MAHAL — The Palace, In One Continuous Take
Scrolling doesn't trigger the film. Scrolling is the film.
A seventy-four-second destination film through a palace, told as eight scenes and re-engineered so the reader holds the transport control: nothing on the page plays by itself, and one object writes video.currentTime sixty times a second off scroll position alone. Scroll slowly and the camera through arrival, the grand entrance, the court of palms, a suite, the pool, dinner, the spa and nightfall drifts; stop and it stops on a frame; scroll back and you walk out through the doors you came in by. The engine is framerate-independent (damping is normalised against elapsed time, not frame count, so it carries the same weight on a 60Hz and 120Hz panel), issues exactly one seek at a time with a watchdog for seeks that never report back, and never once puts React on that hot path.
How to run this
Works the same on Windows, macOS and Linux. No prior setup beyond Node.js, and nothing to configure — the pack runs as-is.
- Built with
- Next.js 16
- Requires
- Node.js 20 or newer
- Opens at
- http://localhost:3000
✦ Or let an AI agent set it up for you
Already using Claude Code, Antigravity, Cursor or Windsurf? Unzip the pack, open the folder as a project, and just ask:
Install the dependencies and run this project, then give me the URL
It reads the README included in the pack, runs the right commands for this project, and sorts out anything that trips along the way. You still need Node.js installed (step 1 below) — everything after that it can handle.
Or run it yourself
- 1
Install Node.js, if you don't have it
Download the LTS build from nodejs.org and run the installer — on Windows and Mac it handles everything. Mac users with Homebrew can run
brew install nodeinstead.To check it worked, run
node --version. It should print a number like v22.11.0. - 2
Unzip the pack, then open a terminal inside the folder
Windows: open the unzipped folder in File Explorer, click the address bar, type
powershelland press Enter.Mac: press Cmd+Space, type terminal, press Enter. Then type
cd(with a trailing space) and drag the unzipped folder onto the terminal window — it fills in the path for you. Press Enter. - 3
Install the dependencies
Run
npm installOne-time, and takes roughly 30–60 seconds. It creates a node_modules folder — that's expected, and it's why the zip doesn't ship one.
- 4
Start it
Run
npm run devThen open http://localhost:3000 in your browser. Leave the terminal open while you use it — closing it stops the site. Press Ctrl+C in the terminal to stop.
- 5
Optional — build for production
When you're ready to deploy,
npm run buildproduces the optimised output. The pack deploys to Vercel, Netlify or any Node host with no changes.
+ − If something goes wrong
- “npm is not recognised” / “command not found: npm”
- Node.js isn’t installed, or the terminal was open before you installed it. Close the terminal, open a new one, and try again.
- “Port 3000 is already in use”
- Something else is running there — often a previous copy of this site. Close the other terminal, or stop it with Ctrl+C.
- The page loads but images or video are missing
- Make sure you ran the command from inside the unzipped MAHAL — The Palace, In One Continuous Take folder itself, not the folder containing it.
- npm install shows warnings
- Warnings (as opposed to errors) are normal and safe to ignore. Only a message starting with ERR! needs attention.
Still stuck? Email us and we'll get it running with you.
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