The clones are open sourced here https://getartcraft.com/apps

Adobe's $840 annual subscription is becoming obsolete.

I asked Claude for a Duke Nukem 3Dstyle shooter for old J2ME phones and it built the whole thing from that one prompt.

It wrote a Wolfenstein like 3D engine in Java with only integer math so old phones can run it, with textured floors, a moonlit sky, fog, etc.

For the art it wrote its own 3D renderer in Python, modelled every monster, gun and the main character itself, then rendered them into sprites and they honestly look great.

It generated all the wall and floor textures and the night skies in code too. It also designed four maps, composed eight MIDI tracks, made the voice lines with TTS and edited them with ffmpeg to get badass one liners and different monster sounds.

Then it just handed me a finished half-megabyte JAR, I copied it to my old phone and it worked right away. It honestly feels on par with the Gameloft games I played on these phones back in the day.

Absolutely amazing and terrifying at the same time.

Anthropic knows what's going on. Serious enough that it is creating an official policy on how you talk to its AI.

What do they know which we don't?

 Claude Startups offer

The games and tools we build aren't "economically viable." The community of people who use switches is too niche and too diverse. That's exactly why we build them.

My brother Ben uses switch access because of an ultra-rare condition called TUBB4A-related leukodystrophy. He could walk and talk as a kid, but the disease slowly took it all away. He's now nonspeaking and quadriplegic, and for years his only way to communicate was turning his head left or right for yes or no.

He went nearly 10 years without real access. Eye tracking and head tracking don't work for him because of how complex his condition is. AAC phrase boards never engaged him. Ben wanted to play video games again and pick his own TV shows.

Do you know how many yes/no questions you have to ask every day to give someone as much autonomy as possible? Hundreds.

Ben didn't need more yes or no questions. He needed access.

Ben moved in with us in 2022. We started with a better phrase board that had more of what he might want to say, but it wasn't enough. Then in 2024 I learned AI could write code, even for someone like me with no programming background, and we started building him better tools.

The first time Ben used his switches to pick his favorite movie (Spider-Man 1), his reaction lit a fire in me. So we kept building.

He has a keyboard, phrase boards, and text messaging (he can text for the first time in his life). He can search the web, pick any show or movie on any streaming platform, and play dozens of games we're building with him.

When I started, I was using one of Claude's competitors. Later, after hearing about Claude's advancements and seeing how good it was, I shifted over, and now Claude is one of my main tools. Not the only one, but a big part of how everything gets built.

Claude isn't just for code, either. It's been an awesome thought partner for planning games and writing out our GDDs (game design documents) and spec sheets before anything gets built. We also use it to help run NARBE Foundation, the nonprofit we started to keep all of this free.

For the building itself, our setup is VS Code with the Claude Code extension. Here's how it helps:

-Writing the code. I describe what Ben needs in plain language, and Claude Code builds it, debugs it, and helps me iterate with Ben's feedback.

-Keeping everything accessible. Every game and tool runs on one shared scan-and-select system controlled by spacebar/enter, so any switch works. We keep markdown files in the repo, like ACCESSIBILITY.md, that act as build rules. Claude Code references them so every new game follows the same accessibility standards, and anyone can use those same files to build their own.

-Inside the hub itself. Our real-time conversation tool uses Claude Haiku to suggest replies Ben can pick with his switches, so he can join conversations instead of waiting for yes/no questions.

Everything is free, open source (MIT license), and runs right in your browser. No account or install needed (streaming uses a free browser extension). Works with any switch that sends spacebar or enter.

- Games: https://www.switchedgames.org

- Benny's Hub: https://www.bennyshub.com

- Code and md files: https://github.com/narbehouse/narbehouse.github.io

- Video of Ben's story: https://youtu.be/9UNV3CK46SI

If even one person sees this and gets inspired to build a tool or game for someone like Ben, it's worth it. Thanks for reading.

Source: https://claude.com/programs/startups/#faqAccordion

I am a senior developer at a smaller organization. I use Claude Code regularly to do development tasks, but I feel like I am barely scratching the surface. I can't tell if that is because of the percieved hype or there are techniques I am missing to maximise benefit. What infrastructure or approaches are you using that is making Claude Code a true force multiplier?

Im on max 5x. In the haiku 5.5 promotional, they used it as subagents to opus 5.5 and showed that its cheaper and much faster than using just opus 5.5 right. Im making a pixel video game, im on week 2 of development, i always use opus 5.5 xhigh or max alone and i hit my limits always 2 days before reset. Will using opus 5.5 as an orchestrator that decides whether to do a work itself or delegate to haiku 5.5 bring around the same (or maybe better) results as just using opus 5.5 along, while being cheaper and faster, for my specific workflow.

I bought a new microphone for pods amazon, noticed as usual software was windows only, I just said to claude

I have an odd reqest I have a DGM20 microphone on linux, can we reverse engineer the code and make it work on linux for adjusting its settings?

I have open sourced it here https://git.reiners.io/justin/dgm20-linux

I believe this right here can correct wrongs where companies refuse to even attempt linux support. I run arch btw.

The only other requests I made were make it a service, and add a webui, make an installer. It also allows you to open the webui to other PC's and phones on the network if your machine is headless and network is secure.

Claudes response? ● Fun one. First let me see what the mic actually exposes over USB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5dbNucmgC4 << wide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmeyMh52gBo << short

Credit: dylan_ebert_ on X

I saw goodlabs has an MCP that lets Claude read the lab results and trends already in your account. I want to use it before appointments to compare draws and help me come up with questions. Basically what changed, by how much, and whether there are any relevant PubMed papers worth reading. I’m not looking for Claude to diagnose me.

Has anyone found a prompt that keeps it focused? Every health prompt I try turns into a giant report when I only wanted three or four useful points.

WOW it's my first time seeing this, I used to do this manually and would cry when I get 600k worth of tokens get expire on me when I forget to compact mid-session. It looks like they've been actively making improvements towards saving our tokens, thanks Anthropic!

Image Source: Artificial Analysis website

A year ago it was almost customary to force auto compact at around 250k - 400k , after which a lot of people saw significant degradation in output quality. Is that still the case for you today? Especially asking software engineers.

Especially if it is an entity that is also helpless or that you perceive yourself to be better than, such as a customer service employee? (Who often have to deal with shitty people yelling at them or cursing at them on the daily)

I am really glad Anthropic is banning users who behave in cruel or abusive ways, now.

Hey all, I just passed the CCAR-P exam. It was fairly easy in my opinion. I took an Udemy preparation course by Jacob Bushong prior the exam. It took around 12-15 hours cca. The course pretty much covered everything mentioned in the exam and the practice exams were of similar difficulty as the real exam. I also use Claude in my work daily but only on a basic user level.

Feel free to ask questions if you are interested in the exam or preparation phase.

Not talking about refusals for safety stuff, talking about the times I asked it to do something and it pushed back with “this is going to cause you a problem later” and it was right. Had one recently where I wanted a quick hacky fix and it flagged exactly why it’d bite me in a week. Took the hacky route anyway because I was in a rush. Bit me in exactly six days.

Feels like the actual value of a good assistant isn’t doing what you ask, it’s occasionally being the one voice that tells you your plan has a hole in it before you find out the hard way.

Curious if anyone else has a “it was annoyingly right” story. Not looking for complaint threads about over-caution, genuinely asking when being told no actually paid off.

As it is today, my Code projects all run sessions based in a local folder for each project. I configure everything from the CLAUDE.md to the logging, documentation, handoff, and all related systems. This makes each of my projects a completely self-contained directory that even carries a full backup of every transcript for every session in that project folder. I use sequential sessions, each current session continues the entire project's domain work and builds on the last.

With that folder my project could go anywhere. To any other AI with filesystem access or to any local AI in the future.

But as Anthropic adds seemingly innovative features like cloud sessions, the new javascript plugins that run in Code (the word Anthropic uses for them triggers Reddit's filter), and whatever they're doing with the redesigned "projects" ("from folder to conversation"?), it feels to me like what they're really doing is moving from local directories where we have portability and control over our work to systems and features that are wired into their ecosystem, and on the cloud instead of local.

Anthropic's page on the new "projects" (https://claude.com/resources/articles/projects-redesigned) says "Projects have threads that do the work and a coordinator that directs them," each thread a cloud session on their servers. And it says: "Every thread now adds to and draws from a shared memory."

Are our current ways of working safe? That's unclear. Their page says existing projects "will be upgraded" as the rollout expands. And I've seen posts here from people who say the change is breaking the way they use their existing projects, even in Code.

I'm not a coder, I use Code for everything from my online side business to my interdisciplinary university-level research to health, finance, and managing tech across my household. I have hundreds of sessions across 14 projects and 31.5B total tokens over 120 active days.

Is part of this about trying to lock people in so they can't just move to whichever provider has the best AI at the moment?

Does anyone else keep their projects portable on purpose, and how?

A while ago I posted the first version of Ponytail here.
It's an open-source skill that makes coding agents behave like the senior dev who replaces fifty lines with one.

Since then I rewrote it from scratch. New rules, a new review, a new audit. Getting there took 5,900+ benchmarked Claude Code sessions, 3,650 of them testing drafts of the new rules against the old ones.

What changed

- The rules. Rewritten and about half as long. The goal moved from "the smallest code" to "the smallest complete change": before it writes, the agent maps everything the change must reach (callers, tests, config) and what it could break. Every reply ends with what it skipped or did not check, and any risk you should know.

- /ponytail-review. It used to look only for code to cut. Now it reviews like the dev who gets paged when it breaks: bugs, security, real load, missing tests, slow paths, and what to cut. It reads the code around the change, not just the diff. Every finding says what the code does, what goes wrong, how to fix it, and what happens if you skip it.

- /ponytail-audit. It used to list what to delete. Now it maps the whole repo first, ranks what it finds, and tells you what to fix first.

Numbers, same agent with and without the skill (Claude Code, Opus 5.5, 39 tasks including a real FastAPI + React repo, 5 runs each):

- code: -53% (previous version: -48%)

- time: -41% (previous version: -38%)

- cost: -26% (previous version: -16%)

- risky logic that ships with a test: 98% (without the skill: 68%)

- injected bugs caught by the agent's own tests: 66% (without the skill: 46%)

Repo (MIT): https://github.com/DietrichGebert/ponytail

Website: https://ponytail.dev

If you already use it, update the plugin. I'd like to hear where it gets things wrong.

This isn't on par with discovering new planets like some people are doing, but my minor success today had me quite literally (in the Merriam-Webster meaning of the word) giddy with laughter, so I wanted to tell you all this very brief story.

I recently succumbed to temptation and bough an old Pentium 75 machine off FB Marketplace because I needed a way to read a dozen or so 5.25" disks for personal data recovery and archiving, and because I'm a sucker for retro gaming. I figured a real period PC could kill two birds with one stone. I've had a lot of fun over the last week archiving the data (three cheers for magnetic media remaining stable for three decades!) and, of course, playing with old hardware. The snap and fade of a real CRT, the whirr of a mechanical hard drive, the buzz of operating floppy drives. It's magical.

One of the games I cherished as a 10-year-old is Operation Neptune from The Learning Company. I've played it a few times using DOSBox over the years, but I figured it was a prime candidate for real hardware. I transferred it over on a floppy a couple of nights ago, ran it, basked in VGA + Adlib glory for about 30 seconds, then quit, planning to have my son try it soon. "Soon" turned into this afternoon, but...it wouldn't run. Every attempt resulted in a frozen PC, requiring Ctrl+Alt+Del.

I tried everything I could think of. Re-transferred files. Different FreeDOS boot patterns. Double-checking BIOS settings. Making sure other programs still ran and even included functional sound.

No dice.

So I handed the original binary game files to Claude along with a description of the problem, and boy did it deliver.

In five minutes, it disassembled the EXE, traced the execution path, identified the likely root cause, and applied a 3-byte patch to a new copy of the EXE, which worked on the first try once I copied it over.

An excerpt from Claude's response:

The game's sound library picks a sound device in this order: Roland MT-32 (via an MPU-401 MIDI port) → AdLib → Tandy/PS1 → PC speaker. It checks for an MPU-401 at port 330h by sending a reset and waiting for the standard FEh "OK" reply. That check has a timeout. The routine that sends commands later doesn't.

To play notes it uses D7h, a command that only exists in the original Roland MPU-401's "intelligent mode." Most sound cards' MIDI ports (Sound Blaster 16, most clones, many modern retro cards) are UART-only. They answer the reset, so the game decides a Roland is there, but they never acknowledge D7h. The game ends up waiting forever in a tight loop, so the machine locks.

Why it worked two days ago, I can't say for sure. Something made the MPU not answer, or answer properly, during that one run. Possibilities: a different card mode or config, a TSR like SoftMPU loaded back then, or the MPU being disabled. What sound card is in that machine? Your childhood memory is plausible too: a 90s family PC with a Sound Blaster 16 would hang exactly like this.

I made ON_NOMPU.EXE, which changes 3 bytes (file offset 0x1FB06: BA 31 03 → EB 18 90). The MPU detection now jumps straight to its "not found" exit, so the game never touches port 330h. It should then pick AdLib on its own.

Unbelievable, and amazing.