The Winding
Gallery

Your photographs, hung along an endless winding sky‑path.

A moonlit cobblestone causeway winds between lanterns and framed photographs, floating in a starry night sky — Plate Ithe causeway, two hundred paces in

What is this?

A place, not a page

Point it at any directory of photos — one command, no build step — and walk a moonlit causeway adrift among floating islands. Every photograph becomes a gold-framed plate on its own stone plinth, lit by lanterns and fireflies, with a brass plaque bearing its name.

ᛟ

An endless path

The causeway is conjured ahead of you and dissolved behind you, winding and gently climbing forever. When the collection runs out, it simply begins again.

✦

Every photo, a plate

Landscape or portrait, each image is framed to its true aspect, numbered in Roman numerals, and hung under its own soft glow — as is proper for a wizard's collection.

🏮

Behold, up close

Look at a plate and press E — the view flies in and a parchment panel names it. Press Esc and drift back to the path exactly where you left it.

ᛃ

The Keeper's Tour

Press T and a glowing wisp leads a self-playing exhibition, plate to plate, forever. Pair ?auto&tour for a kiosk or TV slideshow.

ᚹ

Wings & waygates

Subfolders become wings of the gallery — each hangs together on the path, announced by a stone waygate carved with its name in gold.

ᛞ

The Wayfarer's Map

Press M: every wing listed with its plate count and a you are here mark. Choose one and the night fades — you arrive walking through its gate.

From the collection

Walk the gallery

The path curves away past plinths and lanterns toward a stone arch — Plate IIwhere the path turns beneath the arch

A wooden lantern post hangs its glowing lantern over the cobblestones — Plate IIIa lantern keeps the crossing

A framed aurora photograph glows on its plinth beside the path — Plate IVaurora over the frozen firth

Beholding a plate up close, with its name shown on a parchment panel — Plate Vbeholding — plate II of VIII

An amber dusk photograph hangs beside the path start — Plate VIamber dusk over the vale

A stone waygate carved with FELLS in gold spans the cobblestone path — Plate VIIthe waygate to the wing of fells

The keeper's tour beholds a glowing plate while its banner shows in the HUD — Plate VIIIthe keeper leads the tour

The Wayfarer's Map overlay listing the wings of the gallery — Plate IXthe wayfarer's map, wings one step away

The entrance veil: The Winding Gallery, eight photographs await along the path — Plate Xthe veil, before you step through

Quick start

Hang your own photographs

From npm

# any folder of jpg / png / webp / gif / avif — scanned recursively
npm i -g the-winding-gallery
winding-gallery ~/Pictures/landscapes

From source

# Node 24 LTS recommended
git clone https://github.com/acaylor/the-winding-gallery.git
cd the-winding-gallery
pnpm install
pnpm run samples   # conjure 8 sample plates
pnpm start -- ~/Pictures/landscapes

Then open localhost:4173 and step onto the path.

Walking the path

The walker's grimoire

`Click`	take hold of the view
`WASD` + mouse	walk and look — `Shift` to hurry
`Scroll`	glide along the path, hands-free
`E` / `Click` a plate	behold it up close, name and number revealed
`T`	the keeper's tour — a wisp leads, any key hands the path back
`M`	the wayfarer's map — step to any wing of the gallery
`Esc`	return to the path
`H`	toggle the hints

Under the moonlight

How the magic works

ᚠ

No build step, one dependency. A tiny zero-dependency Node server scans your photo directory and serves the app; Three.js is served straight from node_modules.

ᚢ

A path that cannot knot. The causeway is a heading integrated over gentle overlapping sine curvatures — tested to wander and climb forever without ever turning back on itself.

ᚦ

An infinite walk stays lean. Segments are built ahead and dissolved behind; photos decode off-thread, downscale to 2048 px, and are reference-counted.

ᛟ

Real stone and real lanterns. CC0 cobblestone, rock and bark from ambientCG; the lantern is the Khronos glTF sample model, slimmed from 9.6 MB to 271 KB; the floating islands are Poly Haven photoscans. The windswept pines are grown procedurally — no asset at all.

Every bundled asset is CC0 — catalogued in ASSETS.md. Tested with node --test on every push.

The WindingGallery