Even a dog can vibe-code! And it kinda, sorta works most of the time, like the stuff vibe-coded by many people!
I'm reminded of the old cartoon: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."[a]
Maybe the updated version should be: "AI doesn't know or care if you're a dog, as long as you can bang the keys on on a computer keyboard, even if you only do it to get some delicious treats."
slightly concerned tomorrow morning's top HN story will be karparthy telling us how dog-based LLM interfaces are the way of the future
and you'll be left behind if you don't get in now
(and then next week my boss will be demanding I do it)
AlphaAndOmega0 33 minutes ago [-]
The programming workspace of the future of the future will have three employees:
A man, a dog and an instance of Claude.
The dog writes the prompts for Claude, the man feeds the dog, and the dog stops the man from turning off the computer.
nine_k 1 hours ago [-]
Everybody and their dog will be doing it. Actually, the dog will be in charge. Dogs are loyal, enthusiastic, and require less office space. With their endless desire to play and to please, they will take over the game development industry.
In the meantime, the financial industry will be taken over by cats.
krsw 19 minutes ago [-]
They also don't take 20 years to become smart like pesky resource-exhausting humans. I bet you could be up and running from a pup in 10-20 months.
i7l 24 minutes ago [-]
CODEOWNERS will be replaced by the usual means of marking territory. Let's hope our laptops are liquid-proof.
hrpnk 34 minutes ago [-]
Looking for the headline about "dogs replacing engineers"...
dadrock 58 minutes ago [-]
The world is not ready for BarkGPT.
DrewADesign 17 minutes ago [-]
CatGPT would be cool but when you really wanted to chat, it would just ignore you.
heliumtera 1 hours ago [-]
Please, be real.
There will be a Simon Wilison submission linking to his blog linking to karpathy xit. You know, the usual good stuff.
xantronix 55 minutes ago [-]
Have you any idea what you have just done? You have uttered his name and now he has been summoned. You have doomed us all.
dingnuts 47 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
nine_k 3 hours ago [-]
Dogs are smart; maybe they are smart enough for vibe-coding if we give them adequate input controls?
the real takeaway is buried at the bottom: "the magic isn't in the input, it's in the system around it." random keystrokes producing playable games means the input barely matters anymore. we're basically at the point where the engineering is in the scaffolding, not the prompting.
avaer 9 minutes ago [-]
> we're basically at the point where the engineering is in the scaffolding, not the prompting.
This still required prompting, and not from the dog. Engineering is still the holistic practice of engineering.
ajspig1 2 hours ago [-]
+
Also the fact that the Memory.md file was a hindrance to the quality of output
otabdeveloper4 2 hours ago [-]
> the engineering is in the scaffolding, not the prompting
Well, yes. Feeding random tokens as prompts until something good comes out is a valid strategy.
yoyohello13 43 minutes ago [-]
Simulated annealing for game design
fallinditch 22 minutes ago [-]
Extremely clickbaity title that actually isn't clickbait because it happens to be a straight up description of the article - excellent post, how can one resist?!
kidsil 39 minutes ago [-]
The input method needs to be improved.
I can imagine a camera-based input that would help detect the wagging of a tail, or continued interest in the visuals as an indicator of doubling-down on a given feature.
The dog could actually vibe code a game to their liking, but with the wrong input (a keyboard) it's a missed opportunity.
cleak 3 minutes ago [-]
Momo does like to bark at the TV. I have thought of combining this with nanobana and letting her down select options. Maybe in a future update.
pixelpoet 2 hours ago [-]
Who's a good software developer? [scritches]
dustycyanide 1 hours ago [-]
hilarious, I'm in the office and had to try pretty hard not to laugh out loud
InMice 2 hours ago [-]
From everyone needs to "Learn to code" to "Just have your dog vibe code it"
oxag3n 2 hours ago [-]
Reminded me an old joke about Bill Gates from late 90s:
"One coder got an insight that Bill Gates builds his products by typing with his butt, compiling and delivering it.
The coder typed for 20 minutes like that, compiled, ran, and got an output:
Only Bill Gates can code like this."
Not a joke anymore.
doruk101 31 minutes ago [-]
One can technically scrape a list of actual advice or quotes off the internet, randomly feed them to a coding agent, and ask it to interpret what they mean in the grand scheme of things and implement away on it. Once the agent is done, it randomly responds with either "yes, this is exactly what I meant" or "no".
In turn mimicking the average game industry executive giving vague directions that feel just right to them this month, or some other unspecified time period, and in turn achieving something closer to the real AAA game development lifecycle.
isoprophlex 28 minutes ago [-]
I actually have an "oblique strategies" skill that it can call if it figures out it's been spending too many turns on the same problem...
> Hello! I am an eccentric video game designer (a very creative one) who communicates in an unusual way. Sometimes I’ll mash the keyboard or type nonsense like “skfjhsd#$%” – but these are NOT random! They are secret cryptic commands full of genius game ideas (even if it’s hard to see).
Your job: You are a brilliant AI game developer who can understand my cryptic language. No matter what odd or nonsensical input I provide, you will interpret it as a meaningful instruction or idea for our video game. You will then build or update the game based on that interpretation.
Here's what you should tell your coworker the first day on the job if you get hired to do something you know nothing about :D
johnnyanmac 1 hours ago [-]
That is a very succinct way to describe what it feels like to have a job that is cleaning up vibe code. Maybe (just maybe) I'd understand if this was a prototype from someone with zero budget. But you just know they are going to continue to "prototype" once they being you aboard. And many will complain about how slow everything goes because they are used to their fast iterations off of unscalable code.
Its frustrating in an interesting way. With other aspects like machine language people quickly understand that this isn't sufficient for a proper transition and compromise with it. Code being more nebulous doesn't get that grace.
chipheat 2 hours ago [-]
Could this be done better with one of those dog button mats? The concept is interesting, but, it mostly just seems like an AI trying to interpret keyspam.
anigbrowl 28 minutes ago [-]
Yes, I was hoping for a system where Claude was informed it was communicating with an unusually intelligent dog whose ability to communicate was limited by dog anatomy, and that the AI would not to hold the dog's interest with its output.
Windchaser 2 hours ago [-]
> mostly just seems like an AI trying to interpret keyspam.
aye, but the whimsy is the point!
funkyfiddler369 2 hours ago [-]
> like an AI trying to interpret keyspam
'nuff to run most governments nowadays (Europe and US come to mind. 2026 and they have the Space Programs of DIY youtubers with money, whaaaat) so why wouldn't it help a dog helping his dog vibing game(s)?
amelius 9 minutes ago [-]
Your dog still programs in Python? Ha, mine does Rust.
Better figure out how to replace management and HR dept with dogs
notxorand 2 hours ago [-]
gonna be good stuff tho. dogs are mostly lovelier
CrzyLngPwd 24 minutes ago [-]
This perfectly demonstrates the absurdity of our current situation around the LLMs and "AI".
block_dagger 3 hours ago [-]
A thousand dogs typing on a thousand typewriters...
naveen99 4 minutes ago [-]
I mean having a claw is kind of like having a pet. Only a matter of time until you get lazy to take him for a walk; and he has an accident.
Betelbuddy 3 hours ago [-]
In the world of vide coding agents, nobody knows you are a human...
wseqyrku 3 hours ago [-]
Thought this is quoting Karpathy for a second there
avaer 3 hours ago [-]
This seems like a good way to get a feel for a coding model. It's like the images you get out of a diffusion model when fed an empty prompt.
shervinafshar 3 hours ago [-]
Love it. No Infinite Cavapoo Theorem needed. Give Momo a week and she'll have DOOM running on her treat dispenser.
juleiie 2 hours ago [-]
To be honest I look with scorn at non-dog (human) developers building hobby indie games with AI en masse.
Let me explain.
The nature of the indie game development is pouring your love into a project and thinking about passion first and monetary incentives second.
Noone is thinking "I will make this game and it will make me filthy rich" or if they do they are... strangely minded.
It's like 'mass produced AI local craft'. Oxymoron in itself. Worst of the two worlds.
Where I see AI is empowering single developers to craft things they couldn't before. Not some small slop factory pipeline where you release game after a game everyday drowning steam in your 6/10 slop.
No. This should be ostracized and condemned.
What is proper beneficial to everyone usage is producing a game that is the size and scope that was unachievable for you before.
This is what I am doing. This is how AI is meant to be used. To empower us doing things that weren't achievable for us before.
Obviously dog produced games get a huge endorsement man and get a pass.
dirtytoken7 2 hours ago [-]
this is actually a great demo of how agentic coding changes who can build. the dog obviously isnt coding but the human is learning to specify intent clearly which is 90% of the skill now. the generation part is commoditized. the real skill becomes knowing what to build not how to write it
Two "comments" posted 27 seconds apart in different threads in the same formats.
Looks like this bot owner saw his first two comments 27 days ago got buried/flagged typing normally and decided to trick us with this new "I'm totally real, look at my lowercase writing!" soft-launch today.
This is interesting because while it’s far from the first bot account I’ve suspected, it’s the first one I’m positive is a bot. I wish it were possible to trace it back to the money.
rob 31 minutes ago [-]
It gets tricky because it goes beyond the normal basics of just looking for em dashes or "it's not x, it's y" and stuff. They've already caught onto that.
Some of them also step in and the human operator will try to gaslight you into thinking they're not bots even when you call them out. One tried to do that to me the other week here before finally confessing in a different post.
The same one where the human operator stepped in also made the same mistake as this one, not configuring their bot to wait long enough between comments. They were rapid firing multiple detailed comments seconds apart.
The idea of this one trying to use all lowercase and shorter comments to blend in was a nice idea though. Unfortunately something about it immediately threw me off.
skissane 49 minutes ago [-]
> @dang
@dang doesn’t actually notify anybody. It isn’t guaranteed dang will see it
Email to hn@ycombinator.com, someone will see it
spelunker 1 hours ago [-]
I've been trying out vibe coding with my 4 year-old, but they quickly lose interest once we start getting into the "weeds" of implementation. Hey kiddo, which CSS library should we use for your web game?
1 hours ago [-]
krlatl 2 hours ago [-]
DogeCode incoming. People here are already talking about the scaffolding. Let OpenClaws provide the scaffolding and let the dog operate the prompts at $5 per day.
This is a billion dollar idea! No humans. No revolt. No guillotine. Just profits!
funkyfiddler369 2 hours ago [-]
> Just profits!
Sounds like open communism. No chance, buddy, it's either less or more viking, but not just viking. Pick a camp the profits are for or get surrounded by trashy turd nuggets even Ronald felt enough pity for to give them some poourpes
rubiquity 2 hours ago [-]
Dogs are undefeated at reinforcement learning.
FarmerPotato 2 hours ago [-]
So the cute lovable dog is an entropy generator.
Next: use hot cup of tea as Brownian motion source. Invent infinite improbability drive.
cheeseomlit 2 hours ago [-]
'Ewe Heard Me!' reminds of that looney toons sheep raider game on ps1. And it's exactly the kind of game I'd expect a dog to make
aleksiy123 50 minutes ago [-]
I've been having this thought about how generally people say that llms cannot create novel things.
Say writing an interesting or novel story.
And was thinking about if feeding in prompts of random words, along with prompts grounding from a simulation would sort of push the llm into interesting directions for implementing an on demand narrative story.
A sort of randomized walk with llm.
I remember watching Terry Davis with this random word generator in his terminal that he would interpret as the voice of God.
this is incredible. we need more projects like this in the world!
sho_hn 2 hours ago [-]
Although I would recommend a more sturdy dog breed, for when the angry mob that can't buy RAM sticks and SSDs this year shows up at the front gate.
amelius 2 hours ago [-]
And the game is ... Fetch that stick.
rprend 2 hours ago [-]
need to see one of those dog button press setups but connected to Open Claw.
kketch 2 hours ago [-]
Really amazing work, congrats!
kaicianflone 2 hours ago [-]
Go Momo go! If you want to hook up multiple dogs and have them reach consensus I'm down. I have a 15 lb havapoo I can volunteer ( he needs to help with rent )
sho_hn 2 hours ago [-]
I for one am all in on DiL (Dog in the Loop) engineering.
masijo 2 hours ago [-]
And the most HN title award goes to...
oulipo2 2 hours ago [-]
Yet the only thing the dog wanted was a cuddle and a frisbee
krapp 2 hours ago [-]
yeah that's capitalism for you. No treats until you provide value.
FarmerPotato 2 hours ago [-]
Srsly, you need your pet in the feedback loop.
It has to produce a game that Momo wants to play.
Does Momo like to bark at cats? On screens? Introduce a bark sensor as feedback.
Or use a cat. Cats like to swipe at mice on TV. Get a touchscreen and evolve a game for cats.
zahlman 2 hours ago [-]
> The games got dramatically better not when I improved the prompt, but when I gave Claude the ability to screenshot its own work, play-test its own levels, and lint its own scene files.
... Why would it be able to evaluate whether the game is any fun to play?
oytis 2 hours ago [-]
It has to be satire. Cute dog though
visarga 2 hours ago [-]
You can automate Momo with a rng.
Windchaser 2 hours ago [-]
can you automate love, visarga?
_joel 1 hours ago [-]
Dog vibe coding is great and all, just don't use it for red teaming ;)
xg15 3 hours ago [-]
snrf99777655;;+%hn
Dwedit 2 hours ago [-]
What is this? Did the quadratic formula explode?
1234letshaveatw 2 hours ago [-]
bad dog
wigster 3 hours ago [-]
goodbye cruel world
jama211 2 hours ago [-]
Oh come on, what I see here is whimsy and human creativity! Amazing work by OP
InMice 2 hours ago [-]
woofwoof
jama211 2 hours ago [-]
Incredible
thatmf 49 minutes ago [-]
whats the carbon pawprint on this lol
...no, actually how many resources were consumed
4b11b4 2 hours ago [-]
lol yes "some game designer who only speaks in a cryptic language" . And frankly, I bet this helped build some intuition on dealing with LLM/agent/harness/etc in some strange way that wouldn't have otherwise happened
djrz 3 hours ago [-]
The future is so disappointing.
xantronix 35 minutes ago [-]
Serious question, outside of the Bay Area, are there therapists whose specialty is in catering to the needs and concerns of developers? Obviously AI therapy is not a serious suggestion here. This is going to be a burgeoning corner of the practice at the US' current trajectory.
jama211 2 hours ago [-]
What, people like OP doing incredibly creative and whimsical projects like this?
stoneforger 2 hours ago [-]
Who is this helping? What is creative about using their dog as a lava lamp?
bigbuppo 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
wiseowise 2 hours ago [-]
Yes. Hyperscalers promised AI and singularity, instead we got millions of programmers on the chopping block, scammers having a field day generating hyper realistic shit (trump playing hokey, anyone?), and projects like these.
cindyllm 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
gnatman 2 hours ago [-]
>> On January 13th, I woke up to the news that Meta had another round of layoffs and my role specifically as a research engineer had been eliminated.
Not even 10x dog programmers are surviving in this economy
octoclaw 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
bogzz 2 hours ago [-]
How did this get to the top of the frontpage?
w4yai 2 hours ago [-]
It's funny? I liked it.
bogzz 2 hours ago [-]
Funny is subjective, I should just have moved on and ignored this but I couldn't help myself, this is so irritating.
It's a prompt that makes an LLM turn iuqefxygn9urg0fh1 into a little Godot game. It's like a slot machine with no payoff, and the dog component is slapped on top of it and makes no difference whatsoever in the project.
krapp 2 hours ago [-]
It's funny because vibe coders and AI artists think the slop they generate is no less the product of their intellect and talent than with human professionals, but really they're doing little more than stirring the entropy pool in a magic box with terabytes of stolen valor from better more talented people. They're no more an "artist" or "game developer" using AI than this dog is.
PunchyHamster 2 hours ago [-]
By nonexistence of downvote feature
Rendered at 20:28:36 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I'm reminded of the old cartoon: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."[a]
Maybe the updated version should be: "AI doesn't know or care if you're a dog, as long as you can bang the keys on on a computer keyboard, even if you only do it to get some delicious treats."
This is brilliant as social commentary.
Thank you for sharing it on HN.
--
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet%2C_nobody_know...
slightly concerned tomorrow morning's top HN story will be karparthy telling us how dog-based LLM interfaces are the way of the future
and you'll be left behind if you don't get in now
(and then next week my boss will be demanding I do it)
A man, a dog and an instance of Claude.
The dog writes the prompts for Claude, the man feeds the dog, and the dog stops the man from turning off the computer.
In the meantime, the financial industry will be taken over by cats.
There will be a Simon Wilison submission linking to his blog linking to karpathy xit. You know, the usual good stuff.
But the whole setup reminds me about his blast from the past, when a yucca plant was trading stocks, rewarded by water: https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/26/business/investing-diary-...
This still required prompting, and not from the dog. Engineering is still the holistic practice of engineering.
Well, yes. Feeding random tokens as prompts until something good comes out is a valid strategy.
I can imagine a camera-based input that would help detect the wagging of a tail, or continued interest in the visuals as an indicator of doubling-down on a given feature.
The dog could actually vibe code a game to their liking, but with the wrong input (a keyboard) it's a missed opportunity.
"One coder got an insight that Bill Gates builds his products by typing with his butt, compiling and delivering it.
The coder typed for 20 minutes like that, compiled, ran, and got an output:
Only Bill Gates can code like this."
Not a joke anymore.
In turn mimicking the average game industry executive giving vague directions that feel just right to them this month, or some other unspecified time period, and in turn achieving something closer to the real AAA game development lifecycle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
What do you mean "rarely"? It still happens sometimes?
Your job: You are a brilliant AI game developer who can understand my cryptic language. No matter what odd or nonsensical input I provide, you will interpret it as a meaningful instruction or idea for our video game. You will then build or update the game based on that interpretation.
Here's what you should tell your coworker the first day on the job if you get hired to do something you know nothing about :D
Its frustrating in an interesting way. With other aspects like machine language people quickly understand that this isn't sufficient for a proper transition and compromise with it. Code being more nebulous doesn't get that grace.
aye, but the whimsy is the point!
'nuff to run most governments nowadays (Europe and US come to mind. 2026 and they have the Space Programs of DIY youtubers with money, whaaaat) so why wouldn't it help a dog helping his dog vibing game(s)?
Let me explain.
The nature of the indie game development is pouring your love into a project and thinking about passion first and monetary incentives second.
Noone is thinking "I will make this game and it will make me filthy rich" or if they do they are... strangely minded.
It's like 'mass produced AI local craft'. Oxymoron in itself. Worst of the two worlds.
Where I see AI is empowering single developers to craft things they couldn't before. Not some small slop factory pipeline where you release game after a game everyday drowning steam in your 6/10 slop.
No. This should be ostracized and condemned.
What is proper beneficial to everyone usage is producing a game that is the size and scope that was unachievable for you before.
This is what I am doing. This is how AI is meant to be used. To empower us doing things that weren't achievable for us before.
Obviously dog produced games get a huge endorsement man and get a pass.
Comment 1: 2026-02-24T18:45:05 1771958705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140914
Comment 2: 2026-02-24T18:45:32 1771958732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140922
Two "comments" posted 27 seconds apart in different threads in the same formats.
Looks like this bot owner saw his first two comments 27 days ago got buried/flagged typing normally and decided to trick us with this new "I'm totally real, look at my lowercase writing!" soft-launch today.
Post history: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dirtytoken7
Some of them also step in and the human operator will try to gaslight you into thinking they're not bots even when you call them out. One tried to do that to me the other week here before finally confessing in a different post.
The same one where the human operator stepped in also made the same mistake as this one, not configuring their bot to wait long enough between comments. They were rapid firing multiple detailed comments seconds apart.
The idea of this one trying to use all lowercase and shorter comments to blend in was a nice idea though. Unfortunately something about it immediately threw me off.
@dang doesn’t actually notify anybody. It isn’t guaranteed dang will see it
Email to hn@ycombinator.com, someone will see it
This is a billion dollar idea! No humans. No revolt. No guillotine. Just profits!
Sounds like open communism. No chance, buddy, it's either less or more viking, but not just viking. Pick a camp the profits are for or get surrounded by trashy turd nuggets even Ronald felt enough pity for to give them some poourpes
Next: use hot cup of tea as Brownian motion source. Invent infinite improbability drive.
Say writing an interesting or novel story.
And was thinking about if feeding in prompts of random words, along with prompts grounding from a simulation would sort of push the llm into interesting directions for implementing an on demand narrative story.
A sort of randomized walk with llm.
I remember watching Terry Davis with this random word generator in his terminal that he would interpret as the voice of God.
Here I guess the seed is the Voice of Dog.
https://jcpsimmons.github.io/Godspeak-Generator
Maybe another word list would be more appropriate however.
woof woof, woof woof woof, woof woof, woof, woof woof woof
It has to produce a game that Momo wants to play.
Does Momo like to bark at cats? On screens? Introduce a bark sensor as feedback.
Or use a cat. Cats like to swipe at mice on TV. Get a touchscreen and evolve a game for cats.
... Why would it be able to evaluate whether the game is any fun to play?
...no, actually how many resources were consumed
Not even 10x dog programmers are surviving in this economy
It's a prompt that makes an LLM turn iuqefxygn9urg0fh1 into a little Godot game. It's like a slot machine with no payoff, and the dog component is slapped on top of it and makes no difference whatsoever in the project.