Esquisse ✍️

Quick AI workflow prototyping.

Esquisse is a light and quick tool for when you need to prototype a generative AI workflow, one level or two above basic prompt engineering.

Draft and test AI ideas, move up from basic prompts to your own mini AI apps.

I (https://github.com/juliendorra) originally built this web-tool so my design students could prototype mini AI-apps in a couple of hours: a fantasy football club generator, with logo and jersey; a user interview template that auto-update according to answers; an idea helper for products; and more!

Why create this mini AI-app builder?

To give users a malleable and generic way to draft AI usages one level or two up from just "prompting". Without code, my design students managed to build AI pipelines… and also asked for a few updates that I added and tested with them 😅

Install and use

You can use Esquisse on you own computer by cloning and running the repo: Local usage

Or you can easily deploy on Deno Deploy: Deploy

You will need OpenAI and Stability API keys.

How to create and share mini AI apps?

• Adds text and image generation blocks
• Reference and use the result from a text block in another text or image block top 'Data' cell by using either #name (no white space, for example a single word block name) or [name of the block] (white space allowed in the name of the block)
• You can mix and match several text results with static text: head face [character for head] #style
• ⟳ button refresh a block result by sending a new request
• The structure of your AI cells is saved in the URL: names, data text, transform text. Share the URL to share the structure (not the results). You can go back to reload a previous structure.

Set UI/UX Hints on blocks

• 📥 button set the block as an entry block, only the data cell is writable.
• 🔒 button set the block as an locked block, no cell is writable.

These are purely UI/UX hints to help you organize your mini-app, and can be reversed any time. These cells keeps updating normally when the results they reference update.

Examples:

Building an AI Cadavre Exquis app in 12 minutes (sped up!)

Esquisse.Building.an.AI.Cadavre.Exquis.app.in.12.minutes.-.01.mp4

[early version] Screenshot of a simple app that generates three images combining a character and scene as paintings from the the 16th, 17th and 19th century:

Students at Strate in the process of creating apps:

Local dev

• install Deno locally https://docs.deno.com/runtime/manual/

• clone the repo locally

• create your local .env file based on .env.SAMPLE

• add your OpenAI and Stability API keys

• add at least one local user

• for quick local dev you can copy the users from the .env.SAMPLE

• deno cache main.ts

• deno task dev

• visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ to use

Deploy on Deno Deploy

The code has been written with deployement on Deno Deploy in mind, in a few easy steps:

Environnement variables: API Keys and users

• Add your OpenAI and Stability API keys in your Deno Deploy Settings / Environnements Variables
• Add users for your instance. Prefixed user name as key and Bcrypt hashed password as value.
• Prefix the user name with USER_
• You can use a tool like https://bcrypt.online to generate the password hashes

Deploy

• link the repo in Deno Deploy Dashboard in automatic mode
• pick main.ts as the entry point