Progressive prompting: same game, and each prompt gives Claude more to work with.
This is a question dropped into a Magic 8-Ball: you shake it, and some answer floats up. Claude knows nothing about what you're picturing, so every gap gets filled with a guess. This is where hallucinations start: decisions made with little or no context at all.
Is this the game you were picturing?
Make me a whack-a-mole game. It should be fun to play, not too hard, and well designed.
No more shaking the Magic 8-Ball. Now Claude has something real to build from, and you can judge what comes back because you know what you want, and you know how to ask for it.
Which decisions did it still have to make for you?
3x3 grid. 30 second game with a countdown and a big score. Moles should come up quick enough that I have to pay attention but not so fast it's unfair, and get harder as the clock runs down. Points for hits, lose a point if you miss. Clean and simple, no scrolling.
You ask for Claude's ideas, it asks for yours, and you work it out together before anything gets built. That's reverse prompting, and this is co-thinking: not you telling it what to do, not it telling you, but a conversation that ends in a decision.
What did it ask you that you hadn't thought about?
Let's turn this up a notch. I want real visual style, not default boxes and colors, and I want it to be more fun to play. What would you change about the look, and about how it plays, like timing and difficulty? Ask me what you need to know, and let's brainstorm before you build anything.
One line can change the whole feel. Pick one, or write your own.
Make the moles tomatoes instead.Make it gophers in a vegetable garden.Add a bonus mole worth 5 points that shows up rarely.Speed it up every 10 seconds so it gets brutal.Add something I lose points for hitting.Low-Stakes Homework ยท Due next class
Any topic. Any form. As simple or as elaborate as you like.
A Mad Libs about your weekend, your dog, a company picnic, the drive to work. A silly story with five blanks or a saga with thirty. Something you'd read out loud at dinner, or something just for you. Claude can ask you for the words one at a time, or hand you a fill-in-the-blank sheet you print out. It can be a story, a poem, a fake news report, a recipe.
There's no version of this that's wrong. Make one, and notice what you had to tell Claude to get what you were picturing.
AI Fluency: Mad Libs Homework Same three steps as today. Walk all three and watch how the answer changes, or skip straight to three. Prompts one and two aren't good prompts; that's the point. And if you only do step one, you still did it.
Make me a Mad Libs game.Make me a Mad Libs game about ______. Ask me for ______ words, one at a time, then read the finished story back to me. Keep it ______ (silly / sweet / for kids). About ______ long.Before you change anything, give me your best ideas for making this more fun. Then ask me what you need to know before you build the next version.