llm-things: an MIT-licensed sticker pack of LLM industry jokes

What llm-things actually ships: stickers, not software

The repository description is literal. This is a collection of LLM memes, and the README says so in one line: a collection of LLM memes including png and svg, just for kicks. There is no install step, no package manifest, no runtime. The primary language field is unknown, which fits a repository whose payload is image files plus a README table.

The audience is narrow and specific. It is for people who already know why the phrase at the top of a Claude Code reply became a joke, why an Anthropic price chart is funny, or why a Chinese-language sticker about a lobster and a safety rule works. The README is written for that reader. Anyone outside the LLM tooling conversation will find a table of images with captions that assume prior context.

That is the honest framing. If you arrived looking for a library that does something with large language models, the name is misleading. The name is a pun on the thing being joked about, not a description of functionality.

Repository layout: a README table, a stickers directory, and two badges

The visible architecture is flat. There is a stickers directory, referenced throughout the README as stickers/<name>.png, and a readme_assets directory holding at least two SVG badges. Every entry in the README table follows the same shape: an image tag pointing at a file under stickers/, a fixed width of 400, and a description cell.

The data flow is entirely one-directional. A contributor adds an image file to stickers/, adds a row to the README table, and writes a caption. There is no build step that validates the image, no index file, and no generated manifest. The README is the catalogue. If a sticker file is renamed without updating the table, the table breaks, and nothing in the repository would catch it.

Two badges sit at the top. One links to a Figma community file, which suggests the artwork is also distributed as a Figma resource. The other links to df.fenx.work/llm-things/, a domain the README does not explain. The repository homepage field is empty, so those two links are the only outward pointers in the material. Treat the Figma file as the editable source and the repository as the export, or the reverse; the README does not say which is authoritative.

The captions are the product, and several require Chinese-language context

Several stickers carry explanatory text that goes well beyond a one-line label. The safeclaw entry is a couplet: countless lobsters, safety rule first, messy configs, a system in pools of tears. The deepseek entry explains that the Chinese text in the image means roughly thinking, oh no, the user is completely angry, and then traces the meme to a user insulting R1 and the model's first line of thought being that sentence. The ollama entry describes a Chinese X user asking what took so long and the account replying in idiomatic Chinese.

This is the part of the repository that has actual editorial value. A reader who only sees the PNG gets a picture. A reader who reads the caption gets the origin, the language, and the reason the joke circulated. The apple-intelligence-delay entry does the same work, explaining that the pigeon in the image means to break a promise in contemporary Chinese usage.

Where the captions are thin, they are very thin. The tab sticker is captioned human can press tab. The bouncing-ball-test entry says testing is also one of the LLM's coding ability tests. Those are labels, not explanations, and they assume the reader already knows the reference. The inconsistency is real: some rows read like documentation, others like a note to self.

How you get it running: cloning, not installing

There is no installation. The README gives no commands, no package name, and no configuration keys, because there is nothing to configure. The practical workflow is a clone and a file copy.

To get the assets locally:

git clone https://github.com/fenxer/llm-things

After that, the images live under stickers/ with names matching the README table, for example stickers/claude-code.png, stickers/reset.png, stickers/mistral.png, stickers/qwen-ditto.png, stickers/distillation.png, stickers/soul-md.png, stickers/anthropic.png, stickers/grok.png, stickers/deepseek.png, stickers/ollama.png, stickers/agents-md.png, stickers/pelican.png, stickers/yc.png, stickers/gemini.png, stickers/gpt-trademark.png, stickers/closeai.png, stickers/ghibli.png, stickers/strawberry.png, stickers/bouncing-ball-test.png and stickers/mlx.png.

If you want the editable version, the badge at the top of the README points to a Figma community file. If you want whatever df.fenx.work/llm-things/ serves, that is a separate destination the README does not describe. Beyond those two links, there is no documented API, no CDN path, and no versioning scheme for the images. Pinning to a commit hash is the only way to get a stable reference, and the README does not suggest doing so.

Where a sticker repository breaks down as a dependency

The obvious failure mode is treating this as infrastructure. It has no releases retrieved, no changelog, and no interface. If you embed a raw GitHub URL for a sticker in a slide template, that URL is tied to a branch that can be rewritten. The README itself is the only index, and it is hand-maintained.

The second limitation is provenance. MIT covers the repository contents, but the stickers reference third-party names and marks: Claude, DeepSeek, Ollama, Gemini, Grok, YC, Tailwind, Ghibli, Apple Intelligence, the .ai domain, and a character described as Ditto. The README does not state that any of these are used with permission, and it does not include a trademark notice. The ghibli caption even notes that the referenced style is largely unavailable due to copyright reasons. That sentence is about the model capability, not about the sticker, but it is a reminder that the subject matter sits near rights questions.

The third limitation is audience. A sticker about a Chinese-language pun on a delayed product launch will not land in a deck aimed at a general audience, and the caption that makes it land is long enough that it will not fit on a slide. Half the value of this repository is the explanation, and the explanation does not travel with the image unless you carry it yourself.

Compared with a general-purpose meme or illustration source

The realistic alternative is not another LLM meme repository. It is a generic asset source: an illustration library, a stock image service, or a design tool's template gallery. The difference in approach is context versus coverage. A stock library gives you a wide, searchable, licence-documented set of images with no relationship to the LLM toolchain. llm-things gives you a small set where every image is aimed at a specific piece of the toolchain, and where the README supplies the reference the image assumes.

That trade is the whole decision. If you need a picture of a person at a laptop, a stock library wins on selection and on paperwork. If you need a picture that only makes sense to someone who has watched token pricing move, a stock library has nothing for you and this repository does. The narrower the audience, the less a general source can substitute.

A second alternative is to commission or draw the artwork yourself. That removes the provenance question entirely and lets you match your own visual style. It also removes the joke, since the humour here comes from shared recognition of specific events, and a commissioned illustration of a shared event is a different object.

Maintenance cost and what the MIT licence does and does not settle

The maintenance burden on the consumer side is close to zero and the maintenance burden on the publisher side is entirely manual. Adding a sticker means adding a file and a table row. Nothing regenerates, nothing is validated, and the README table is the only place where the set is enumerated. A consumer who vendors the images into their own repository inherits that manual upkeep if they want to track upstream changes.

The MIT licence is stated in the repository metadata. MIT permits use, modification and redistribution provided the copyright notice and permission notice are included. That is a permissive grant over the code and assets the repository actually contains. It is not a grant over third-party trademarks, logos, product names or characters that a sticker may depict, and the README does not claim otherwise. Redistributing a sticker that shows a company mark or a recognisable character is a different question from redistributing an MIT-licensed file, and the repository offers no guidance on it.

One practical step before reuse: check whether a LICENSE file is present in the tree and read it, rather than relying on the metadata field alone. The supplied material lists the licence as MIT but does not show the file contents. For internal use the risk is low. For anything public or commercial, the sticker-by-sticker question of what is depicted matters more than the repository-level licence.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt llm-things if you need MIT-licensed PNG or SVG artwork for slides, internal docs, or chat reactions about the LLM toolchain, and you are willing to read the README captions because a large share of the jokes only land with that context. Do not adopt it if you need a maintained dependency, versioned releases, or any machine-readable metadata; the repository is a sticker folder, the badges point at a Figma community file and df.fenx.work, and no releases were retrieved. Before reuse, verify the licence file and the provenance of any sticker you plan to redistribute commercially, since MIT covers the repository but does not settle rights in the referenced model names, logos or characters.

Official sources

1. fenxer/llm-things on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: MIT
4. README