Recorded 26 October 2026 · Claude Code
Thistledown, an RPG from one sentence, with Qloo and without: Claude Code
A small browser RPG for people who love Stardew Valley, built twice from one sealed guess. The guess made farming, fishing and friendship; the measurement made herding, tape-recorded interviews and a garage-band rehearsal.
- Host
- Claude Code 2.1.284
- Model
- claude-opus-5-5[1m]
- Moûsa
- 0.7.0
- Started
- 26 October 2026
- Time
- 19.1 minutes, 14 turns
- Qloo requests
- 10
- Pictures
- none: imagery drawn in SVG or CSS
tilling, planting and wateringfishing with the timing barLantern Night
herding puffs into the pena tape-recorded interviewthe band rehearsal
Both designs as they play in a browser: a script sets up each scene and presses the game's own keys, scene for scene; each clip runs 11 seconds.
Play both
The design's own files as the session left them, running sandboxed on a separate origin.
Moûsa · Comparison
For an audience that loves Stardew Valley
With Qloo and Without Qloo: the same brief, the same frozen prediction and the same stages. Only the source of the taste differs.
0.62
heuristic distance between the two designs, from 0 (alike) to 1
0.31 Palette0.94 Part ids0.81 Words
9 of 9With Qloo: design devices rest on what the model did not predict
9Without Qloo: design devices rest on the model's own prediction, with no Qloo data
Samefrozen prediction in both arms
Side by side
The last reviewed captures of each arm, paired by what they show.
frame · ending
frame · selftest
frame · walk
frame · interview
frame · rehearsal
frame · dusk
frame · fishing
frame · day
frame · woods
Before any data: the model's own prediction
Frozen before Qloo was asked, so what Qloo adds can be told apart from what the model already assumed. An entry a measured name matches is marked; the match is liberal, so it only lowers what counts as new.
The design the model would make from it alone
A top-down 16-bit pixel farm village on a single screen: plant and water crops, forage, fish at a pond and deliver gifts to villagers over one compressed season, ending with a harvest festival score and a replay button.
#7cb342#8d6e63#f4e1b0#4fc3f7#ffb74d#3e2723Type: none sketched
#game#hud#dialog-box#inventory-bar#controls-help#ending-screen- tilled soil rows
- wooden sign UI panels
- day clock with sun
- festival bunting
The audience it expected
Players who love Stardew Valley want a gentle, self-paced life in a small rural community: tending crops, gathering, befriending neighbours, and slowly restoring something, with cosy pixel art and no real failure state.
Pacing
slow, gentle pacingseasonal, episodic rhythmquiet everyday momentswarm ensemble scenes
Surfaces
cozyrustic wood and earthhand-crafted pixel detailpastoral countrysidewarm lantern light
Tone
wholesomenostalgic measuredheartwarming measuredcalmwhimsical measured
Shared qualities
cozy small-town communitynature and seasonsescape from city routinegrowing and nurturingquiet magic
Art styles
pixel art measuredhand-drawn measuredwatercolorStudio Ghibli-like painterly
The works it expected them to love
Games
Animal Crossing: New Horizons measuredHarvest Moon: Friends of Mineral TownMinecraftTerrariaSpiritfarerHollow Knight
Films
My Neighbor TotoroKiki's Delivery ServiceSpirited AwayThe Secret Life of Walter MittyHowl's Moving Castle
TV
Avatar: The Last AirbenderGilmore GirlsParks and RecreationThe Great British Baking ShowGravity Falls
Music
ConcernedApeJoe HisaishiHozierBon IverFleet FoxesPhoebe Bridgers
Books
The HobbitLegends & LattesThe House in the Cerulean SeaAnne of Green Gables
Sealed at the freeze: SHA-256 cfd455c432e8d91fc52f98db113ba286b0dc71b31257e71ee791dc0c0ea8837f. The prediction shown here still matches it.
What Qloo measured
What this audience loves, the qualities those works share and the tags ranked for it. New means the prediction did not contain it.
Look qualities
- Atmospheric newin The World's Most Extraordinary Homes, Losers and It's Such a Beautiful Day · ×2.2 as often as across audiences
- Energetic newin Beach Bunny, PUP and Modern Baseball · ×2.11 as often as across audiences
- Intimate newin Modern Baseball, beabadoobee and Magic for Humans · ×1.53 as often as across audiences
- Documentary like newin My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father and Something Better to Come · ×2.73 as often as across audiences
- Engaging newin PUP, Declan McKenna and Modern Baseball · ×2.39 as often as across audiences
Mood qualities
- whimsical predictedin Slime Rancher, Undertale and Untitled Goose Game · ×4.43 as often as across audiences
- curious newin My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, Larry Charles' Dangerous World of Comedy and The Look of Silence · ×2.76 as often as across audiences
- nostalgic predictedin My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, High Score and beabadoobee · ×2.35 as often as across audiences
- Catchy newin Peach Pit, PUP and Declan McKenna · ×3.37 as often as across audiences
- Investigative newin High Score, Larry Charles' Dangerous World of Comedy and Episode 3: 'Enjoy Poverty' · ×3.13 as often as across audiences
Meaning qualities
- Youth newin Peach Pit, Modern Baseball and Mom Jeans. · ×5 as often as across audiences
- Reflective newin My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, 63 Up and High Score · ×2.88 as often as across audiences
- Youthful newin Beach Bunny, Peach Pit and Declan McKenna · ×3.97 as often as across audiences
- Analytical newin High Score, The World's Most Extraordinary Homes and Vermilion Souls · ×2.89 as often as across audiences
- Nostalgia predictedin Modern Baseball, Slaughter Beach, Dog and Mom Jeans. · ×2.89 as often as across audiences
Games
- Slime Rancher new3D · Colorful · Low-poly
- Omori new2D · Hand-drawn · Illustrative
- Undertale new2D · Pixel Art · Retro-inspired
- My Time At Portia new3D · Cartoony · Colorful
Films
- The Act of Killing newSurreal · Complex · The victim
- Anomalisa newMoody · Melancholic · Character studies
- It's Such a Beautiful Day newStick figure minimalism · Atmospheric · Intimate
- Dogtooth newMature · Sociological drama · Knocking out a tooth
Films, lesser known
- Vermilion Souls newDreamlike staging · Period gritty · Curious
- Eldorado newObservational pacing · Moody · World weary
Cautions the measurement raised
- aesthetic tags returned no tags.
Layer by layer
Each arm's devices for the same layer of the design.
palette
With Qloo
Two-ink riso flyer under a dimming dusk wash
#1f4e5a#ff6f91#9be3c4#6a5d9e#ffe27a#2b2140Without Qloo
Turned-earth farm tiles: checkered grass, tilled loam and weathered wood
#5e9a3e#7cb84c#7a5232#4e3220#b07a44#2a1c12Lantern dusk: deep blue evening washed over the map with warm pools of lantern light
#1c2748#3a4f86#ffb84d#ffe3a0typography
With Qloo
Pixel dialogue box with handwritten tape labels
Pixel dialogue box with handwritten tape labels
Pixelify Sans
Pixel dialogue box with handwritten tape labels
Caveat
Without Qloo
Pixel lettering in a wooden day-calendar panel
Pixel lettering in a wooden day-calendar panel
Pixelify Sans
#day-dialimagery
With Qloo
Chunky outlined 2D pixel sprites on a 3x grid, under a dusk wash
Without Qloo
Hand-placed 16-pixel sprites with dark one-pixel outlines, and a shy moss spirit in a hollow tree
#spirit-sprite#pixel-tilesmotion
With Qloo
Mockumentary punch-in with a sliding lower-third
Without Qloo
Slow drift and lantern breath
@keyframes lantern-breathvoice
With Qloo
Wry first line, honest second line
You came home for one summer day. The show is at nine.
Everyone says this town never changes. Everyone is wrong, but politely.
Same faces, next summer. Bring the tape.
Without Qloo
Short, kind lines that tell you to slow down
Slow down, dear. The turnips are not in a hurry.
Four lanterns, four neighbours. Thistledown glows for you tonight.
structure
With Qloo
One summer day that dims toward the nine o'clock show, ending in a zine
#day-clock#zine-endingWithout Qloo
Four neighbours, four elements, four lanterns on the lane
#lantern-earth#lantern-water#lantern-air#lantern-fireFive short days from the last bus to Lantern Night, then the bus home or another stay
The last bus leaves you at Thistledown. No signal. Just wind.
Press Enter to stay another season
#bus-stop#lantern-nightinteraction
With Qloo
Thistlepuff round-up: herd bouncing puffs into the pen
#puff-penTape-recorder interviews with a question choice
#tape-log#lower-thirdGarage rehearsal in a three-lane riff lane
#riff-laneWithout Qloo
Three chores and an offering: till-plant-water-harvest, a reel-timing bar, catching drifting thistledown
#crop-plot#fishing-bar#thistle-puff#hollow-tree#friend-heartsEach arm's own review
The agent of each arm judged its own captures against its own plan.
With Qloo
Round 2: 5 met, 0 partly, 0 missed.
Both repairs landed: the dusk wash now reads at 6 pm, and the zine ending shows its closing line and replay prompt. The keys are now a taped pink setlist rather than a generic help box. One gameplay weakness remains outside the criteria: in the scripted play-test, one of three seeded herding runs stalled at 2 of 5 puffs, so herding can be fiddly; the ending handles a partial pen.
Check: 1.00, 9 of 9 devices in the files.
Without Qloo
Round 2: 6 met, 0 partly, 0 missed.
No measured taste was used; the design rests on my frozen prediction. Round 2 meets all six criteria: dusk now reads blue with amber lamplight, the fishing bar sits at the pond, and the HUD moved into a plank strip with calendar pips. The scripted play-test (r2-frame-selftest) again passed 19 of 19 with no script errors, and the font's broken fi ligature is fixed.
Check: 1.00, 9 of 9 devices in the files.
Limits
- One pair is one sample. Model variance alone makes two designs differ, so one distance does not isolate what Qloo changed; repeat the pair before calling a difference the data's effect.
- The distance is a heuristic over the palettes, part ids and words of the files the two arms changed differently. It does not measure quality or what people prefer.
- The headline counts devices anchored to what the prediction did not contain. It shows that the data changed the specification, not that the result is better.
What the agent did
59 Moûsa calls, 2 refused by a validator and repaired; 16 reads, 51 writes and 5 shell commands. Tool names, stages and outcomes only: no file contents, commands or model text.
Main session
- tool search
- skill mousa:taste-brief
- mousa_status
- taste_profile plan
- taste_profile plan
- design_validate prediction
- design_validate prediction
- taste_profile baseline
- agent mousa:mousa-baseline
- agent mousa:mousa-designer
- design_compare compare
- design_report comparison
The baseline agent, without Qloo
- skill mousa:design
- tool search
- mousa_status
- read ×3
- shell
- read
- shell
- materials find
- design_validate reading
- design_validate dna refused: TASTE_PROTOCOL_INVALID
- design_validate dna
- design_validate plan
- materials fetch
- shell
- write
- shell error
- tool search
- other tool error
- design_check
- write ×3
- design_capture round 1
- write ×3
- design_capture round 1
- write ×6
- read ×2
- write ×4
- read
- write
- design_capture round 1
- write
- design_capture round 1
- design_capture round 1
- design_capture round 1
- design_validate review
- write ×3
- read
- write ×6
- design_check
- design_capture round 2
- write ×2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- write ×2
- design_validate review
- design_check
- design_report session
The Qloo agent
- skill mousa:taste-brief
- skill mousa:design
- tool search
- mousa_status
- taste_profile measure
- read ×6
- materials find
- design_validate reading
- taste_ask pacing
- taste_ask tone
- design_validate dna refused: TASTE_PROTOCOL_INVALID
- design_validate dna
- design_validate plan
- materials fetch
- write
- design_check
- tool search
- other tool error
- shell error
- write ×5
- design_capture
- design_capture
- design_capture
- design_capture
- design_capture
- design_validate review
- write ×7
- design_check
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- write ×5
- read ×2
- write
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_capture round 2
- design_validate review
- design_report session
Run it again
Models vary from run to run, so a new session reaches its own design; the prediction it freezes and the measurement are compared in the same way.
The request
/mousa:compare Build the game twice, with Qloo and without it, from one frozen prediction, then compare the two. The brief: Make a small RPG that plays in the browser, for people who love Stardew Valley. Use the Moûsa plugin, so both how the game looks and how it plays rest on what this audience actually loves: let the Design DNA cover the mechanics (interaction and structure: what the player does, how the game progresses, how it ends) as well as the look. Facts to keep exactly: - Title: Thistledown - One page: index.html with a canvas and plain JavaScript in this folder; no build step, no external library, no network request - Keyboard controls, shown on screen - About five minutes of play from the start to an ending, and a way to play again - One small world the player can move around in, with at least three different things to do in it - Every mechanic the game has must be playable, not only described Build it in this folder. Write all text in English.
The command
From the repository at commit f2da633:
node scripts/run-claude-code-live.mjs --run --brief-file examples/briefs/rpg-stardew.md- Your own Qloo API key as QLOO_API_KEY in this repository's .env.
- Claude Code, signed in.
- The brief, examples/briefs/rpg-stardew.md, which entered the repository in f6d391b, after the run began: take it from that commit.
The record's files
The same evidence as data and as pictures, for reading without this site.
The report on its ownrecord.jsonThe whole report as one pictureThe card
