Prefab
A prefab in vibesmith is a generative content unit. It bundles together:
- a recipe — the input specification (parameters, constraints, references),
- a generator — the code that turns the recipe into a scene composition,
- an AI brief — natural-language guidance for the AI that produces the recipe,
- a critic — code that checks the result against the brief, and
- a preview — a rendered image or short clip the editor shows.
When you “use a prefab,” you’re not spawning a saved object — you are running the generator over a recipe to produce fresh output, which the framework then composes into your scene.
A heads-up if you’re coming from Unity / Unreal
Section titled “A heads-up if you’re coming from Unity / Unreal”This is the most common terminology collision in vibesmith. In Unity / Unreal:
- Unity prefab = a GameObject template with serialised component values. You spawn it; you get an instance.
- Unreal Blueprint Class = same idea, different vocabulary.
In vibesmith:
- prefab = a generative template — the framework runs code to produce the output, optionally driven by an AI brief. The output isn’t a “prefab instance” you can re-edit; it’s a fresh composition each time.
If “a thing you place in the scene and re-use” is what you mean, that’s just a regular React component in vibesmith. The framework calls those components; it reserves the word prefab for the recipe-driven authoring loop.
Why generative?
Section titled “Why generative?”Three reasons:
- Closes the AI-authoring loop. A prefab can be authored conversationally — “give me a Norse longboat with five rowers, ice on the prow, sails furled” — and the framework, with the recipe + generator + critic, can produce the composition without a human laying out every node.
- Variants are cheap. Same recipe, different seed → different output. The same prefab generates dozens of shapes-of-the-same-thing without storing each one in your repo.
- The output stays in the consumer surface. What ends up in your scene is plain React Three Fiber JSX — readable, diff-able, editable. The recipe doesn’t lock you out.
What’s inside the framework, what’s inside the consumer
Section titled “What’s inside the framework, what’s inside the consumer”The substrate (the prefab schema, the runtime loader, the
preview generator, the AI-brief contract) lives in vibesmith. The
specific prefabs (a particle effect, a building style, an
NPC archetype) are project-shaped — they live in your project’s
prefabs/ directory and reference your project’s recipe canon.
- Recipe — the curated patterns prefabs are built on.
- Director pattern — the AI-assisted content authoring loop prefabs run inside.
- Prefab system — the contract + lifecycle reference.
- Scene construction — the recipe → generator → composition pipeline.