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Show HN: I built a game on my old phone without knowing what I was building

I'm calling this "Vibe Discovery" — distinct from vibe coding because I didn't know the requirements upfront. Started with "make something with the accelerometer" and discovered through 6 iterations that I wanted a WebGL marble game. The interesting part was the dev setup: Claude Code running in Termux on a Redmi Note 9 (4GB RAM). The same-device feedback loop — code, test accelerometer, react, iterate — made rapid discovery possible in a way that laptop-to-phone deployment wouldn't.

10 points by kikkupico - 8 comments

8 Comments

spuz [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Why can't we just call it "play". That is what we used to call doing things without a purpose.

I wish people would disclose when they used an LLM to write for them. This comes across as so clearly written by ChatGPT (I don't know if it is) that it seriously devalues any potential insights contained within. At least if the author was honest, I'd be able to judge their writing accordingly.

cgio [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Quoting: “ What I’m describing is different. I’ll call it Vibe Discovery: you don’t know what you’re building. The requirements themselves are undefined. You’re not just discovering implementation - you’re discovering what the product should be.

The distinction matters:”

What is it with this pattern of phrases that screams LLM to me? Whenever I come upon this pattern I stop reading further.

lithocarpus [3 hidden]5 mins ago
One way I'd describe it is LLMs say lots of things that technically make sense but aren't quite like anyone would normally say it.

And secondly they like to use more nouns for things, in my experience.

Of course all this is just what I observe currently and could well become different for better and worse in future versions.

trollbridge [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It’s just like my friend has a distinct way of speaking. LLMs also have a distinct voice.
furyofantares [3 hidden]5 mins ago
You posted the prompt to the game, care to post the prompt to the blog post? I don't care what an LLM thinks about how you built your game. I would like to know what you think, but I'm not going to try to salvage it from an LLM-generated blog post.
jackmhny [3 hidden]5 mins ago
were approaching peak slop every day
phoronixrly [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Today on the front page there was an obviously vibe coded python script that pulls OSM data and slaps a colour scheme on it. Of course the data was skewed, because apparently LLMs don't do projections...

I gave up on the first non-ironic 'You are absolutely correct' comment... What is even real...

daveguy [3 hidden]5 mins ago
To be fair, vibe discovery is a lot more viable than vibe coding. Vibe coding implies the LLM output is acceptable. Vibe discovery implies a human in the loop, because LLMs can't "discover". They have no inate preference based on their lived experience in the same sense that a human or any biological organism does.