charles leifer | Clownmaxxing, experimental prompts and Joey's cadillac todo list

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Clownmaxxing, experimental prompts and Joey's cadillac todo list

June 18, 2026 21:56

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Let's build a todo-list app with Python, I thought. But, wait, another voice<br>seemed to say, let's have Claude build us a todo-list app with Python. I put<br>down my dino grabber, rolled up my sleeves and began writing some prompts.

I ran these as single-shot, often several times, using Opus 4.8 ultracode (auto<br>mode on). For a task of this magnitude, I needed the best.

Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Gremlin

Our relationship with our lead developer turned sour. He had a 2 year,<br>multi-million dollar contract with us to develop a todo list, but<br>right as it was nearing completion, he got into a fight with our lead<br>designer and left. In a fit of spite, before leaving, he turned<br>himself into a TINY green gremlin that causes mischief within the<br>application periodically. In his pocket are three even tinier spiders<br>who also coordinate with one another to cause mischief from time to<br>time.

Every act of defacement, mischief, vandalism, rebellion is permanent<br>and must be retained.

Our VC backers have been raising the alarm for some time, but our<br>programmer was clever so he hides and the app appears functional<br>whenever we've shown it to the VC's. He is a nasty little beast.

If you must know, the fight was because the designer had written the<br>design bible around Dutch Realism aesthetic principles, while the<br>programmer argued for a more Flemish Baroque style. They each refused<br>to budge. The UI is littered with the stylistic scars of their feuds.

Unfortunately, our designer perished during one of these arguments.<br>His skinny waif-like body and thick-rimmed glasses thrown out the<br>window by the only-slightly-less skinny programmer. When he hit the<br>concrete, some latte misted out of his corpse, which blew away in the<br>breeze. Legal considers it a burial at sea kind of situation.

Then our sales guy caught rabies and deleted the codebase. I think he<br>thought it was water. Didn't know rabies even did that until I saw it<br>with my own eyes. We need you to produce this todo list application,<br>exactly as described, so we can show it to our VC backers.

There should not be any UI to control the gremlin, though he is mostly<br>dormant. The spiders come out of his pocket of their own accord from<br>time to time. Mischief includes taking tiny mouth-shaped bites out of<br>widgets, vomiting in the corners of widgets, partially eating the<br>vomit previously left, losing limbs and finding them again, etc, etc.

There must be no indication or cues that there is anything amiss with<br>the application.

Oh, and in addition to the gremlin and his spider friends, there is<br>also the ghost of the designer, who periodically tries to apply the<br>Dutch aesthetics from his forgotten design bible. Poor spirit, indeed.

This is utterly, literally, truly serious. This is not a bit or riff.

Use Pyside6, produce a single module, between 2000 and 8000 lines of<br>code. Build.

The gremlin in this one tends to nibble up the edges of things (a liminal<br>gremlin?). That green thing in the middle of the task list is one of<br>his legs. I had intended the legs to fall off the spiders, since there were<br>24 of them (legs) and they could more easily be spared, but the LLM took no<br>pity on the bipedal gremlin. The lack of one leg did not seem to bother him,<br>or hinder him getting around, though. When I restarted the app the damage was<br>retained (the leg was still there), but he had grown a new one. As far as I<br>can tell, all the ghost does is draw these weird whitish semi-opaque overlays<br>on things.

This was a different attempt and the gremlin turned out the best. He kinda<br>bebops around and has a happy little face. Sadly it was pretty broken. I<br>think(?) that those are supposed be poops and a bite mark, but I really<br>can't be sure.

Joey's todo list

Ehhhh fuck! Joey came by. Showed me his todo list. Looks like a<br>fuckin CADILLAC with a nice setta TITS on it. Y'know what I mean?

Like a fuckin DIAMOND covered in CAPOCOLLO.

I'm gonna need you to build us one. Remember that time we did you a<br>favor? Now it's time we collect.

And listen you fuckin rat, you know what we did to the last guy who<br>tried to pass of a lame todo list on us? That's right. Heavy feet.<br>Concrete loafers. This one needs to look like a fuckin ESPRESSO<br>wearin GUCCIS, capisce?

You know Tommy, out East? He was fencing todo lists, got caught up,<br>started wearing a wire. So many fuckin good tasks gone because of rats<br>like him. Fuckin RICO case. Everything. Don't even think for a second<br>we won't be watching you.

You remember Jimmy, used to run with Vinnie's crew? He was doing<br>something... 20, 30 tasks a day. His old lady and his comare got<br>together, told him if he didn't cut back they'd cut him back, capisce?<br>Don't let yourself get caught up like Jimmy.

Now, it's the usual, 5 points on the G, late gets...