3D Math Playground
Mal Duffin recently built a web-based 3D Math Playground that turns machine learning concepts into interactive visualizations you can explore right in your browser. You’ll find interactive components like gradient descent parabolas, loss curves, activation surfaces all rendered in real-time. It’s a tool for visual learners to see abstract math.
Mal, a longtime indie game dev now shifting toward AI/ML, created this during a Bolt.new hackathon with Half Baked. He “vibe-coded” the whole thing using Bolt’s AI assistant spitballing ideas, pasting in console logs for help, and stitching it all together with A-Frame and Three.js. The result showcases what AI-assisted dev can actually look like when you're just trying to learn and build. Mal’s looking for feedback and ideas, so dive in, break stuff, or just poke around the markup.
This demo passes the vibe check (pun intended) and we love Mal's willingness to try new tools, workflows, and to openly share his findings with the community. If you’re curious about the process or just want some dev-to-dev honesty, be sure to read Mal’s own blurb below.
I recently joined a Bolt vibe-coding hackathon and the comment “Make something for you” stuck with me. I’ve been shifting my focus from XR to AI, and while I’ve been digging into Python, libraries, and math videos, I've found that visualization (difficult) math is both satisfying and important. So I built this app to visualize a few of those 3D ideas and allow for interactive exploration.
The neat part is that I decided to vibe-coded everything (i.e. code, models, UI) just to see how far I could push the workflow. Bolt’s chat was great for thinking through problems and debugging; more than once I just pasted the console log in and said, “Okay, what’s going on here?” I used A-Frame so I could quickly read the scene setup when things broke, and my Three.js background helped when Bolt pulled in outdated examples.
The global and project knowledge settings were also very useful for guidance towards appropriate libraries and practices. In the end, this project was helpful for me to visualize math concepts, try out a new workflow, and get a feel for what AI-assisted development can actually do.
- Live Demo: https://ai3d.bolt.host
- Author: Mal Duffin