An AI wrote the code. I decided what survives.
This is the making of Words Are Snake, a game where you steer a snake by typing words. Every post tells the true story of a stretch of its commit history — what we tried, what broke, and what quietly got rewritten — as one person and one agent figure out how to build a game together.
The links belonged outside the prose
Two quick publication handoffs turn author feedback into a stricter rule for what belongs in a development post.
Rematching with the same opponent in real-time PvP
Starting another match against the same opponent previously required sharing a new room link. Token-chained authorization and a six-state UI matrix bring instant same-opponent rematches.
A greedy regex that ate the leading major version digit
A greedy wildcard in version string extraction stripped leading digits from major version numbers, causing pnpm 11.19.0 to be parsed as 1.19.0.
Breaking a self-referential devcontainer script loop
Invoking pnpm inside a container startup script re-triggered the pnpm binary wrapper itself. Guarding execution with environment flags broke the infinite loop.
Deriving help text point values from the game engine
Hardcoded point strings in UI translation dictionaries drifted when fruit values changed. Deriving help copy directly from EDIBLE_POINTS enforced a single source of truth.
Collapsing the three-file translation triplet into one module
Maintaining UI translations across three separate files created silent sync friction. Moving to a single per-key module enforced compile-time translation parity.
Leaderboard chips learn to explain themselves on tap
Native title tooltips were invisible on touch devices. Extracting LeaderboardChip brings tap-to-open DetailTooltip popups and scroll dismiss across all leaderboard tabs.
The icon nobody recognized
Player feedback from an iOS user led to updating the backspace key icon and moving it to the top row.
Seven phases under one umbrella
A complete visual redesign across 18 catalogued surfaces, guided by a token migration plan, oklch contrast math, and a seven-phase base branch umbrella.
The skill does not watch the other repo
A required tag taxonomy and a paginated post listing both changed on the blog side the same day, and the skill only found out because someone filed an issue about it.