I built a small machine for imagining impossible futures

wafula eliah — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 17:52:05 +0000

This is my submission for the Sanity Challenge, Path Two: Vibe-Code Something Strange.

What I Built

WHAT IF is a small playground for imagining impossible futures. Readers choose a question, open its story, and use the Ripple Engine to explore what might happen on the first day, one year later, and generations later.

The stories are structured in Sanity rather than hard-coded into the page. Editors can manage each question, its slug, summary, story, image, and optional consequences for each time horizon.

Demo

Explore WHAT IF

Open a question from the board, read its story, and choose a time horizon in the Ripple Engine.

Code

View the project on GitHub

My Build Process

I used Codex to help build the Nuxt site and connect it to Sanity. I started with the question board and individual story pages, then added the Ripple Engine so readers could explore how one change might affect the future.

I used Sanity CLI and Nuxt CLI to get the projects started. I refined the site in small steps, including its visual design, the author credit, and the story navigation.

One issue took extra debugging: story content didn’t always appear when navigating between pages. I moved the Sanity reads behind the Nuxt app’s own server routes and made page loading non-blocking. That helped the pages open promptly while their content loads.

The Ripple Engine does not generate AI predictions. It uses consequences written in Sanity, with prompts to help readers imagine outcomes when an editor hasn’t written one.

Sanity Project Details

Project ID: c526wkjm
Dataset: production
Main document type: whatIf

What I’d Improve Next

I’d add more thought experiments and continue refining the editing experience so it’s easy to create detailed, story-specific ripple outcomes.