Spectre

Real-time phone camera boxing with a live PixiJS spectator overlay

Hackathon · Cornell Claude Builders Club Hackathon, spring 2026 · Team of 4 · Built the spectator overlay · April 2026

Overview

Spectre is a real-time 1v1 boxing game: each player throws punches at a phone camera and watches their silhouette fight in a live browser overlay. It was built with a team of 4 at the Cornell Claude Builders Club Hackathon in spring 2026.

What the team built

My teammates built the parts that turn movement into gameplay: MediaPipe pose estimation in each phone's browser, the Python game server that runs hit detection, damage, and rounds at 60 Hz, and an AI commentator using the Claude API and ElevenLabs.

My role

I built the spectator overlay, the screen everyone watches. It is a React, TypeScript, and PixiJS v8 app that connects to the game server over WebSocket with auto-reconnect, projects pose keypoints into on-screen skeletons with interpolation between server ticks, and draws silhouettes, hit sparks, HP bars, a round timer, round and match cards, and sound effects.

I also wrote a mock server that simulates the 60 Hz game state, damage, latency, and a three round match, so the overlay could be developed and tested on its own.

Status

The demo video shows a full match. Teammates have since rewritten the codebase in Rust, so the current repo differs from the hackathon build.