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Indian Design Student Asked Claude One Prompt. It Built Walkable Mumbai and Bengaluru

A 21-year-old design student used a single prompt and Claude Code to create Gulmohar Local, an interactive 3D world featuring walkable versions of Mumbai and Bengaluru.
AI-built miniature versions of Mumbai and Bengaluru showing transit routes and city details in Gulmohar Local
September 26, 2026 04:28 PM IST | Written by Vaibhav Jha

A 21-year-old design student used one line of instruction to have Claude Opus 5.5, Anthropic’s AI model, build walkable versions of Mumbai and Bengaluru cities, complete with trains, autos and people you can move among.

According to Shardul Nandedkar, a final-year B.Des student at RV University, Bengaluru, all it took was a single line prompt “build me two Indian cities I can walk around.” and an overnight work for Opus 5.5 to code Gulmohar Local, a browser world in which Mumbai’s Western Line and Bengaluru’s Purple Metro sit on separate miniature planets.

Miniature 3D Indian city generated with code for the Gulmohar Local interactive world
Gulmohar Local renders an Indian city as a miniature 3D world, with buildings, roads, greenery and other elements generated through code.

More than a filmed tour and less than a miniature video game, Gulmohar Local allows a visitor to walk the roads and platforms, board a local, hail an auto and change the weather.

 

Shardul claims the entire project was Three.js code, written and tested by Claude Code in a browser sandbox and then produced a program, when opened in a browser, builds Mumbai and Bengaluru on the fly: platforms, trains, autos, trees, signage and people.

“There’s no Blender, no 3D models, no art files. Every building, train, tree and person is described in code: ‘a box this tall, this colour, with windows here.’ A library called Three.js turns that code into 3D graphics in your browser, and that’s why it runs on a website with nothing to install,” said Shardul.

The detailing by Claude is also remarkable with Mumbai cast in late May with gulmohar blooming and Bengaluru set in April with afternoon rain on demand.

First-person view of a Mumbai street with an auto-rickshaw in the Gulmohar Local 3D world
A first-person view inside Gulmohar Local shows a Mumbai street with an auto-rickshaw, storefronts, pedestrians and other details rendered in the browser.

Shardul says he did not upload photo or maps to Claude Code for the project.

“Models like Opus have absorbed a huge amount about Indian cities from books, travel writing and the web: station names on the Western line, that Gul mohars flower before the monsoon, that Bengaluru’s jacarandas bloom in April. [I didn’t give it any photos or maps] The details came from what it already knew, and when it wasn’t sure it made reasonable choices,” said Shardul.

The design student explained that he used Claude Code on the monthly subscription max plan.

Also Read: Karpathy Sees Highly Customized AI Gaming Future As Claude Builds LOTR 3D World

Author

  • Vaibhav Jha, editor and co-founder at AI FrontPage

    Vaibhav Jha is an Editor and Co-founder of AI FrontPage. In his decade long career in journalism, Vaibhav has reported for publications including The Indian Express, Hindustan Times, and The New York Times, covering the intersection of technology, policy, and society. Outside work, he’s usually trying to persuade people to watch Anurag Kashyap films.

    LinkedIn

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