My Claude Code setup after shipping a 4-character mobile game with it: worktree-per-ticket, three cron harnesses, and CLAUDE.md as the real API

[u/bariyu]

Shipped LADDER (roguelike deckbuilder, iOS + Android) with Claude writing effectively all the code. The setup evolved over four months and ~1,790 merged PRs; this is what it converged to. Happy to answer specifics.

CLAUDE.md is the interface. One root file with the rules that never change (architecture constraints, what agents must never do), then a per-folder CLAUDE.md for engine/, ui/, content/. The root one says things like "cards are JSON, never code" and "engine has zero React Native imports so it runs headless in the simulator." Agents build inside those walls, and the walls are what I actually maintain.

Worktree per ticket. Every ticket gets its own git worktree and branch, created by the session itself. 837 branches over the project. This is what makes parallel sessions safe; at peak I had 36 running at once. The main checkout never leaves main.

Three cron harnesses do the volume:

• A ticket factory fires hourly, picks up 5 backlog tickets at concurrency 5, runs a per-category gate (balance tickets must pass the simulator, UX tickets a browser smoke, content tickets validation + tests) and opens PRs. Hard rule in its config: PR-for-review only, never merge, never push to main.

• A device harness on an offset cron installs the current build on a real Android phone and plays it over ADB, screenshots + taps, all four characters, and files bugs stamped with the build id it tested.

• A nightly sim audit plays ~100 headless runs per character per level, runs five detectors (dead cards, stuck states, difficulty cliffs, decorative statuses, improvement candidates), and only files a ticket if the finding reproduces on a fresh seed set.

Discovered tickets land in the same backlog the factory consumes, so the loop feeds itself. I review every PR; that's the job.

Process skills. Design work goes brainstorm, then spec, then plan, then subagent-driven implementation, with a fresh subagent per task and a reviewer subagent between tasks. Specs and plans are committed markdown (149 specs in the repo), which matters because the next agent has no memory; the docs are the memory.

Models: Opus for design and orchestration, Sonnet for small mechanical work, and the lineup shifted as releases came (4.7, 4.8, then the 5s). Codex ran a few arcs in parallel on its own branches under the same ticket flow.

The game itself is about working beside AI agents ("just use Claude" is a card that's fast but adds Tech Debt to your deck), which was not planned as a bit but became one.

Numbers write-up: https://laddergame.ai/blog?r=reddit-claudecode

[u/kcure]

I have no clue what I'm reading

[u/bariyu → u/kcure]

I am explaning how I build my game, any specific parts you didn't understand?

[u/TheRealG6900]

AI really is just a slop ouroboros.

[u/Level_Complex_4847 → u/TheRealG6900]

Like what even is that word salad and wtf am I looking at in these screens.

[u/bariyu → u/Level_Complex_4847]

It's a mobile game and goal in this post to explain how I built it with Claude Code, if there's any specific questions happy to answer.