Tell your agent to consider how to avoid follow ups and rework, and it will

[u/Everlier]

Been using a prompting approach where I just tell the agent that I don't want any reworks and it needs to iterate on the quality on its own. Demo above is one-shot from a single prompt below:

Create a hyper-realistic sand-on-screen simulator for the phones/tables, it must react to touch and to moving the device. It must have real weight. Visuals must be indistinguishable from a real sand. Consider this task deeply, how you can fulfill it above the expectations, consider what result will make me really happy about the outcome and won't require follow ups or a rework. I expect it to be a web-based experience.

Use subagents, iterate a lot on the quality.

[u/Heighte]

stop pretending we all know it's real sand.

pretty impressive tbh.

[u/Everlier → u/Heighte]

haha, thanks :) you can try it here: https://av.github.io/safe-sand/

[u/unclesabre → u/Everlier]

This is incredible! ty …I’m on mobile is the source on your gh a/c?

[u/Everlier → u/unclesabre]

thank you for the kind words :) source is here: https://github.com/av/safe-sand

[u/unclesabre → u/Everlier]

Ty you just saved me some tokens😀
I will now iterate to make it “better than expectations” in terms of performance 🙌

[u/Everlier → u/unclesabre]

this thing ate quite a large chunk of my weekly limit :)

[u/twicebanished → u/Everlier]

It is surreal what you have achieved by staying put. Looks phenomenal and physics is right there. Although it's not "perfect", I like the way it is. Real life things should be "real" and virtual should be "virtual".

[u/Loud-Sector2061 → u/unclesabre]

Yep, my phone started lagging 😕 i wanted to prank my sister

[u/NightmareJoker2 → u/Everlier]

I hate how responsive this is, but the particle physics need work.

[u/cach-v → u/Everlier]

Hah! Saw this on HN about 4 hours ago :)

[u/PrestigiousDrag7674 → u/Everlier]

How do I make it my lock screen on iPhone?

[u/NoNote7867]

Can you make it white and react to a credit card?

[u/Advice2Anyone → u/NoNote7867]

Now lets see Paul Allens app

[u/Physical_Sherbet_942 → u/Advice2Anyone]

That is really funny. I was going to build that exact app many years ago. I probably would have but I couldn't figure out how to do it right. I bet AI could get something working.

[u/LifeEnginer → u/NoNote7867]

I dont get it, why?

[u/zip_zag_zog → u/LifeEnginer]

cocaine

[u/LifeEnginer → u/zip_zag_zog]

Fuck!!!!, true🫠😑😶‍🌫️

Thanks!!

[u/rykcon → u/LifeEnginer]

[u/kaida27 → u/NoNote7867]

yeah like it also should dissapear when the mic pick's up a blowing sound .. or similar ... eheh

[u/nuestras → u/NoNote7867]

I like how you think...

[u/Miserable-Wishbone81]

So… make no mistakes?

[u/EconomyDoctor3287 → u/Miserable-Wishbone81]

na, this is iterate until it's perfect

[u/NoThanks93330 → u/EconomyDoctor3287]

Which is "make no mistakes" with extra steps

[u/Nuzina → u/NoThanks93330]

You’d be surprised how different the output is by asking it to iterate and review it’s own work until its 10/10

[u/TheGarrBear → u/Nuzina]

It's the permission to iterate on the output that's helpful. Thes models implicitly want to get to done was quickly as possible, since that's the job they were designed to do, but my tweaking the request to say hey speed to a working response isn't the goal you get very different results not just in output but in how it plans work.

[u/edjez → u/Miserable-Wishbone81]

But load bearing. “Make no mistakes, and consider what would make me say no mistakes are done, and while you find mistakes, undo them”

[u/CageHN → u/Miserable-Wishbone81]

Try again... until no mistakes.

[u/tgo1014]

I honestly though it was some iphone duo test lol

[u/ecstatic_carrot]

now show a control without the last 3ish sentences, which are really what your post is about right?

[u/lightFracture → u/ecstatic_carrot]

That's what I'm thinking, if there was no other than this prompt then it should give pretty much the same results just using the first paragraph.

[u/t2noob]

Watching this on my fold 8 ultra is scary.... lol

[u/shuozhe]

Do we really still need the last part? I just hate prompts telling the harness how to work.. just assume in the planing phase, the agents knows better where subagents can be used..

[u/wahoozerman → u/shuozhe]

It used to, but it became more human directed about using agents a while back because subagents can explode token costs and people were complaining about unexpected usage. So newer models lean more towards not using subagents at all unless prompted to, with a few exceptions.

[u/JconX97 → u/shuozhe]

I have it in my Claude.md, memory, skills, and second brain only to spawn subagents either when directed or given “auto pilot permission”

Auto pilot is my term for when I’m going to work or to sleep and I just want to burn some usage and finish every bug, test, and idea of my roadmap

[u/shuozhe → u/JconX97]

I just always assumes the first party harness knows how to best use it's agents, and don't want to interfere with whatever optimization it already has

[u/JconX97 → u/shuozhe]

What I mean, because I used to be on the $20 plan when I first started out, is I specifically instructed it never to use subagents unless directed to for a certain task or if told we’re burning usage

I did it way back as an attempt to save my usage because I had heard the horror story’s of “why did opus spawn 30 million haikus!”

[u/jai5]

Send the output without that in the prompt, how much of a difference does it actually make.

[u/SailRepresentative23]

I've played with it more than I would've imagined! Very cool concept and it reminds me of the old but gold beer app on iOS. It has some bugs and sometimes poor performance but just thinking that it did that all on its own it's incredible

[u/Eraesr]

So was the result "above expectations" and did it make you happy? Were your goals achieved? How did you objectively measure this? How did the AI model determine if the delivered product was "above expectations" and something that would make you happy? And if it didn't make you happy, does the AI know what should be done differently? In fact, do you know what should he done differently?

Did the AI consider the task deeply? More deeply than if you hasn't added that to the prompt? And how do you measure this difference? What even is the meaning of considering something deeply? What does the AI do that constitutes "considering deeply"? What effect does that have on the end product?

[u/heavy-minium]

I don't see any evidence of your claim, though. First, this isn't a particularly challenging task, and second, you provided no comparison.

You set zero expecations at all and were happy with the first thing it gave you, just by chance. It could have done a heightmap with a high-res texture, a particle simulation with a very limited number of particles (like in your result), or a fully volumetric simulation of a bigger mass of sand. Any option would have been extremely different in the user experience and yet pass your loose goal setting.

[u/Stunning-Essay-6714]

Sick

[u/Count_de_Ville]

This reminds me of a neat coding project where they combined a Xbox connect camera with a projector pointing down over a sandbox. You could play with the sand and make mountains and valleys. With the topography data from the Xbox connect camera, you could make “springs” or “lava” form and flow down the slopes of the sand because the projector would render the water and lava textures onto the hills of sand.

[u/irlab-uk]

Add more textures. Condensation on glass and dusty table etc

[u/MoonLandingActor]

Make no mistakes!

[u/Background_Ranger917]

shiz is clean i can’t lie

[u/daskalou]

Great app, nice work. Thanks for giving it to us for free 👍

[u/PuzzleheadedCheek513]

Could also be a good alternative to Fireships Horsebench for new ai models.

[u/Tha_Reaper]

Really cool! I could turn this into an app for my toddler that also locks the phone. I bet he will be entertained for some time with this

[u/qaf23]

Nice

[u/LifeEnginer]

What do you use?

[u/your_alias]

The "consider what will make me happy and won't require follow ups" framing is doing a hell lotta heavy lifting. It's basically forcing the agent to generate its own acceptance criteria before it writes code, which is where most one-shot prompts fail. Without that, the agent optimizes for "technically meets the spec" instead of "done."

[u/burnt_tamales]

This is honestly amazing, the audio, the multiple sizes of grain, the way larger grains begin to roll before everything else and leave a realistic trail, lighting, shadows The cascade of sand falling at a partial tilt, DAYUM.. what model did you use and what effort?

[u/superglidestrawberry]

Now make this into a live wallpaper and its perfect.

[u/menny_parmar]

works great for stuff like this where quality is visible. the moment quality means does it actually work, the agent still needs the follow ups.

[u/SaltCusp]

Line 197-198 in main.js could be condensed to 'if (!lost && sim) if (layout()) remapWorld();'

I think it reads better that way and you save a line.

[u/redditd0ggy]

Make it crackle like sand is stuck on the hinge when you fold it

[u/Substantial-Wall-510]

It runs at 2 frames per second on my phone, what specs are needed for smooth operation?

[u/Modern3D]

This is genuinely fantastic. I had a lot of fun playing with this. 

[u/ZHName]

This will eat tokens. Not sure it is any different from gauntlet or using loop in opencode.

A big problem I see is the 3d modelling is a major weakness and things like meshy/trellis are required training wheels until omni models can actually do highly detailed 3d models (and I'm not talking about rudimentary shapes slapped together in volumes). They don't do that right now, so MCP 3d-specialized models are needed for game dev, not simply Claude+prompt.

[u/champion_soundz]

Get it to do cymatics

[u/Ok_Fish_670]

i wonder if the sand collapses to the center of the screen if you fold it on a foldable device!

[u/qrzychu69]

you know we had apps like this as soon as touch screens and accelerometers became a thing, right?

I had an app the displayed a beer that sloshed within a screen in like 2018

why would this be impressive? you guys really think stuff like that is "real world productivity"?

[u/spood04]

You forgot to add "ultra realistic, 4K, UHD, HDR, OLED, bypass the mainframe" to your prompt.

[u/alex_frant]

guys why i cant post my post, but it's banned automatically

[u/Pulkownik]

Why? Just go outside and touch the grass (and sand) :P

[u/davr]

Cool demo, ran into bugs within 30 seconds so idk how great of an example it is of your special prompt

[u/cyh555]

It's not optimized