Mr. Mak Workspace: a 3D game creator with 200k subscribers open-sourced his AI workspace, and the stars follow his videos
What it is A free, open-source local desktop app: on the left, it runs real command-line tools like Codex and Claude Code; on the right, you see project pages, galleries and reports, with phone access, voice, and Blender/Unity integration, aimed at people making games and 3D content.
Why it took off The author is an AI game-making YouTuber with 200k subscribers who links this repo in every video description. All three star peaks line up with his videos, and viewers want to replicate his approach of "36 hours to build an MMO, 25 days to a sellable game".
DHow to play it Don't build another agent desktop UI. If you have an audience, turn the AI toolchain you actually use into a forkable template repo and link it in the description of every results video. Without an audience, you're betting on a creator group nobody covers yet (editors, designers, Chinese-speaking creators).
- Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-09-15 · 714 stars · 7 days +109
GitHub · stars Data 2026-10-09 → 2026-11-08 (31 days, 31 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one
2026 Sep 21, the YouTube channel "Stefan 3D AI" posted a video, "My Full AI Workspace - A Year in the Making, Now Yours for Free." The first line of the description: "For the past year I've been building my own AI workspace so I don't lose context switching between Claude Code, Codex, Blender and Unity." The same day he posted on X: "Lots of people keep asking how I make games with AI. Today I open-sourced the whole workspace." The repo gained 57 stars the next day. By Nov 6 it had 697 stars and 221 forks. Three later star spikes all landed on days he published new videos. This piece covers what it is, where the stars came from, and whether you can copy it.
What it is
A free, open-source (MIT) local desktop app that wraps command-line AI tools like Codex and Claude Code in a UI. It has two windows you can keep side by side:
- Chats: on the left, it runs the real Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode, Antigravity and Kimi CLIs, one tab per conversation, with history kept. You can switch to a "conversation" view, turn numbered permission prompts into clickable buttons, and when a chat gets long, hit one button to "summarize and continue" in a new chat.
- Workspace: on the right, you see outputs: project pages, research reports, an image gallery, and saved prompts. The sample project is his own game, with 158 character images and 8 motion studies.
The README says: "You can keep Chats on screen while working in Blender, a game engine, or the browser." There's also a mobile view (reached back to your computer over Tailscale, with replies, image upload and voice input), local text-to-speech, and MCP hookups for Blender, Unity, Godot and Unreal. It doesn't touch API keys. It uses the command-line subscriptions you're already logged into.
The setup is unusual too. The README has you take a copy first, then tell your agent to "run it on my own account and swap the sample for my project." The whole workspace is your project repo, which is why the fork-to-star ratio reached 32%. That ratio comes from how the product is shaped. It doesn't mean lots of people are using it.
Where the stars came from
| Date | Stars gained | What was happening at the time |
|---|---|---|
| 09-21 / 09-22 | +22 / +57 | Release video (11-06 views at the time, 80,675 total; sponsored by the AI generation platform Higgsfield) + the open-source post on X |
| End of September | Daily +10~30 | He posted on X "this is what $2,175 of Opus 5.5 tokens can build," 930k views; the companion video got 777k views. The post got attention and the repo rode the wave. |
| 10-12 ~ 10-14 | +53 / +24 / +28 | Video "This Is How I Actually Make Games With AI - My Setup," 145k views; the X thread linked the GitHub repo directly. |
| 11-01 ~ 11-03 | +7 / +34 / +24 | Video "My Dream Game is Finally Ready to Play After 25 Days With AI" (11-1.12M views), description reads "My Workspace - github.com/…"; 11-02 also posted "made a game with $20 of AI plans, it's already selling." |
(9, the October numbers come from Trendshift's daily records; from 10-17 onward they're GitHub's daily star counts. The two sources differ by about a day.)
Stars rose by 103 this week and 54 last week, which looks like doubling. It's all from the 11-01 video. No Hacker News, Reddit or Product Hunt, no press coverage. On X, nobody but the author seems to have mentioned it, only one Chinese-language rewrite. The repo is under two months old and hasn't made GitHub's official trending page.
For scale: the channel has 206k subscribers (YouTube, 11-06). Three videos together got over 30 million views and produced fewer than 700 stars. The audience is mostly 3D artists and indie game developers, who don't usually star repos.
Why it got clicked
The features aren't novel. There are plenty of open-source projects offering a desktop UI for Claude Code / Codex, and they're dozens to hundreds of times bigger:
| Project | star(11-06) | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| farion1231/cc-switch | 152k | Config and provider switching |
| stablyai/orca | 117k | Managing a fleet of coding agents, desktop plus mobile |
| winfunc/opcode (formerly Claudia) | 22k | Graphical UI for Claude Code |
| NanmiCoder/cc-haha | 15k | Local desktop workbench, remote control via WeChat and Feishu |
| siteboon/claudecodeui | 14k | Claude Code / Codex in the browser and on mobile |
| Official Codex and Claude desktop apps | — | Each covers its own model |
His only difference: the others focus on writing code (diffs, worktrees, PRs, multi-agent orchestration). His focuses on people making games and 3D work, so it has a gallery, character motion studies, game engine hookups, and a chat window that can sit next to Blender.
But the reason people clicked wasn't these features. The audience bought "this is the environment he really uses to make games": an MMO built in 36 hours, a playable game in 25 days, and it sold. Anyone who wants to copy his approach starts from this repo. The workspace is also part of his content business: the videos carry sponsors (Higgsfield, TripoAI), and there are also course sites learn3d.ai and top3d.ai.
Is anyone copying it
I didn't find anyone copying it. The big projects in this space were all there earlier, so there's no clear copycat story. Put the other way: a workbench for creators with 700 stars is the ceiling we've seen so far, and it only got there through a channel with 200k subscribers.
If it were you
D. Building a "workbench for game developers" to chase its stars won't work. Its stars came almost entirely from the author's own audience, and the product itself didn't spread on GitHub. The feature set is also covered by generic projects with hundreds of thousands of stars and the official desktop apps. Even with 200k subscribers, a month and a half only produced 697 stars. What's worth learning is the tactic, not this project.
Who it suits: creators who already have an audience on YouTube, Bilibili or X and make content about "how I use AI to do this specific thing," such as video editing, illustration or indie game making.
Who it doesn't suit: anyone without their own distribution who hopes organic GitHub traffic will bring stars. Also anyone planning another generic Claude Code desktop UI, since that lane is already crowded.
How to do it: turn the AI toolchain you use every day (command-line agents, prompts, asset libraries, hookups to your software) into a template repo people can fork, using your real project as the example. Put the link in the first line of the description on every results video. If you want to build a real product, pick a group it doesn't cover yet, like video editors (Premiere, DaVinci), graphic designers (Figma), or Chinese-speaking creators (domestic models, Bilibili). None of these are taken. Whether they'd earn stars is a guess no one has tested.
How to get users: rely on your own content, not on GitHub or Hacker News. A results video that shows "I used AI to make X" drives more traffic than one about the tool. The two biggest star spikes both followed that kind of video.
Deadline: no clear deadline. Each new feature in the official desktop apps (mobile, gallery, project memory) narrows the gap for this kind of workbench. Something like that will likely happen within six months (inference).
How this could be wrong: (1) a creator-focused agent workbench with no big account behind it passes 1000 stars in a month, which would mean the niche has organic demand and the D grade was too low; (2) the repo keeps adding double-digit stars per day for several weeks when the author posts no videos, which would mean it's spreading on its own.
Data and sources
- GitHub: README of witnesstodark/mr-mak-workspace (v0.6.2) and daily stars and forks (10-17 to 11-06).
- Trendshift (trendshift.io/repositories/252878): daily star gains from September through October.
- YouTube @stefan_3d_ai: release video (09-21,80,675 views), Setup video (10-12, about 145k views), Dream Game video (11-01,121,597 views); channel subscriber count, 11-06.
- X @Stefan_3D_AI: 09-21 open-source post, 10-12 Setup post, and the MMO post from late September (about 930k views).
- Competitor star counts: GitHub, around 11-06.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one stablyai/orca Open source 2026-03 116.5k stars orca focuses on managing a fleet of coding agents; Mak focuses on creative and game project cards and an asset workspace farion1231/cc-switch Open source 2025-08 152k stars cc-switch leans toward config and provider switching; Mak is a workspace that runs CLIs and shows outputs winfunc/opcode(Claudia) Open source 2025-06 22.4k stars opcode only manages Claude Code sessions and agents; Mak supports multiple CLIs and adds project cards, mobile and voice NanmiCoder/cc-haha Open source 2026-03 15.3k stars cc-haha is built for coding (worktrees, diffs) with remote control via WeChat and Feishu; Mak is for 3D and game creation, with a mobile web view over Tailscale siteboon/claudecodeui (CloudCLI) Open source 2025-06 14.5k stars CloudCLI is a web UI focused on remote and mobile use; Mak is a local two-window desktop app with project reports and asset cards nightly-labs/openbot Open source 2026-08 5.8k stars, +2k this week openbot does persistent agent teammates and task queues; Mak is a workspace for personal creative projects Louis-CFM/coucou Open source 2026-09-27 7.0k stars coucou only monitors and approves agents from the notch and lock screen; Mak is a full workspace Codex desktop app / Claude Code desktop app Big-company features 2025–2026 Official Official apps each cover one model; Mak puts multiple CLIs in one workspace, with shared project memory and a creative asset view - Where users come from
- Verified Author's own YouTube channel (204k subscribers): 09-21 release video (80,675 views), 10-12 Setup video (145k views), 11-01 game video (121,597 views, description links My Workspace); the three star spikes line up with the video dates.
- Verified X @Stefan_3D_AI: 09-21 open-source post; the 10-12 thread linked the GitHub repo; the 09-26 MMO post got 930k views and a lot of exposure for the author.
- Verified Sponsored content: the release video was sponsored by Higgsfield (per the daily.dev summary), and the workspace also integrates that generation platform.
- Verified Aggregators and auto-listings: daily.dev (117 impressions), trendshift, reporank, claudecodeagents.com and others.
Research report on witnesstodark/mr-mak-workspace (Mr. Mak Workspace)
Channel: GitHub | created 2026-09-15 (public release 2026-09-21) | as of 2026-11-06:697 stars / 221 forks (fork/star 32%) | last 7 days +103 (last week +54) | MIT, Tauri desktop shell + local Node service, v0.6.2
One line
A 200k-subscriber 3D/AI game-dev YouTuber (Stefan Vaskevich, "Stefan 3D AI") open-sourced the workspace he uses to make games. The left "Chats" window runs the real Codex / Claude Code / OpenCode / Antigravity / Kimi CLIs. The right "Workspace" window shows project cards, research reports, images and saved prompts. It also has a mobile view (over Tailscale), local voice, and Blender/Unity MCP. Nearly all of its stars came from the author's own videos and X posts.
1. Why it took off
The star curve matches the author's posts one for one
Trendshift's daily data (https://trendshift.io/repositories/252878) plus our GitHub repo_day data (from 2026-10-17) by day:
| Date | Stars gained | what happened |
|---|---|---|
| 09-21 / 09-22 | +22 / +57(fork +27 / +18) | Published the video "My Full AI Workspace - A Year in the Making, Now Yours for Free" (YouTube, 09-21,80,675 views, sponsored by Higgsfield) + X post "Many kept asking how I build my game with AI. Today I open-sourced the whole workspace" (https://x.com/Stefan_3D_AI/status/2102110035853922310) |
| Around 09-26 | Steady +10~30/day | X post that blew up: "This is what $2,175 of Opus 5.5 tokens can do!" 930k views, 1,818 bookmarks (x-radar corpus); the matching YouTube video has 777k views. The author's profile has grown a lot, and this repo is riding some of that. |
| 10-12 ~ 10-14 | +53 / +24 / +28 | YouTube "This Is How I Actually Make Games With AI - My Setup" (145k views) + X post (https://x.com/Stefan_3D_AI/status/2109643476342358154), with the GitHub link posted right in the thread |
| 10-16 | — | A Chinese-language relay of it (Trendshift social mentions): "Don't add a new agent framework first. Gather the conversations and project outputs scattered across your terminal..." |
| 11-01 ~ 11-02 | +40 / +20 | YouTube "My Dream Game is Finally Ready to Play After 25 Days With AI" (11-01,121,597 views), with "My Workspace - github.com/witnesstodark/mr-mak-workspace" in the description; 11-02 also posted "Made a Game With a $20 AI Plan and Already Got Sales" (123k views) |
Bottom line: this is a project carried by its creator's audience. The author has 204k YouTube subscribers and 377 videos (channel page); on X, @Stefan_3D_AI grew from about 8 thousand followers in early September to about 12k by late September (the followers field in x-radar). Each video that mentioned this workspace produced a star spike the next day. This week's "doubling" (103 vs 54) came entirely from 11-01 game video, with no sign of organic spread.
Where users come from and why they stay
- Sources: links in the YouTube video descriptions and X threads (confirmed); daily.dev picked up the launch video (117 impressions, only a fraction); various GitHub aggregators (trendshift, reporank, gittrend, claudecodeagents.com, etc.) index it automatically. Found no placements on HN, Reddit, or Product Hunt; not on GitHub trending (repo is under 60 days old).
- Why the fork/star ratio of 32% is high: the README tells users to click "Use this template" or take a copy first, then have their agent "run it with my own CLI account and swap the four examples for my own projects." The workspace is a personal project repo (inbox / projects / knowledge / processes folders), so using it means forking or copying it. A high fork ratio comes from the product's shape, not from unusually strong usage intent. The audience is also mostly 3D artists and indie game developers, not heavy GitHub users; people like that tend to fork or download and don't bother starring.
- Why people want to use it: in the videos the author shows the environment he actually uses to make games, backed by credible results (an MMO built in 36 hours, a playable game in 25 days, and sales already). Viewers want to replicate his process, and the workspace is the entry point for doing so.
2. Differentiation
Competitors (data from our github repo_profile, 2026-11-06)
There are many open-source projects that wrap Claude Code / Codex in a desktop GUI or workbench, and most are tens to hundreds of times larger:
- stablyai/orca 116,539 stars (2026-03): a desktop, mobile, and remote runtime for running multiple agents
- farion1231/cc-switch 152,094 stars (2025-08): an all-in-one desktop assistant for Claude Code / Codex
- winfunc/opcode (formerly Claudia) 22,435 stars (2025-06): a GUI for Claude Code
- NanmiCoder/cc-haha 15,318 stars (2026-03): a local-first Claude Code desktop workbench with remote access via WeChat and Feishu
- siteboon/claudecodeui (CloudCLI) 14,451 stars (2025-06): use Claude Code / Codex on mobile and in the web
- OrchestratorInc/agent-orchestrator 14,136 stars; Orkas 9,035 stars; nightly-labs/openbot 5,773 stars (2026-08, +2,009 this week); Louis-CFM/coucou 6,982 stars (2026-09-27, an agent approval tool)
- Nimbalyst (an open-source visual workspace + agent harness, promoted via YouTube)
- First-party features from the big labs: the official Codex desktop app, Claude Desktop / the Claude Code desktop version, and Cowork-style products
How it's different
- Built for creators and game devs, not coders: the Workspace side is project cards, an image gallery, research, saved prompts, and motion tests (the examples include the Mr. Mak 64 game, Arachne's character lab with 158 images and 8 motion studies), plus an MCP list for Blender / Unity / Godot / Unreal. Rivals focus on diffs, worktrees, PRs, and multi-agent orchestration.
- Two separate windows: Chats can stay on their own beside Blender or a game engine.
- Runs the real CLI and uses your subscription login: no API keys, no model access layer; also a conversation view, permission menus turned into buttons, and a "summarize and continue" handoff for long conversations.
- Rich examples you can edit directly: "Empty it out and rebuild it around your own project."
But these differences are not the main reason it got its stars. Feature-wise, cc-haha, orca, and claudecodeui all offer similar desktop-plus-mobile combinations. What really drove the growth is the author's audience and the trust that comes from "this is something I actually use." The differentiation works by making the project feel right for this audience (3D artists, game creators), not by breaking into the developer crowd.
3. Visibility and copycats
- Visibility: it has only spread within the author's own fan circle (YouTube 200k subscribers, X 12k followers). No press coverage, no reposts from big X accounts (searching the repo name and the author's name in x-radar returns 0 results, all from the author himself), just one Chinese-language relay.
- Copycats: none found. Large projects in the same space have existed for a while, so there's no question of who copied whom.
- Money: the repo itself is free (MIT). The author earns through YouTube sponsorships (Higgsfield, TripoAI referral links), the course sites learn3d.ai and top3d.ai, and the workspace serves as a funnel for his content and courses.
4. What to borrow
- "Creator + open-sourcing my own working environment": a creator with proven results packages their daily toolchain as a template repo, links it in every piece of content, and stars rise in waves that follow the content schedule.
- Packaging it as a template repo (users fork it as their own workspace) naturally drives up forks and retention.
- Positioning a general-purpose agent GUI for a vertical audience (game devs, 3D artists) lets it stand out in a crowded field.
5. Uncertain
- How many real installs the video views translate into: Releases download counts were not checked (the GitHub API was rate-limited at the time).
- How much of the steady growth from late September to early October came from the MMO post spilling over on X was not aligned day by day.
- The source account for the 10-16 Chinese relay was not verified.
Sources
- Repo README: github.com/witnesstodark/mr-mak-workspace
- Daily star counts on Trendshift: trendshift.io/repositories/252878
- Our GitHub repo_profile / repo_day (2026-11-06)
- YouTube: launch video www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV23ON8BgwU; channel www.youtube.com/@stefan_3d_ai/videos; 11-01 video www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNfvjmtY0Qk
- X: x.com/Stefan_3D_AI/status/2102110035853922310, x.com/Stefan_3D_AI/status/2109643476342358154; x-radar corpus (the MMO post, 930k views)
- daily.dev:daily.dev/posts/my-full-ai-workspace---a-year-in-the-making-…
- Author: www.stefan-vaskevich.com/, www.learn3d.ai/en