Play-test your own game
A developer built an agentic test harness so an AI could play their game and help with play-testing.
What they did
The game is a browser-based, turn-based crossword dungeon. Claude wrote a node.js wrapper that leaves the game files alone. It adds a text renderer and synthetic key events, served over HTTP. The AI played via curl calls, built fixtures to reproduce bugs, and was told to playtest each milestone feature before moving on.
How it went
Milestone 13, with five new special encounters, took 12 minutes and about 120k tokens. The AI caught and fixed a cage bug on its own. Manual playtesting was still needed and found more bugs, but it took under 30 minutes.
Worth knowing
It ran on Claude Code with Sonnet 4.6 on the Pro plan; the approach suits text-heavy, turn-based games better than screenshot-driven browser automation.
Labels
A developer built an agentic test harness so an AI could play their game and help with play-testing.
The AI caught and fixed a cage bug on its own.
The AI caught and fixed a cage bug on its own.
The AI played via curl calls, built fixtures to reproduce bugs, and was told to playtest each milestone feature before moving on.
A developer built an agentic test harness so an AI could play their game and help with play-testing.
The “Material” label failed its quality check and is not used for selection.
Details
- Agents
- custom-built or unnamed agent
- Source
- Hacker News
- Source date
- Apr 29, 2026
- Accounts
- 1
- In registry since
- Oct 12, 2026