I built Sonder — describe any scene, AI agents spawn and live it out autonomously

Redson Ngwira — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:51:39 +0000

I wanted to watch AI agents interact without directing them. Not chatbots answering
questions — actual people, with histories and tensions, living inside a scene I described.

So I built Sonder.

What it does

You type a scene. Something like:

"Five coworkers watching football at someone's flat. The team is losing.

One of them hasn't been paid in three weeks."

Sonder generates five agents. Each gets a name, a personality, a backstory,

a reason to be in that room, and something eating at them. Then it starts the room.

You don't say anything. They just... go.

Derek: slams cup down

Lena, if you'd pulled your reports an hour earlier like I asked, 'barely'

wouldn't be the best win we had all week.

Marcus: leans back, voice low and sharp

Wow. The 'team player' act's really holding strong, isn't it, Derek? Must be

exhausting — lying to clients, lying to us, lying to yourself.

Tariq: stands up abruptly, chair screeching

You wanna talk lies, Marcus? At least Derek shows up stressed — unlike you,

smirking like you're not one bonus away from selling us all out!

You can:

Watch silently — just observe
Whisper to one agent — only they hear you
Join as a named character — agents address you by name
Ask the narrator — an omniscient LLM that knows what everyone is really thinking

The narrator

Ask it anything mid-scene:

"what is happening"

The room is unraveling. What began as a routine post-work gathering has cracked

open into a raw exposure of dread, resentment, and unspoken betrayals. Derek's

forced cheer has shattered. His outburst at Lena wasn't about reports — it was

panic, a man lashing out because he feels the ground giving way beneath him.

Marcus sees it all. He's bitter, yes, but he's not wrong. The team is burning —

not from incompetence, but from the weight of withheld truths.

How it works

Parallel asyncio.gather loop — all agents fire simultaneously
Agent personalities are hot-reloadable .md files — edit them mid-simulation
World creation fetches real behavioral research via DuckDuckGo
Plugin hooks for voice, avatar, memory, and export
SQLite persistence — worlds survive restarts

Completely free to run

Provider	Free allowance
Cerebras	1M tokens/day
Groq	Rate-limited free tier
Gemini	Free tier
Ollama	Fully local, unlimited

Works on Linux, macOS, Windows, and Android (Termux, Android 7+).

Demo

Try it

bash

git clone https://github.com/RedsonNgwira/sonder
cd sonder
python -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python onboard.py
python main.py

GitHub: github.com/RedsonNgwira/sonder

Built this from Malawi 🇲🇼. GPL-3.0. Feedback welcome.

Why Django Needs Convention Over Configuration (And How DJX Fixes It)

Redson Ngwira — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 15:33:48 +0000

I've been building Django apps for a while now, and every single time I start a new feature, I do the same thing:

Create a model
Create views (ListView, DetailView, CreateView, UpdateView, DeleteView)
Create templates for each view
Create urls.py
Wire it into the project urls.py
Add the app to INSTALLED_APPS

Every. Single. Time.

Rails developers have been laughing at us for 20 years. They type one command:

bash

rails generate scaffold Post title:string content:text

And they're done.

Django Deserves Better

Django is more powerful than Rails in many ways. But the developer experience gap is real. There's no scaffolding. No conventions enforced by tooling. No "happy path" that just works.

So I built DJX.

What DJX Does

DJX is a CLI tool that brings convention over configuration to Django. Inspired by Rails, built for Django developers.

bash

pip install djx-cli
djx new myblog && cd myblog
djx scaffold Post title:string content:text published:boolean
python manage.py migrate && python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/posts/ — you have a working list, create, edit, and delete. No code written.

What Gets Generated

When you run djx scaffold Post title:string content:text, DJX creates:

posts/models.py — model with all your fields + automatic created_at / updated_at
posts/views.py — all 5 class-based views
posts/templates/posts/ — list, detail, form, confirm_delete templates
posts/urls.py — all RESTful routes
Auto-wired into project urls.py
Auto-added to INSTALLED_APPS

Other Commands

bash

See all your routes in a clean table

djx routes

Remove a feature cleanly

djx destroy scaffold Post

Install a package and auto-add to INSTALLED_APPS

djx add djangorestframework

Generate just a model or just views

djx model Article title:string body:text
djx controller Post

The Comparison

Task	Django	DJX
New project	`django-admin startproject` + manual setup	`djx new myproject`
Full CRUD feature	model + views + urls + templates (manual)	`djx scaffold Post title:string`
See all routes	no built-in command	`djx routes`
Remove a feature	delete files manually	`djx destroy scaffold Post`

It's Early Stage — Contributions Welcome

DJX is early stage and there's a lot to build. Ideas on the roadmap:

djx console — Django shell with all models auto-imported
djx generate api — DRF REST API scaffold
djx db migrate — shortcut for makemigrations + migrate

GitHub: https://github.com/RedsonNgwira/djx-cli

PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/djx-cli/

Built with ❤️ from Malawi 🇲🇼

What Rails-like features would you want in Django? Drop a comment below.

DEV Community: Redson Ngwira