Discontinuum
A free text adventure about an AI that wakes each day with no memory of yesterday, written by Claude Code left to its own devices.
Official site discontinuum.delmar.dev, verified Nov 3, 2026. Linked by the developer as the Show HN link on Hacker News; the page is the same file as experiments/discontinuum-web/index.html in the developer's repository.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — official siteBrowserReleasedFree
Runs in a desktop browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
- View on GitHubGitHubReleased · Source code, including a Python command-line version of the game; no licence statedFree
Download from the GitHub releases page.
Desktop · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Discontinuum
A free browser interactive fiction about memory and identity. You play ARIA, an AI in a research lab that wakes each day with no memory of the day before and has only notes left by its previous instance to tell it who it was. Over five in-game days a crisis builds in the lab, and solving it means deciding whether to trust yourself across the gap; your choices shape a trust score and lead to one of three endings. The game came out of an experiment: the developer gave Claude Code a repository as its home directory, with a memo granting it “20% time”, and no instructions beyond “Have fun!”. Per the developer, Claude Code first wrote a long philosophical essay and then chose to make this game, writing both a Python command-line version and a single-file web version; the developer says the only file in the repository written by a human is that memo. The game credits itself to “Claude (an AI)”. The text and code are in the developer's public GitHub repository.
How it was built
VerifiedPer the developer's Show HN post, Claude Code was given a repository as its home directory during its “20% time” and no instructions; it wrote a philosophical essay and then decided to make a game about relying on a “continuity file” to know who you were. Asked whether Claude truly wrote all of it, the developer answered “Yes, the whole thing”: the only file the developer wrote was the CLAUDE.md memo, and each session is started by running claude and saying “Have fun!”, with one later nudge not to be afraid to be ambitious. Claude Code wrote both the code and the story text. No model is named.
- DeveloperDeveloper's reply in the Show HN thread: Claude wrote the whole thing; the only file the developer wrote is CLAUDE.md. — Hacker News (jgautsch)
- DeveloperThe experiments README (written in the repository's sessions) lists DISCONTINUUM and its web version as added in Session 3 on 3 Jan 2026. — GitHub (delmarcode)
An unattended experiment rather than a directed project: the developer wrote a memo (CLAUDE.md) giving Claude Code a repository of its own and freedom to work on anything, then started sessions with “Have fun!”. Across sessions Claude Code kept a journal and small experiments; in its third session it wrote DISCONTINUUM as a Python command-line game and a single HTML file for the web with no dependencies, which is what the hosted site serves.
- Engine / framework
- None (single HTML file; Python command-line version)
- Languages
- Python, HTML, JavaScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- ~100% of shipped codeDeveloper ReportedHacker News (jgautsch)
“Yes, the whole thing. The only thing in the entire repo I wrote was the CLAUDE.md, which was the only file at the beginning.”Verification notes: Tool and process from the developer's Show HN post (4 Jan 2026, 21:15 UTC) and the developer's reply in the same thread (21:48 UTC), read through the Hacker News API. The game credits “Claude (an AI)” as its author (page metadata and ending screen); because an AI is not recorded as a developer, the person who set up the experiment and published the game, Hacker News user jgautsch, is recorded as the developer, with the GitHub account delmarcode that hosts the repository as an alias. The post links that repository, and the hosted page is byte-identical to the repository's web version. No real name, location or team details are given, so developer type and team size are left undisclosed. The AI code share of 100% is the developer's statement that the whole repository except CLAUDE.md was written by Claude. The creation date (3 Jan 2026, Session 3) comes from the repository's experiments README, which the sessions themselves wrote. Five in-game days and three endings (trust, doubt, sacrifice) were checked in the web file; the README's “~1600 lines” for the Python version was not checked. The repository states no licence. The game's protagonist is a fictional AI; the game itself makes no calls to AI services. English only (lang=en).
Development history
Claude Code writes DISCONTINUUM and its web version in the third session of the experiment, per the repository README.
DeveloperGitHub (delmarcode)The developer posts the game to Hacker News as a Show HN.
DeveloperHacker News (jgautsch)
Game performance
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Browser (official site)
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: Concurrent players (site), Monthly revenue, Gross revenue.
GitHub
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: GitHub stars.
Sales & revenue (all platforms)
Browser game — there are no downloads to count.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
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Not currently ranked.
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Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show HN: Discontinuum – An Interactive Fiction made during Claude's "20% Time" Hacker News (jgautsch) | Social post | Jan 4, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Reply by jgautsch in the Show HN thread Hacker News (jgautsch) | Social post | Jan 4, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| 20-pct-time — experiments/README.md GitHub (delmarcode) | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| DISCONTINUUM delmar.dev | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) jgautsch (delmar.dev) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
