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September 2026

Hybrix gift certificates!​

September 30 shop

This month we redesigned the billing system for Hybrix, with many improvements:

  • The free trial is now 30 days instead of 14 days.
  • Hybrix Studio is now exclusively a one-time purchase. (If you have a monthly or annual subscription, it will continue for one year. You'll also be offered a discount for converting to a perpetual license.)
  • The terms of service currently guarantee only "five years" of online service. We're working on updated license terms which guarantee that there will always be a way to run the software you purchased, even if it's ever retired from the website.
  • Our quoted prices now include tax. For example, in Washington State this can be a $25 savings on a Hybrix Studio purchase.
  • 🎁 Hybrix has gift certificates! You can now purchase a gift certificate to print or share, which the recipient redeems by inputting the gift code on their settings page.

These changes required a significant overhaul of the billing system, database tables, and server API protocol.

AI policy clarifications​

September 14 chombimon

We're proud that the main Hybrix product is hand-made, including its art, program code, documentation, and sample programs. Our credits page explains that artificial intelligence (AI) chat is consulted only for researching ideas, proofreading, and checking for mistakes.

This month we released Chombimon, the first Hybrix ROM cartridge whose code (7,000+ individual assembly instructions) was generated by an AI agent. It wasn't "vibe coding;" a whole month of human labor went into designing the UX, planning the architecture and optimizations, and reviewing the output. But it was certainly made using AI. Chombimon's AI statement explains why.

To communicate these distinctions more clearly, we've added an AI Policy page that defines three terms:

  • AI-free: No usage of AI at all, not even for research or proofreading.
  • Hand-made: Humans "make" the work. AI can be used for research, planning, or finding mistakes, but its output is never directly incorporated into the work.
  • Made using AI: AI participates directly in "making" the work, for example by generating some of the source code, prose, or artwork.

If you publish Hybrix ROM cartridges, you can use this terminology to tell people about your approach. In the future, the Hybrix ROM gallery will provide fields for self-attestation about AI usage.

Chombimon​

September 10 chombimon roms

After a month of work, the first release of Chombimon is finally live in the ROM Gallery!

Click to see it run!

Guess what fits in 36 kilobytes of uncompressed ROM!

  • a hex editor,
  • an assembly language disassembler and assembler,
  • a debugger that steps through programs one instruction at a time, and...
  • the full HASCII 8x8 font

Inspired by classic Commodore 64 machine language monitors, Chombimon runs on the same virtual machine as the program it's debugging. Give it a try!