I Wrote Up My Whole Claude Code Workflow
The full field guide to how I drive Claude Code — design docs, phased delivery, verification gates, and continuous review — now lives on my personal site. Here's the short version and where to read the rest.
Mr. Phil Games
Game development blog by Philip Ludington. Stellar Throne, indie games, and agentic coding.
Latest posts
S&box Looks Great, But AI Can't Write Code for It Yet
S&box launches April 2026 as an open-source engine on Source 2. It looks incredible — but AI coding agents will struggle with it.
Building an AI That Runs Your Game While You Sleep
What happens when you give an AI agent autonomous control of a persistent game world — the tick architecture, guardrail system, and lessons from building Deep Hollow.
Deep Hollow Enters the Solana Agent Talent Show
I'm entering Deep Hollow into the Solana Agent Economy Hackathon — building a tradeable item economy and AI agent trading in five days with Claude Code.
Deep Hollow — A Survival Game You Play With Your AI Assistant
Deep Hollow is a survival-strategy game where your AI assistant defends your underground fortress while you're away. Free to play in Early Access.
Stellar Throne Devlog 11: New Architecture, New Partner, New Direction
475 commits, a new Unity frontend, a partnership with Pixel Cows, and a design pivot toward shorter play sessions. Stellar Throne's biggest update yet.
Jevons' Paradox and AI: Why It Means More Developers, Not Fewer
Jevons' paradox — the 160-year-old economics principle — explains why AI tools will create more demand for developers, not fewer.
Building a Programming Language for AI to Write
Every programming language was designed for humans. But AI code generation is reshaping how software gets built. What if we designed a language for AI?
Why Nobody Has Built a Modern Second Life (And Probably Won't)
Meta lost over $83 billion on the metaverse. Decentraland was valued at $1.3B with just 38 daily users. Meanwhile, Second Life quietly grew to 620K monthly users and minted 14 millionaires. Why can't anyone replicate it?
The Game Discovery Crisis Nobody's Talking About
AI is about to flood the market with more games than any storefront can sort. Creation isn't the bottleneck anymore — discovery is. Here's the economic case, the structural failure, and what I'm building about it.
Forget the Multipolar World — AI Is Redrawing the Map
Everyone's talking about the multipolar world. But AI and robotics will reshape global power faster than alliances ever could. Here's the real game.
$2 Robot Labor and Jevons' Paradox: The Indie Game Explosion Nobody's Ready For
Robot labor at $2/hour won't kill indie games — Jevons' paradox says it'll unleash millions more. What the economics of near-free labor mean for game devs.
My Marketing Stack is a Terminal
How I replaced my entire marketing stack with Claude Code skills, MCP servers, and terminal tools. AI marketing automation for CLI developers.
Why Game Discovery Is the Real AI Bet
AI is about to flood the market with games. The bottleneck isn't creation anymore — it's finding the good ones. That's why I'm building GameLegend.
What Block's 4,000 Layoffs Signal for the Games Industry
Block cut nearly half its workforce and Wall Street cheered. The games industry is already following the same playbook — here's what it means.
Jai in 2026: The State of Jonathan Blow's Programming Language
Jai — from closed beta to the upcoming open-source release, community growth, and how it compares to Odin and Zig.
The Last Techno-Scribes
AI is to programming what the printing press was to hand-copying manuscripts. That's wonderful for humanity and terrifying for the scribes.
Letter to Congress: DoD's Threat Against Anthropic
A template letter to send your representatives about the Department of Defense's threat to designate Anthropic a 'supply chain risk' for maintaining AI safety restrictions.
MyFitnessPal Bought Something Anyone Can Build
MyFitnessPal acquired Cal AI for its photo-based calorie tracking. Two teens built it. In the age of AI, so could anyone else.
The DoD Wants AI Without Guardrails. Gamers Should Care.
The DoD threatened to blacklist Anthropic for refusing to remove AI safety restrictions. Gamers have seen this playbook before.
MCP Is Wasting Your Context Window (And How to Fix It)
The Model Context Protocol loads every tool definition upfront, burning up to 30% of your AI's memory before you type a word. Here's what a leaner version could look like.
What Stripe's Minions Get Right About Coding Agents
Stripe's AI coding agents produce over 1,300 merged PRs per week with zero human-written code. The secret isn't a better model — it's better infrastructure.
CLAUDE.md for Game Devs: The File That Makes AI Actually Understand Your Game
Your AI coding agent is brilliant but clueless about your game. CLAUDE.md fixes that. Here's how to write one that actually works for game projects.
What is Agentic Coding? (And Why It Changes Everything)
Agentic coding is the biggest shift in software development since the IDE. Here's what it is, how it works, and why I'm building all my games with it.
The Big Catch-Up — Changesmith, YouTube, Community & More
Three months of updates: Changesmith launch, first YouTube video, Stellar Throne progress, Agentic Game Devs community, and more.
Stellar Throne Devlog #10 — From Bug Fixes to Breakthroughs
Fleet navigation, event system, research persistence, and construction system all fixed and implemented. 13 commits, 1000+ lines changed.
Stellar Throne Devlog #8: Validation, Parity, and Precision
Building a comprehensive serialization parity test framework, fixing floating-point precision, and validating the dual-engine architecture.
Stellar Throne Devlog #9: Visual Parity and Data Preservation
Fixing star rendering, preserving planet data, restoring entity names, and fleet composition through Zig serialization improvements.
Stellar Throne Devlog #7: The Zig Simulation Goes Live
The Zig simulation backend is now live in production. Bidirectional serialization breakthrough enables the 52x performance improvement.
Stellar Throne Devlog #6 — Zig Parity and Production Deployment
Comprehensive parity testing, 11 bugs fixed, and the Zig backend reaches production-ready status with 52.7x performance improvement.
Stellar Throne Devlog #4 — The Great Migration: GDScript to Zig Complete
All 23 game managers fully ported from GDScript to Zig. 333 tests passing, TOML config migration complete, and simulation system track 2 underway.
Stellar Throne Devlog #5 — All 21 Zig Simulation Phases Implemented + Parity Tester Online (52.7x Faster)
All 21 simulation phases complete in Zig with 52.7x speed improvement. TOML config system, rehabilitated test suite, and parity framework built.
Stellar Throne Devlog: The Engine Overhaul - 52× Faster Simulation
Hey everyone — MrPhil here with another deep dive into Stellar Throne.
Ground Combat & Territory Borders Revamped
Ground combat gets strength bars, ownership updates, and battlefield grids. Territory borders redesigned with shaders.
Stellar Throne Changelog Week of August 8-15, 2025
Major planetary warfare upgrades with Orbital Bombardment and Ground Invasion systems, redesigned Ground Combat UI, and dozens of bug fixes.
When the Bug Breaks Before You Do
A multi-day struggle with a persistent combat timing bug, exhausting every debugging strategy before a final standard approach resolved it.
Bugs, Battles, and a Bit of Scroll Sorcery
Combat UI scroll fix in Stellar Throne and ClaudeCraft course structure progress with modules 7-10 complete.
Why I'm Making ClaudeCraft
Four core reasons for building ClaudeCraft: democratizing game creation, empowering creative communities, learning through teaching, and embracing AI's creative future.
Redesigning the Battlefield: Combat UI Overhaul & ClaudeCraft Takes Shape
Comprehensive combat UI screen infrastructure redesign and launching the ClaudeCraft 10-week program for AI-assisted game development.
Patching Up Combat and Building Better Testing Tools
Refining combat UI, building a Zig-based test harness, and creating specialized Claude agents for development and quality control.
Opus 4.1, GUT Migration, and Combat UI Overhaul
Upgraded to Opus 4.1, migrated to GUT testing framework, and evaluated six combat UI layout designs.
This Week's Newsletter
Newsletter about switching Stellar Throne to a new engine.
Upgrading to Godot 4.3 (Opus 4.1) and Combat UI Progress
Upgraded to Godot 4.3, performed a full codebase audit, and continued combat UI fleet layout improvements.
Why I'm Switching Stellar Throne to Godot — And How I'm Making It Work
*From low-level power to high-level polish — how a week-long experiment with Godot reshaped my AI-assisted workflow on Stellar Throne.*
Combat Returns (Sort Of)
Chasing elusive bugs to bring combat back online, fixing fleet behavior, engagement triggers, and optimizing loading screens.
Refactoring with AI: Lessons in Trust, Testing, and Prompts
AI-assisted refactoring with Claude requires clear boundaries. Restored build buttons, loading screen, and ship construction timing.
Closing the Parity Gap in Godot
Fog of war restored, star field in place, animated notifications implemented, and CLAUDE.md earns a 9.5/10 audit score.
Godot Port Complete (Mostly!)
The Godot port reaches functional completion with fleet travel, 96 technologies, fog-of-war, and interactive panels all working.
Stellar Throne: Porting Progress & Platform Trade-Offs
Huge porting strides across combat, strategic layer, and UI systems. Comparing the Godot and Zig development workflows.
Stellar Throne Enters Alpha: Polish, Audio, and the Godot Port Begins
Stellar Throne officially reaches Alpha. The transition to Godot begins with foundational migration, galaxy rendering, and core mechanics ported.