Catbot
Free · play online in your browser, no download
A clockwork cat repairs a crashed shuttle using only two speeds: walk and trot through rooms of physics puzzles.
Official site chaoswrangler-ux.itch.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. The developer's own itch.io page (chaoswrangler-ux), linked from its official Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 submission page.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — itch.ioitch.ioReleasedFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Catbot
A short physics puzzle game. A shuttle has crashed on a dead world, and the survivor is a brass-and-copper clockwork cat that does not know it is a repair unit; ship parts look like toys to a cat, so the ship is rebuilt one plaything at a time. Movement is the only control, with no jump or action button: hold a direction and the cat breaks from a walk into a trot, and every room is a different problem solved with those two speeds, from drifting belts and timed steam to a lamp that only sees what moves, greasy floors, heavy trays and low gravity. Failure is soft, and an optional REWIND tile is reached by walking. All art is drawn in code on a canvas and all sound is synthesised, with no image or audio files. The developer, Tasha, says Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code and Claude Cowork built the engine, hub, most rooms and the finale; Codex built one room and Mistral Vibe the first pass of another, which Claude then debugged, and each model hid a signed easter egg in its room. Made for Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1, where it ranked 7th overall. Free in the browser on itch.io.
How it was built
Partially verifiedPer the developer's jam answer and the itch.io page's tool table, Claude Opus 5.5 built the core engine, the hub, most rooms (Aft Hold, Engine Bay, Observation, the second pass of Berthing) and the finale in Claude Code, and three later rooms in Claude Cowork; Claude Sonnet 5.5 helped plan, and Claude wrote the captions, hints and credits and the synthesised sound. Each room started from a written brief plus a shared CLAUDE.md file. Later rooms were built bot-first, with one rule function shared by the game and a deterministic test bot. The developer directed, tuned, playtested and hand-edited, and writes: “I haven't read every line of it.”
- Developeritch.io tool table: core engine, Aft Hold, hub and Engine Bay by Claude Opus 5.5 (Claude Code); Sanitation, Hydroponics and the Cockpit finale by Claude Opus 5.5 (Claude Cowork). — itch.io
- ObservedThe shipped source files carry headers such as “Built with Claude Opus 5.5 (claude-opus-5-5) in Claude Code”; hub.js and audio.js name Claude Sonnet 5.5 in Claude Code. — chaoswrangler-ux (itch.io)
Codex built one room, the Galley, as a test of an unfamiliar model on a whole room; Claude Opus 5.5 then triaged and stabilised it after the rework leaked a shared change into other rooms. Mistral Vibe (Mistral Medium 3.5) built the first pass of another room, Berthing, which Claude rebuilt.
ChatGPT (GPT-5.6 Sol) served with Claude Sonnet 5.5 as design advisor for brainstorming and the handoff briefs, and ChatGPT Images, with Arena.ai battle mode, produced concept art and a storyboard. The developer says the concept art was not used in the game, whose visuals are drawn in code.
Made in a week for Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 in plain HTML and JavaScript, with no build step, libraries or asset files. The developer treated each model family “like a paintbrush” and made them follow one house style (Claude's) through per-room briefs and a shared CLAUDE.md. Later rooms were built bot-first: a deterministic bot plays the same rule function as the live game, a live test compares the two every tick, and each room gets an isolation check. An optional WebMCP hook lets an AI agent move the cat; the developer added it so Codex could play the game to make the itch.io cover image, and the game does not need it.
- Engine / framework
- None (vanilla JavaScript)
- Languages
- JavaScript
- Team size
- 1 (solo)Developer Reporteditch.io (Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1, hosted by dg)
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“I directed, tuned, playtested and hand-edited throughout, and I don't know every line.”Verification notes: AI use from the developer's jam answer and the itch.io page's AI disclosure (“the lab notes”), both re-read on 5 Nov 2026; model names are recorded as the developer writes them. The jam's own rule (“AI must be part of the build”) is not code-specific, so it is not counted as evidence. Several models wrote the code and the developer hand-edited it, so no AI code share is recorded. The itch.io table credits the hub to Claude Opus 5.5, while the shipped hub.js header names Claude Sonnet 5.5 in Claude Code. Team: Tasha alone (design, direction, tuning and playtesting), with the AI tools credited as tools; only a first name is given. Publication (8 Oct 2026, 05:21 UTC), status, genre and tags from the itch.io page; the submission page said it was submitted 1 day and 1 hour before the 9 Oct, 07:00 UTC deadline, and the page says work started on 3 Oct 2026. The webmcp.js file registers tools for an outside AI agent (status, movement-only moves and screenshots, plus staging tools only with #mcp in the URL); the developer added it so Codex could play the game for the cover image. Normal play does not use it, and no calls to AI services were found in the game's code. The experiment is documented on thegarden.rosettaskeys.com, which was not opened. Jam results (10 ratings): 7th overall (4.132), 5th in Use of AI and Polish, 9th in Fun. The game was not played.
Development history
Published on itch.io (05:21 UTC) and submitted to Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 (theme Cat and Robot, restriction Movement Input Only).
Voting closes: 7th overall of 36 entries (10 ratings), 5th in Use of AI and in Polish.
Officialitch.io
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
itch.io
Free in the browser (HTML5); a download is also offered.
Not publicly available: itch.io rating, Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catbot by chaoswrangler-ux itch.io | Store page | Oct 8, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Catbot by chaoswrangler-ux for Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 itch.io (Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1, hosted by dg) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Catbot HTML5 build (source file headers) chaoswrangler-ux (itch.io) | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 itch.io (hosted by dg) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Top ranked games in the Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 1 itch.io | Official site | Oct 15, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) chaoswrangler-ux (itch.io) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
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