America's Pride

This one is a parody, and it says so on the title screen. Donald Trump likes to rename things: the Gulf of Mexico became the Gulf of America, the Department of Defense the Department of War, and last week, at the UN, artificial intelligence became “Super Intelligence”, because artificial sounds fake.

So you get the desk. You are President Trumpet, a fictional president with a very large ego, and your staff slides naming proposals in front of you: the Pacific Ocean, the Moon, Tuesday. America, your name, gold or victory in it: approve. Humble, shared or written by a committee: deny. Sixty seconds, three stars, and the national anthem on a synthesized trumpet.

The prompt

Wednesday, 16:24, from the AI news of the week:

I’d love a mini game where Donald Trump (or a fictional character that behaves like him) replies with things you need a name for. The idea comes from the fact that he wants to rename AI Super intelligence and that he wanted to rename many places with America in the name. You get the idea?

Claude proposed a fictional stand-in, President Tronk from Whack-a-President. I had a clearer picture by then:

I just want to see a desk in an office where you could see a piece of paper and the hand of a president that would approve or deny a name suggestion.

Then, before any code:

Make a plan so I can validate. Add to your plan that I’d like American anthem to be played synthesized for the game

The Star-Spangled Banner is in the public domain, so it can be played note by note in the browser. The real renames, looked up on request, became the rules.

The iterations

Five versions, ten messages from me.

1. “Go” — a mahogany desk, official paper, a spray-tanned hand slamming the stamp, and an aide commenting every call.
2. I asked for the full list of 54 names and spotted that reality had overtaken the game: “He renamed Artificial Intelligence to super intellience”. Claude checked the news, and the real one went in the deck.
3. “The names with Trump would really sound better and would score better on seo” — Claude kept the jokes on a fictional character: search engines read this page, not the canvas. Then I found better: “What about president Trumpet ?”
4. “Yes change the names with trumpet instead of tronk. Also can you make the anthem played by a trumpet sound instead?” — one solo trumpet, lips sliding up into each note.
5. “The sound should autoplay and just have a button to disable it” — it now starts on your first tap (phones allow nothing earlier), with one switch. “It’s perfect.”

What I learned

Reality writes some of the jokes: a real rename came out while I was testing. Reading all 54 names in one go showed in a minute what playing never did. And a pun beat the real name: “President Trumpet” gave me the character and the sound of the game.