missless failed at real-time video — so we pivoted to vibeCat

missless failed at real-time video — so we pivoted to vibeCat Three weeks of work. A working WebSocket proxy, Cloud Run deployment, Lyria BGM generation, 75 commits. And then the real-time video generation just... didn't work. I created this post for the purposes of entering the Gemini Live Agent Challenge. If you read my earlier posts about missless — the websocket cascade from hell , the security holes, the 3am debugging sessions — this is the post where that story ends and a new one begins. the promise that broke missless was supposed to be a "virtual reunion" app. Upload a video of someone you miss, the AI reconstructs their personality and voice, and you have a real-time conversation — with video. Not just audio. Video. A face that moves, reacts, speaks back to you. The audio side worked beautifully. Gemini Live API handled voice synthesis, the Go backend proxied WebSocket streams, Cloud Run kept it alive. I had real-time voice conversations with AI-reconstructed personas and it f