HARMLESS
An unofficial browser tribute to Elite (1984): trade, jump, dock and fight across the original 2,048 seeded worlds in wireframe. The developer says Claude and other coding agents did all the work, without the developer ever looking at the code.
Official site harmless.atomic14.com, verified Nov 3, 2026. Linked as “You can play HARMLESS here” at the top of the README of the developer's repository atomic14/harmless, and from the developer's Show HN post.
Rights holder / original work: Elite (1984), by Ian Bell and David Braben, published by Acornsoft; “Elite” trademark: Frontier Developments
The README calls HARMLESS an unofficial browser tribute and non-commercial fan homage to Elite (1984), and package.json calls it “A web remake of the classic 1984 Elite”. It uses the Elite name in its description, the original galaxy (all 2,048 worlds from the 1984 seeds, with their names, governments, prices and descriptions), ship names and wireframe hulls generated from an analysis of the released ship files, and the released game's damage arithmetic. The README says the repository ships no audio, textures or binaries from Elite, but includes one piece of the original: Julie Dunn's 1985 arrangement of The Blue Danube for the docking music, decoded from the Commodore 64 release, which it says is a separate copyrighted work included as a deliberate decision. The README says the project is affiliated with none of the rights holders; no source shows a licence from them. The project's own code is MIT-licensed. (GitHub (atomic14))
VibeGameDB lists this game only to document that it was made with AI coding tools. We do not host it, we do not represent the rights holder, and listing it does not mean it is licensed.
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 or mobile browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
- View on GitHubGitHubReleased · Source code (TypeScript, three.js; MIT licence); requests are taken as issues, not pull requestsFree
Source code repository, not a place to play.
Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About HARMLESS
HARMLESS is a free, unofficial browser tribute to Elite, the 1984 space trading game by David Braben and Ian Bell, and is named after the lowest combat rating, the one every commander starts at. You begin docked at Lave with a Cobra Mk III, 100 credits and three missiles; buy cargo, jump to a world that wants it and sell, spend the profit on equipment and upgrades, fight the pirates who come for your hold or run from them, and climb the ratings toward Elite. All 2,048 worlds across eight galaxies are made from the original game's seeds and arithmetic, the ships are wireframes generated from data on the released ship files, and the suns and planets are shaders. Docking, the law and bounty hunters, missions, convoys, an escape pod and autosaves are all there. Every command is a button, so it plays on a phone as well as with keyboard and mouse: the ship flies a course to what you tap and lines up in a fight, while the trigger stays yours. The site adds a flight manual, a novella, a missions page and an encyclopaedia of the first galaxy's 256 worlds. The developer, Chris Greening (atomic14), calls it an “Open Vibe Code” experiment: the developer says they have not looked at the code, that all the work has been done by Claude and other coding agents, and that requests are taken as GitHub issues rather than pull requests, with the agent periodically pointed at them. The code is MIT-licensed; the README calls the game a non-commercial fan homage affiliated with none of the original's makers.
How it was built
VerifiedThe README opens, in the developer's words: “I have not looked at the code. I have no intention of looking at it. All the work has been done by Claude and other coding agents. In fact, this is the first piece of editing I've done!” Contributions come in as GitHub issues, and “Periodically, I'll run Claude (or other coding agent of the day) and have it run through the issues and address them.” The rest of the README is introduced as written by the AI. The developer names Claude but not whether Claude Code was used, nor which other agents or models were used.
- DeveloperShow HN post (14 Aug 2026): “I've had Claude (and other models) building this for me”, and “I'll point claude at all the issues periodically and see what it does.” — Hacker News (iamflimflam1)
An “Open Vibe Code” project, per the developer: the developer does not read or edit the code, and the agents work through GitHub issues. The game is written in TypeScript and rendered with three.js (with a bloom pass for the phosphor glow), built with Vite and deployed to Cloudflare Pages behind a gate of lint, tests and generator checks. The galaxy follows long-published descriptions of the original's data, the 38 ship hulls are generated from a vendored analysis pack of the released ship files, and the damage model follows the released game's arithmetic. The other ships are flown by hand-written pilot code; a trainer in the repository once bred neural pilots, but the README says the game loads no weights. Sound comes from a WebAudio synth.
- Engine / framework
- Three.js
- Languages
- TypeScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“I have not looked at the code. I have no intention of looking at it. All the work has been done by Claude and other coding agents.”Verification notes: The AI claim comes from the developer's opening section of the README (raw.githubusercontent.com) and the Show HN post of 14 Aug 2026 (11:08 UTC, user iamflimflam1), which agree: Claude and other coding agents did all the work and the developer has not looked at the code. The developer's name is from the LICENSE file (“Copyright (c) 2026 Chris Greening”); github.com and the GitHub API did not answer our checks, so commit dates were not read. Gameplay and features come from the landing page and the README; package.json calls the project “A web remake of the classic 1984 Elite”. The README describes the NPC pilots as hand-written and says the game loads no trained weights, so no AI runs during play; no calls to AI services were found. The hosted game loaded on 4 Nov 2026. The Show HN post is the earliest dated mention found, so no release date is recorded. Team size and location are not stated. The game was not played through.
Development history
The developer posts the game on Hacker News as a Show HN, “Open Vibe Coded Elite”.
DeveloperHacker News (iamflimflam1)
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.
Browser (official site)
Free in the browser with no install or account; keyboard, mouse or touch.
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.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show HN: Open Vibe Coded Elite – Harmless Hacker News (iamflimflam1) | Social post | Aug 14, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Open Vibe Code / HARMLESS — README, LICENSE and package.json GitHub (atomic14) | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| HARMLESS: a browser tribute to Elite (1984) atomic14 | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) atomic14 | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
