Wave Bench
4 builds · one-shot · runs in your browser

One prompt. Four models. One pass.

Each Claude model got the same brief: build an interactive 3D coastal flood simulation with a real shallow-water solver, placeable defenses, erosion and building damage. No retries, no follow-up fixes. Pick a build, place a seawall, launch the wave.

claude-fable-5-1 · effort medium

Claude Fable 5.1

Coastal Defense Lab

Staggered-grid shallow water, upwind advection, wet/dry fronts, wave maker · 160 × 160 grid

Plain scripts, no build step; three.js comes from cdnjs. Optional flow arrows and a camera that follows the wave crest.

Active time
41 min
Output
173K tok
Est. cost
$14.41
Own code
1,821 lines
Run simulation
claude-opus-5-5 · effort medium

Claude Opus 5.5

Coastal Flood Lab

MAC-grid shallow water, semi-Lagrangian momentum, Flather offshore boundary · 240 × 200 grid

Solver runs in a Web Worker and streams snapshots to the renderer. Sediment is carried with the flow and settles where it slows; floating cars and debris can hit buildings.

Active time
72 min
Output
260K tok
Est. cost
$14.90
Own code
3,958 lines
Run simulation
claude-sonnet-5 · effort high

Claude Sonnet 5

Coastal Flood Simulator

Virtual-pipes flux scheme with outflow clamping and sponge boundaries · 120 × 100 grid

The only run that left no README. A stable pipe model rather than a momentum solver: depth can never go negative, whatever the wave.

Active time
38 min
Output
157K tok
Est. cost
$10.27
Own code
1,764 lines
Run simulation
claude-sonnet-5-5 · effort high

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Coastal Flood Lab

Inertial shallow water on a staggered grid, implicit Manning friction, flux limiting · 160 × 140 grid

Bundled with esbuild into one script. Damage metrics are compared against the previous run.

Active time
38 min
Output
216K tok
Est. cost
$8.77
Own code
2,516 lines
Run simulation

Compare the runs: time, tokens, cost, code →
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