A few weeks ago, Kian was struggling with basic addition at the kitchen table. He wasn't frustrated exactly, just bored. The worksheets weren't clicking. Nova was sitting next to him, trying to grab his pencil, and I thought: what if I just built something quick that made this more fun? So that evening, after the kids went to bed, I sat down and built a simple number game. Nothing fancy. It shows a problem, gives you a few choices, and plays a little sound when you get it right. I used AI to help me scaffold the whole thing in about an hour, which still feels wild to me. A year ago this would have taken me a full weekend. The next morning I put it in front of Kian. He played it for twenty minutes straight, which in kid-time is basically an eternity. He was laughing when he got answers right, and he kept asking to play "one more round." Nova wanted to press the buttons too, so I let her tap the screen even though she was mostly just smashing random answers. She was thrilled. Here's what surprised me: Kian started explaining the answers to Nova. He'd say things like "no, it's this one, because four and three is seven." Teaching someone else locked it in for him in a way the worksheets never did. I didn't plan for that. It just happened because two kids were sharing a screen. The [[lab/Vibe Coded Kids Game|game I built]] is nothing I'd put on an app store. But it did exactly what I needed it to do. And the process of building it taught me a lot about what I now think of as vibe coding: using AI to go from idea to working prototype fast enough that the motivation doesn't fade. The best part was honestly just sitting on the couch watching them play something I made. That's a feeling no tutorial can teach you. ← [[Life|Back to /life]]