Declare
List each asset, its prompt, its provider, and an optional final-art quality profile in one file.
You write the manifest.pixelkiln.manifest.jsonA build pipeline for generated pixel art
Fire once.
Ship every sprite
with receipts.
Declare the sprites you need in one manifest. PixelKiln prices the run offline, lets you choose among candidates, and records a SHA-256 hash for every file you ship.
Offline planningHard budgetsExact provenance
$pixelkiln plan --style base
PROJECTforge-kit
EST. COST2 generations
base/anvilcurrent
base/hammerrecoverable · free
base/tongsmissing · 1 gen
base/cruciblestale · 1 gen
PROVENANCE LOCKEDsha256 · 98f1…c42a
✓04generation providers
38composable commands
00LLM calls in the loop
You choose every image.
PixelKiln does the polling, hashing, and file placement the same way every time.
Declare it. Price it. Generate it.
Review it. Ship it.
One committed manifest drives every step. Each step says what it reads and what it writes.
Plan
Compare the manifest with the lockfile and the files on disk. The plan shows what costs money and what you can restore for free, and it makes no provider calls.
Reads the manifest, lockfile, and disk. Spends nothing.pixelkiln plan
Generate
Pass a budget and PixelKiln submits, polls, and downloads. It saves each remote id before polling, so a failed download is recoverable work and not a second charge.
Writes the lockfile and the downloaded files.pixelkiln gen --budget 120
Review
Choose from a local candidate sheet, touch a sprite up in the gallery's editor, then approve the exact pixels you ship.
Writes your choice and approval to the lockfile.pixelkiln pick
Ship
Build atlases, Aseprite sheet JSON, Godot SpriteFrames, and tilesets for Tiled and Godot. A style with a palette rule never ships a color outside it. Quality-profile styles stay blocked until approval is current.
Writes sheets and exports with provenance.pixelkiln packPick the image.
Approve the pixels.
pixelkiln pick opens a local page with every candidate. It preserves native aspect ratios and stays readable on ultrawide displays, and a frame set counts as one choice. PixelKiln records every candidate and leaves the decision to you.
PixelKiln asks providers for your palette, and enforcePalette makes it a rule: every downloaded sprite is snapped to the nearest palette color as it is written, while the provider's bytes stay in the cache. Turning the rule on or off later re-applies it to art you already paid for.
Open the whole project in one local page.
pixelkiln gallery shows every generation the lockfile knows about, plus the assets you declared and have not made yet. It starts read-only. Each flag you add gives the page one more power, and the page says which one it is using.
Look
pixelkiln galleryReads the manifest, lockfile, and disk. Writes nothing and never contacts a provider.- Sprites at whole-number zoom on a checkerboard, dark, light, or your game's background color.
- Each record shows the prompt that was sent, cost, hashes, lineage, and who approved it.
- Search by prompt, id, or hash. Filters and the open record live in the URL, so a link lands on the same view.
- Compare up to four records side by side, with every differing field tinted.
- Loops play on the grid. The frame player steps, scrubs, and shows an onion skin.
- A character family turns through its rotations and plays each loop by direction.
- Entries the manifest no longer declares stay visible, marked undeclared, so paid work never hides.
Change
pixelkiln gallery --editRewrites the manifest and nothing else. Never contacts a provider, never spends.- Edit prompts, sizes, tags, and style fields, and add assets. A style edit shows how many assets it changes and what regenerating them costs.
- Every write offers Undo, and is refused if the manifest changed on disk since the page loaded it.
- Edit a sprite in your own editor, or in the built-in Pixelorama, a pinned build fetched once and verified by hash.
- Hand edits save beside the generated file, never over it, with the generated art as a faint layer underneath.
- Draw a mask for an inpaint revision, or pose a skeleton for an animation.
Spend
pixelkiln gallery --budget 80Submits work under the ceiling you set. Writes the same lockfile gen writes.- Generate what is missing, stale, or failed, from an asset, a style, or a whole character family.
- A dialog lists every asset with its estimate and what the session ceiling still allows, before anything is submitted.
- Candidate sets slide the
picksheet over the gallery. Choose there and the art downloads. - Regenerating keeps the version it replaces. Restore it for free, up to the count you choose.
- Resume polls and fetches work already at the provider at no cost, and a system notification says when a job finishes.
- Credentials load from the project's own
.envand never reach the page.
Paid work needs a paper trail.
Every provider object, prompt identity, output role, path, and byte hash survives in project state. A failed download remains recoverable work, not a reason to pay twice.
- ✓ Remote identity saved before polling
- ✓ Content-addressed local recovery cache
- ✓ Hand edits kept beside the generated file
- ✓ Replaced generations kept, restorable at no cost
- ✓ Manual-edit and overwrite protection
- ✓ Transactional atlas and export writes
pixelkiln.lock.json
{"base/anvil": {"status": "downloaded","provider": "pixellab","specHash": "61c9…a071","cost": { "value": 1,"unit": "generations" },"outputs": [{"path": "art/base/anvil.png","sha256": "98f1…c42a"}]}}◇ paid-work identity
◇ exact output bytes
Draw the base once.
Everything else follows it.
A character style holds a base drawn facing 4 or 8 directions, states that apply a pose or an outfit to every direction at once, and loops, one direction each. Every one is an asset with its own record and files, so plan prices the cast, one gen runs it in waves (bases, then states, then loops), and pack --format godot writes a SpriteFrames with every direction and every loop.
Start from a prompt on any of PixelLab's four engines, or from your own south-facing sprite: reference hands it over and pro-flash rotates it for one generation at 64px. Regenerate the base and its states and loops go stale, never silently mismatched. Characters already on your account come under the manifest with adopt, and the gallery shows the family: states under their base, loops with their direction, mirrors with their source.
- ✓ A loop facing east is the west loop flipped.
mirrormakes it locally for nothing; eight directions of one walk cost 5, not 8. - ✓ Poses from a text edit, loops from a template or from text, with start and end poses you supply.
- ✓ Concept images and style anchors on pro, style images with chosen traits on pro-flash.
- ✓ Bust portraits and outfit transfer onto a loop, and one
directionslist that declares a loop and mirrors the rest.
pixelkiln.manifest.json
"cast": {"generator": "character", "mode": "pro-flash","template": "custom", "size": 96 },"bot": {"prompt": "small round orange robot, one blue eye","reference": "refs/bot-south.png" },"bot.dented": {"prompt": "shell dented, one arm hanging loose","state": { "of": "bot" } },"bot.walk.west": {"prompt": "walking in place, short legs stepping","animation": { "of": "bot", "direction": "west","frames": 12, "fps": 12 } },"bot.walk.east": { "mirror": "bot.walk.west" }◇ 2 generations to rotate
◇ 0 for the mirror
walk
pick and packed as one looping animation at the fps the manifest records. The arrows and dots are yours; it also cycles on its own.Effects on your own sprites,
rendered for free.
pixelkiln vfx drives PixelLab's VFX workbench. Start from one of its presets or layer its parts, build the effect around a character, and get a spritesheet, a GIF, an atlas, and a game pack with every piece as its own clip. The workbench renders a recipe instead of generating, so it costs nothing on a subscription, and the recipe it saves renders the same pixels again.
pixelkiln vfx --preset lightning_strike --sprite robot.png --out fx/zap# writes fx/zap.png .gif .json .vfx.jsonpixelkiln vfx --recipe fx/zap.vfx.json --out fx/zap-again- ✓ 17 presets and about 90 parts: explosions, slashes, auras, shields, status icons, weather.
- ✓ Every effect is saved to your PixelLab account, where its sliders can be moved;
--effectpulls the edit back down. - ✓ A
.vfx.jsonrecord keeps the full recipe; re-rendering one gave a byte-identical sheet.
Latest updates
from our providers.
When a provider ships something PixelKiln can drive, it lands here with what it cost. The newest update shows real output from the project's own manifests, and each earlier one keeps a short note and its reference.
Connected tilesets, palettes, normal maps, and described effects
Every image below came from a real call, and each one billed exactly what pixelkiln plan said it would.
"sand-grass": {"prompt": "1). plain smooth sand texture 2). plain short grass texture","connect": { "lower": { "of": "ocean-sand", "terrain": "upper" } }},"chest-normals": {"styles": ["lit"],"revision": { "mode": "normal-map", "from": "chest", "fromStyle": "gameboy" }}- ✓ A connected set waits for the set it shares a terrain with, sends that set's tile id, and goes stale when it is regenerated.
- ✓
terrainRoundness: 2withterrainConnectDiagonalscuts the coast at 45°. Sidescroller platform sets cost 3. - ✓ A style's
palettenow reaches Create Image Pro, andmaxColorscaps each candidate. - ✓
pixelkiln normal-mapandvfx --descriptiondo the same for loose files.
A Pro price cut, Image to Pixel Art Pro Flash, and Create VFX
Every Pro tool dropped from 20, 25, or 40 generations to 10, 15, or 25, and pixelkiln plans with the new prices.
pixelkiln pixelateturns a photo, painting, or render into pixel art for 6 generations.pixelkiln vfxrenders animated effects from presets and parts, free on a subscription.
Four providers, one review flow.
PixelLab, Retro Diffusion, ComfyUI, and Scenario share the same review, lockfile, and recovery flow. The cards below show outputs from committed benchmark projects, one sample each. The ComfyUI card separates its model canvas from the recovered native pixel grid, because a large raster can still contain fake pixels. Its samples are diagnostics, not asset recommendations. A style.quality profile applies the same palette and approval gate after any single-image provider or an atomic ComfyUI frame set. ComfyUI and PixelLab both back controlled revisions, and PixelLab adds palette cleanup, animation, and interpolation of an existing asset. PixelKiln hashes the parent and mask bytes before a revision runs.
| Provider | Status | Billed in | What has run |
|---|---|---|---|
| PixelLab | Production | Generations | Generation and account recovery against a live account. |
| Retro Diffusion | Experimental | USD | Single-candidate stills, live. Its other paths need paid runs. |
| ComfyUI | Experimental | Nothing (self-hosted) | Local generation, candidate review, cache recovery, and grid refinement. Atomic frame sets have automated coverage, and PixelKiln saves each accepted frame prompt before it queues the next one. They still need a live pose recipe and benchmark. The tested SDXL graph needs manual cleanup and art review. |
| Scenario | Experimental | Compute units | Paid single- and two-output generation, human review, and recovery. Ten more models, six tool models, reference-image edits, and multi-model chains ran once each. |
Production
GenerationsPixelLab
PixelLab kept more of each brief and made the scenic depth planes easier to separate. Its map objects were opaque, and one scenic attempt added a signature-like mark. Check alpha and stray marks before a batch.
- Benchmark cost
- 1 generation each
- Best fit
- Prompt fidelity and account recovery
Experimental
USDRetro Diffusion
Both 384px building attempts had transparent backgrounds and used 49 to 55 colors. They also filled more of the frame than the earlier 256px attempt.
- Benchmark cost
- $0.058–$0.099 each
- Best fit
- Ready-to-place cutouts and native animation
Experimental
Self-hostedComfyUI
SDXL Base plus Pixel Art XL found workable compositions, but the raw files only imitated a pixel grid. Pixel Art Fixer recovers editable 1× assets and applies a fixed palette. A manifest quality profile makes those mechanical checks and approval part of planning and packaging. You still judge the drawing. Build large scenes from small parts that pass review.
- Provider charge
- None; hardware cost is external
- Quality target
- 48–128px native per part
- Best fit
- Local composition, revisions, frame experiments, and custom graphs
- Readiness
- Still workflow live-tested; frame workflow awaits a live benchmark
Experimental
Compute UnitsScenario
BFL Flux 2 Dev produced a readable keep and completed the full PixelKiln lifecycle. The raw file imitates pixel art but carries a large RGB palette. Treat it as concept art or refinement input, not a finished game asset.
- Measured cost
- 16 CU for one output; 32 CU for two
- Best fit
- Large or illustrative art, reference-image edits, and chains of hosted models
- Readiness
- Eleven image models, six tool models, and reference edits run once each; other schemas unverified
Scenario, measured: ten models, one chain, and where it fails.
We ran Scenario's catalogue through PixelKiln: ten text-to-image models priced from 1 to 11 compute units, six single-image tool models, reference-image edits, a three-model chain, and a real isometric pixel-art game's structures, covers, backdrops, and sound effects. Every paid request is preceded by a free quote and held under a ceiling you set. These are our own benchmark images, one sample each.
Price does not predict fit
The same brief, seed, and 512 px request to four models. The 1 and 2 CU models gave a usable silhouette and the most authentic pixel texture; GPT Image 2 followed the brief best. None returned a native-grid, closed-palette asset, and four ignored the requested canvas size.
Render, pixelate, cut out, refine
One manifest, one pixelkiln gen, 8 CU: each step names its parent's style, so the chain runs in order and a 64×64 transparent sprite lands at the end, held at the same review gate as any other asset. On a real game's 240 px landmarks the same chain returned the sprite's exact size at high confidence with far more detail.
The same render, one PixelLab call
pixelkiln pixelate sends the same knight to PixelLab's Image to Pixel Art Pro Flash. PixelLab picked the 108×109 grid itself and returned it in one call for a flat 6 generations. Like Scenario's Pixelate, the result is opaque, here on near-white, so the cutout step still applies before it becomes a sprite.
What a real game taught us
- Large art works. A 240 px landmark chain returned the existing sprite's exact size at high confidence, with far more detail, for 8 CU on the cheap model or 18 CU on the strongest.
- A reference keeps the design. Sending the current sprite as a reference raised silhouette overlap from 0.39 to 0.66 to 0.93 to 1.00, at the same pixel scale. Some models shift colors.
- Small sprites and tiles do not. 32 px props came back as different objects with holes after the cutout; terrain tiles and characters need tools built for them.
- Backdrops need the prompt to say flat. An isometric prompt lay on a diagonal plane; asking for a front-facing horizontal strip gave the exact grid. A mist fade needs a better cutout route.
- The pixelate grid is not always literal. On a 960 px render, asking for 240 made 2 px blocks and asking for 120 made the 240 cells wanted. Check one image first.
- Sound effects need one event each. A two-part impact worked only as two sounds layered, and only on the pricier model; the cheap one returned ambience.
- Quotes were exact, the balance is not visible. Every quote matched its bill, but the adapter cannot read the account balance, and a hand tally ran about 5% under it.
"assets": {"knight": { "styles": ["render"], "prompt": "…" },"knight-px": {"styles": ["pixelate"],"prompt": "pixelate","revision": {"mode": "image-to-image","from": "knight","fromStyle": "render"}}}revision.fromStyle lets a style that uses one model revise another style's output, so a chain across models is declared, priced, and ordered instead of stitched by hand.
- Where it fits
- Large landmarks, covers and key art with legible text, flat backdrops, image-to-image edits at 1 CU, and cheap sound effects
- Where it does not
- 32 px props, characters, terrain tiles and cliff blocks, which stay on a tool built for them
- Cost control
- A free quote before every paid call, a per-style ceiling, and a command budget
The same sprite can cost 1 generation or 25.
Measured PixelLab costs vary by up to 25×. Retro Diffusion bills in USD, Scenario in compute units, and self-hosted ComfyUI has no provider charge. PixelKiln keeps those units separate.
GeneratorBest forMeasured cost
mapStandalone props and icons 1 gen
pixfluxExact closed palettes 1 gen
imageProNon-square or larger scenes, style transfer, a target palette 10–25 gen by canvas
1dirReferences and candidate variety 10–25 gen
tilesGround and structural sets 10–25 gen
terrainTwo-terrain tilesets, connected sets, and sidescroller platforms 15 gen Pro (25 at 64px), 3 standard or sidescroller
isometricTileA single elevation tile, such as a mesa or a cliff block 1 gen
characterA base in 8 directions, its poses, its loops 1–25 gen per base by engine, 1–4 per template loop, mirrors free
objectProA skeleton-free prop's base, poses, and loops about 6 gen per base at 64px, 1 per loop (unmeasured)
imageProFlashStyled stills on the Pro Flash model, 16–256px 5–9 gen (quoted)
uiAssetUI panels, buttons, and bars from pieces and elements 10–25 gen (20 measured before PixelLab's price cut)
uiElementOne UI element from a description, 16px and up 10–25 gen (unmeasured)
vfxAnimated effects: explosions, spells, auras, hits, on their own or around a sprite free from presets, 1 gen and up when described
animationRetro Diffusion GIFs and sprite sheetsUSD quote
framesControlled ComfyUI still sequences0 provider units
Give your agent the PixelKiln workflow.
The skill tells compatible agents when to plan, when to ask for a budget, when to restore existing work, when to stop for human review, and how to verify output.