API key is required.

• MCP server. The same project-aware actions exposed as MCP tools, so Claude Code or any MCP client can generate art directly.

A project is just a folder — a small manifest, a few JSON files, and the PNGs — so there's no database to manage and you can check assets into git alongside your game.

Related MCP server: MCP Asset Generator

Requirements

• Bun — the repo is a Bun workspace

• A PixelLab account and API token (https://pixellab.ai/account)

• Optional: Claude Code or a Claude API key, if you want the in-app assistant

Getting started

bun install
cp .env.example .env     # put your PixelLab token in API_KEY

The generated PixelLab client is checked in, so that's all you need. (bun run gen:api regenerates it from API.json and is only relevant if you're updating the vendored API spec.)

Then run the desktop app:

bun run app:seed         # optional: creates a "Slime World" demo project
bun run app:dev

Projects live under projects/ in dev, or the app's user-data directory when packaged. Set PIXELLABRAT_PROJECTS_DIR to point the app and the MCP server at the same folder.

If the app fails to start with Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'isPackaged'), your shell has ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1 set (some IDE terminals do this). Start it with env -u ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE bun run app:dev.

The embedded assistant

The chat panel (the ✨ Art-Director button) runs a Claude agent with tool access. It can generate, review, manage the style contract, and check your balance — the same things you'd do by hand — and it writes notes to the project's STYLE_GUIDE.md so it stays more consistent over time.

Auth is picked automatically:

1. Logged into Claude Code? Nothing to do. The app detects it and uses your Claude subscription.

2. Otherwise, the "Connect Claude" button runs claude setup-token and stores the token encrypted in your OS keychain (Electron safeStorage), so there's no .env editing.

3. API key: set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in .env for pay-per-token use. It takes precedence if both are present.

The subscription path goes through the Claude Agent SDK and is meant for personal use — don't ship a multi-user app on a single subscription token.

Using it from Claude Code (MCP)

You can make art entirely from a Claude Code conversation — there's a full walkthrough in docs/using-with-claude-code.md, an art-brief template for bootstrapping a project, and two skills under .claude/skills/: pixel-art (the generation workflow) and pixel-cleanup (find and remove stray edge artifacts from a sprite with ImageMagick). Copy them to ~/.claude/skills/ to use them from any repo.

The repo ships a .mcp.json, so Claude Code picks up the pixellabrat server automatically when started from the project directory. To register it manually:

claude mcp add pixellabrat -- bun run /abs/path/to/PixelLabRat/packages/mcp/src/server.ts

The server exposes the full project-aware toolset (28 tools) — anything the app or the in-app assistant can do, Claude Code can do too. A selection:

Project layout

A Bun monorepo, TypeScript throughout. The PixelLab v2 client is generated from API.json.

packages/
  core/    HTTP client, auth, the typed PixelLab wrapper, async job polling
  store/   the project store (folders + JSON), style contract, generation logic
  mcp/     the MCP server
  agent/   the embedded Claude agent (tools + system prompt)
  app/     the Electron + Vue 3 desktop frontend

A note on credits

Everything bills against PixelLab subscription generations, Pro endpoints included, so you don't have to top up USD credits. As a rough guide, Pixflux is about one generation and style-matched generation about twenty; characters and tilesets are the expensive ones. While an async job is still processing the API returns a placeholder usage value, so the app reads the real cost from the completed response.

Development

bun run typecheck      # core/store/mcp/agent
bun run store:check    # headless store test, no API calls
bun run mcp:check      # MCP round-trip, no API calls
bun run agent:check    # agent tools + prompt (add --live for one real turn)
bun run smoke          # show your balance (free); --generate runs a full transfer
bun run app:build      # production build

The *:check scripts run offline so you can iterate without spending generations.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please keep things typechecking (bun run typecheck) and avoid spending real generations in tests.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.