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Anthony Perrault
01 / The spot · 2026

Engramme.

A 15-second ad for memory that comes to you.

Engramme is Memory-as-a-Service: ambient intelligence that surfaces what you need, no query. The Creative Designer take-home set the challenge: bring a relevant memory into a daily app on its own, with nothing typed. I chose Slack, and I held to one principle, surface, don’t amend. The compose field stays empty. The memory arrives beside it.

Motion / brand · take-homeambient memory0:15 · After Effects
Finished spot · After EffectsAudio on · click to play
02The brief

What the brief gave me

The take-home asked for a 5-to-15-second ad where Engramme surfaces one relevant memory in a daily app on its own, and the user never types to summon it.

Ambienthow it runs
Engramme lives in the background of the apps you already use. There is nothing to open.
Proactivehow recall fires
The memory surfaces on its own, linking now to a moment weeks back. You never open a search box or prompt it.
Presentwhat it never touches
The memory sits with your message and never takes over. It never edits your words. You stay the author.

From the Engramme Creative Designer take-home: surface a relevant memory at the right moment, with no search box, no prompt, and no keystroke.

03The idea

Making the ad

01 / The goal

Bring a memory into the moment it’s needed, before the user goes looking.

Straight from the brief. Every frame earns its place, and the memory lands as relief.

Set in Slack · six hard-cut beats
02 / The build
  1. 01

    A teammate asks about the Q3 positioning.

  2. 02

    The user starts to reply, then reaches to go hunting.

  3. 03

    Engramme surfaces the answer from their own call three weeks ago.

  4. 04

    It lands beside the empty field, then recedes.

  5. 05

    It never touches the message, never sends, never edits.

  6. 06

    The user stays the author.

04The craft

Three tools I built for the brief

The ad needed memory imagery no stock library sells, so I built three motion tools for it with Claude Code. Each one renders imagery drawn from Engramme’s thesis, memory is not search, so nothing on screen reads as a query or a result.

01Procedural tool · Claude Code

Recall

Recall is a node-memory field I designed for a pure-black stage and built with Claude Code: monochrome dot nodes joined by hairline associative edges, with recall firing outward from a single hub in a radial burst. I drew its whole visual language from Engramme’s position paper, which argues memory is a proactive associative network rather than a database. Nodes surface out of the dark, latent dots sit as dark matter, and the associations spread across the field. I used it to make the imagery that opens and closes the ad, the memorome surfacing a memory out of ambience.

02Procedural tool · Claude Code

Photo Node Particles

Photo Node Particles takes one photo, dices it into a grid, and disintegrates part of it into floating fragments held on faint tether lines that converge on an origin point, as a seamless six-second loop. I designed it to show a single memory coming apart into nodes and still holding together, and built it with Claude Code. The tethers carry the associative edges, so even mid-burst the photo reads as connected recall. I ran it to make the frames where a remembered detail breaks into its parts, calm and monochrome.

03Procedural tool · Claude Code

Memory Stream

Memory Stream carries photos along a preset path, straight, wave, arc, or s-curve, as one continuous loop over a near-black field. Each photo scales and fades up out of the dark at the head, travels the curve, then re-darkens at the tail. I designed the surfacing-from-black as proactive recall, and the re-darkening returns the memory to dark matter, still there, unlit. A slight desaturation reads each image as remembered rather than a raw file. I built it with Claude Code and ran it to make the streaming imagery for the ad.

The workflow

Procedural tools, built for what the ad needed.

I made three of them with Claude Code using ToolCraft, a starter kit from the design studio Pixel Point for building your own design tools. Each one runs on my machine: I double-click it, it rebuilds and opens in the browser, and I export the frames. Because they run procedurally, I could shape the node fields and photo streams to the exact look I wanted, then bring the frames into After Effects and animate the ad.

05Memory is not search

Memory is not search

Every beat of the ad makes a claim from this paper visible, so I let Engramme’s own research say why memory surfaces itself instead of waiting to be searched.

  • We argue that proactive, lifelong memory is fundamentally unlike search.

    Engramme · “Memory is Not Search” · §1

  • The memorome is the entire collection of memories from an individual lifetime.

    Engramme · “Memory is Not Search” · §2

  • Memories that are not spontaneously surfaced or suggested become irretrievable, the dark matter of memory.

    Engramme · “Memory is Not Search” · §4

06What I learned

How I used AI on this

Engramme wants to end forgetting, and the hard part was making it feel warm rather than like surveillance. The memory sits beside the message, never inside it, so you stay the author. I animated the ad in After Effects; the memory imagery came from three motion tools I built with Claude Code, then ran to make the node fields and photo streams I brought into the timeline.

Next project

Worked at: Toptal, Cover Genius, Impact Trial Consulting, JPMorgan Chase; By proxy: Uber, Apple, Meta, SAP, Palo Alto Networks, Lyft, CrowdStrike, United Airlines, Grammarly, Booking.com, Sony, Monotype, Dragos, Sonatype, NoName Security, University of Miami.