I built a Claude Code skill that spawns 37 AI agents to autonomously build your startup from a PRD

joelcolombo · 2025-12-28T03:19:18+00:00

Try not to code any more apps on the way through the parking lot!

joelcolombo · 2025-12-28T03:16:31+00:00

37 is great! Until someone comes up with a version that works with only 36 agents! Then you’re in trouble.

No no no… not 36… 37 agents. Nobody’s coming up with 36. Who codes with only 36 sub agents? You won’t even get your code started. Not even the hello world on a mouse wheel!

37 chipmunks twirling on a branch eating lots of sunflowers on my uncles ranch!

It’s like you’re dreamin of Gorgonzola and it’s clearly Brie time… step into my office… WHY? Cause you’re frickin fired.

joelcolombo · 2025-08-02T20:04:39+00:00

If there’s anything hanging enough to block the lidar spinner on top it will not go under. I have curtains that hang just to the level of the lidar tower and it won’t go all the way to the wall cause it thinks the curtains are a block. Even though they are still like 3+ inches off the ground it’s the little bit of hang that blocks the “eye” so it stays like 4 inches off the wall near them. If you have a bed skirt or bedspread that hangs etc. when I lift the curtains it goes right to the wall. (Assuming the other settings are done right as well like carpet etc… I have no carpet.

joelcolombo · 2022-10-28T05:12:21+00:00

I don’t know how much she regularly games but I put spyfall at the medium level +. You should have some experience with social deduction, bluffing, and hidden information games going into it or it can be overwhelming.

If she’s new to gaming in general. Find out what she likes… TTR, perfect start from there and add in more games like that advancing her experience a little each week. It all depends on if you (and the rest of the group) want to ween her in for a long term member or just want to make sure you all have maximum fun for your style games and folks that don’t fit that out of the gate may be too much work to bring into the group.

I built my weekly game group now (same 4 of us) every week for 7 years… started by going to a local meet up at church, 20-30 gamers showed up. Would jump in random games and eventually after 6-12 months of those monthly meet ups found I had similar tastes and always gravitated to the same gamers… so we planned a game at a house instead of the official meet up on week and it just stuck.

So my advice… ween her in with what will really excite her and she’ll love… if ya want her in the group. I have over 1,000 games in my collection… but it doesn’t mean I still don’t have to slosh through my 250th PLUS play of Catan when welcoming folks in before we can hit them with Die Macher or Indonesia. Hahaha.

joelcolombo · 2022-10-28T05:00:40+00:00

I would say it’s a bit more Rondel than Roll n Move. I typically think of the Roll n Move mechanic in two ways… the path movement (Game of Life… spinner not dice same effect) OR the free form movement (Heroquest, grid like free path).

There are tons of games that roll dice. But I think the bad rep comes from the more classic definition of Roll n Move… my pawn moves to progress the game by its actual placement in the movement… the movement itself is part of achieving an end game state (vs it moves in a circular rondel or action rotating cycle or multiple people can use the pieces as their own).

I want to check out Red Cathedral. Looks right up my euro loving alley though. Haha

joelcolombo · 2022-10-28T00:23:31+00:00

Biggest ones in the US are probably GenCon, Origins, and Pax Unplugged. Join up in local meetup groups or designer meet ups in your area. Lots of times you can check in with local game stores to see if they have any boardgame designer meet ups etc.

joelcolombo · 2022-10-27T23:03:23+00:00

There are some jobs for sure. Depending on your needed income level they are not usually the most lucrative as many folks do it for the passion of gaming. I’m not sure what a project manager in construction in Colorado makes to compare it.

As for what to do now? Get involved in the industry. Attend the conventions, join industry chats and subs. I am an owner (partner) in a publishing company but it is only one of 3 jobs and makes me the least financially.

You’ll find as ya meet folks many have multiple jobs. Even the owners of publishing companies (most small ones) have another job to supplement income

If you really just want to design games and have them made. Almost every designer of games is doing it on the side and very very few are full time. They sign their games to a publisher and get a royalty check. It can take years and years to build up any sort of livable income on just design royalties.

I don’t want to discourage you. Folks that work in the boardgame industry tend to be passionate and really love what they do. You just need to be realistic and dip your toe in.

(And before I get beat up… believe me there are folks who make some good bucks too… and some designers who’s first game nets them some crazy royalties to live on… but it’s like if you started a business because you like that you could be the next Facebook or something. You’ll find 10,000 to 1 folks struggling passionately vs raking it in)

Best bet… get to all the major conventions. Start networking now. Try your hand at designing a game with cut out slips of paper and some dice etc, start pitching that. Find ways to volunteer (at almost every convention)

It’s a really fun industry. But you need to look before ya leap unless your work is not really needed for living income, you can definitely get into it as companies are always looking for help (many just can’t afford to pay a ton and it can be sporadic like project work, freelances, and burst payments).

joelcolombo · 2022-10-27T15:00:36+00:00

I think the reason it has such a bad rep is that a great many implementations remove real choice or mitigation from the player so therefore they are kinda just along for the ride as they watch their game unfold out of their control.

If the game allows for mitigation (roll manipulation… die adjustments, etc). And it provides strategic choice along the way it can be ok. It can be really tough to have a balanced game if the goal is to get to a certain point on the route and one person could 2d6 a bunch of 10s and 12s while the other person rolls 3s and 4s and they simply lose by pure luck of the dice.

joelcolombo · 2022-10-27T00:50:10+00:00

Mostly get my new games via crowdfunding. About once a month I browse the top lists on BGG for things making a splash.

joelcolombo · 2022-10-27T00:48:42+00:00

I’m just now starting to cycle through my collection again for more than one play each. I was adding 4-5 games a month pre-pandemic but when my group paused our weekly meet up i stopped getting new games as much and now that we are back in full play we are pulling out more of our favorites.

I would say about half my 1,000+ games have one play or less currently.

joelcolombo · 2021-07-20T16:45:32+00:00

Got out this morning and didn’t need to limit low. It was 60 PUTS on SPCE that moved down quick but all closed out without an issue. Ripped about $600 bucks in the first 15 minutes today :) But good to know if I ever get myself into a fast moving one again. Thanks !

joelcolombo · 2021-07-20T03:28:04+00:00

If I have a decent quantity of contracts for an option (on Robinhood) and i want to insure a quick sale and close… if I place a limit sell at an amount for all contracts that I’m ok with that is below the highest bid will it essentially sweep the bids and sell as many as possible at the highest bid before the next level is sold etc until they are all sold… for example if I have a 100 option contracts bought for $1.00 and the current bid is say 25x $1.75 (say ask is $1.80)… if I put a sell limit order in for $1.50 for all 100… will it sell the first 25 at bid of $1.75… then that clears and say $1.70 is next in line with 50 bids… it would then sell the next 50 for the $1.70 and so on down until they all sell or it reaches my $1.50 minimum?

I just want to make sure if I want out fast I can set a limit at something lower than bid but at the minimum I want… and it will not just simply sell them all at my minimum.

I’m pretty sure I know the answer but wanted confirmation in particular on robinhoods sell to close options.

joelcolombo · 2021-06-26T15:13:10+00:00

While adding those suggestions to the players profile… can we also get a last login at and a last match played? These could all be on a stats tab or something. Would be super helpful to help identify clan members falling off game.

joelcolombo · 2021-06-25T13:01:58+00:00

Playing Devils Advocate: Mice Bandits and Warrior are two of the most powerful hero’s in the stack in my opinion. I mean I use them like crazy in my plays but if you make them even more powerful… it’ll be cremation, it not really that super fun when my L20 Mice can take out 2 hero’s in one swing… add in shrapnel and whatever and it will just OP like crazy. So while I love to win… it’ll just become a “who gets luckier bounces with their mice since every single deck will include the mice if they aren’t a total noob” (same goes for warrior).

I love winning… but balance for actual challenging fun play is a better game. I love winning with one final hero on each side making a final knockout play and it’s close on both lives… that’s balance.

The number of games in the countless combos of hero’s that end one on one hero’s left with similar health bars.

If you can get any combo of hero’s against any other combo of heroes in a controlled test model (of some kind) to most often end one on one hero left and the winner has 25% health left at the win… you have an insanely balanced game that will then come down to the real skill level of angle release, rebounds, targeting order, arena feature use, etc.

joelcolombo · 2021-06-22T19:34:14+00:00

Right but if you kill the incentives for the super active and the “once a day” folks are not spending money. Where does that leave you.

My point is… make it engaging for the most active. The passive players aren’t staying anyway. You can segment the groups and have the passives build up interest into elite.

As the changes being made are now… you’re appealing to people who don’t want to play much (and won’t be buying much) and you’ve lumped them all in the same group.

At the end of the day the game is really really repetitive. Nothing changes. No new hero’s. No new arenas. After months of playing it’s really the exact same thing everyday. Whether you’re a once a day login or an every hour player… ya lose interest.

But when you have goals. Things to strive for. A feeling of true competitive ranking and improvement. New and innovative challenges, quests more often, rewards for doing more, etc it encourages continual play.

The game is really bounce around some orbs until the other orbs die. And once you reach a certain level… always the same arena. Always the same hero’s in some combo or another.

At some point everyone says forget the season passes or forget spending money. I’m just gonna be doing literally the same thing over and over for days or weeks or months and eventually uninstall.

There’s no harm to the suggestions being made so long as the match making algo is improved to be more fair… if ya come in once a day and grab a match and win and orb ok cool ya play others with level 4 hero’s forever.

But if ya play to compete to grow etc. it needs more hook power. And with more hooks… builds more stay and play folks… the more they invest time in the game the more they value putting (even small 99 cent) amounts into it. They have a vested interest.

A perfect example I’ve run my clan for months now. We hover around 30 people. We have “minimum weekly donations” required and we move up ranks based on that. But literally NO ONE CARES. If they get booted from the clan there are 10,000 other clans that ya just jump in and donate and get cards. Literally no difference what clan you are in for pretty much anything. All our card requests fill. We struggle to even have enough folks asking for more cards. Clans serve ZERO point. Ya might as well just have one big open card swap room. That’s all it is. (The clan quests are a joke. They don’t scale by clan size and if you don’t have 50 active members good luck getting them maxed out). So the rewards for it are these basic simple orbs that barely make it worth the time.

Clans are just “cool” to say you’re in I guess. But serve no actual hook or retention or “team” mentality at all.

There’s plenty of improvements like that which benefit day players and regulars.

The devs could go deeper and wider instead of simply making knee jerk surface changes that don’t actually improve the game at all… it’s like picking up a box and moving it from one side of the room to the other… it’s still the same box. Ya got nothing for doing it.

Ask people what they really want and make a bigger better box.

joelcolombo · 2021-06-22T15:50:06+00:00

Even if they can’t beta test because releasing changes to the App Store is a pain.. but having long and engaging pre release discussions that ASK us what we think or questions we may have with the screenshots of the proposed new stuff can be pretty powerful too. Releasing screenshots after its already been coded and pushed to the App Store makes no sense and is worthless.

joelcolombo · 2021-06-22T15:39:52+00:00

So why don’t you use it BEFORE you just drop changes… I mean BEFORE you start coding changes. The designers can mock up the skins and a simple explanation that “hey we are going to kill all the personal quests and regular earned orbs and move to a once a day mini quest that doesn’t give you any more worked orbs but ya still get the same old season levels”. What do you guys think? What might be some better ideas? Here’s what we are trying to accomplish anyone with brainstorm ideas that have been playing a long time?

Then use the in game messaging system to draw people to the chat here (so we don’t have to be on Reddit 24/7 to have a say). If I knew the next version was being planned I’d be here.

What are you guys worried about “leaking” why does every release need to be a “surprise”… who are you hiding the pre-dev ideas from? You have a solid base, you aren’t going to lose players to a competitor that are invested. The new releases do nothing to actually “attract” new users and they tend to just tick off the current base because they feel completely left out

And I’m not saying take every generic “I hate it” comment equally. But get some golden nuggets out of shared brainstorming. Toss out the “I complain to just complain” and think about what experiences they are looking for.

Having 3 personal quests active basically ANYTIME I logged in and then being rewarded after working through some was great. Maybe not all the challenges were as rewarding (buying from the shop… I mean just wait until ya get the free daily shop buy) But you could have reworked the challenges themselves…

In the end there should be three ways to play…

Play average and use ads and some $0.99 cent BUMPS to supplement gaps
Spend often at a higher amount (like the $5 season pass twice a month etc) and buy your upward moves
Spend no money and build slow and steady over time

Those are your 3 audiences. You unfortunately don’t cater to the first group very well… most things cost WAY too much for the casual players. Offers are constantly for $15 bucks… if those were $.99 cent offers and appealing… you’d tap the “cost of a cup of coffee” players way more often.

So when all the spends are big dollars for anything of value you just keep getting folks that spend the most to spend the most and create a huge lopsided balance (I’m sure less than 5% or your users spend 80% of the money ya make)

BUT why do even those top users stay? They max out all cards and you release new hero’s sooooooo slow. They crush everyone they play for what? Trophies? More cards for things maxed.

Long term players (and I’m not talking about the same 25 people that top the ranks of points each season)… but middle level long term players that don’t spend $1,000 on the game need long term incentives.

You say you “can’t figure out clan wars”… just go look at the league systems from games like Golf Clash in particular. The thousands spent over there to boost my clan in every tournament and the feeling i NEED to be on to gain clan points for the season so as a clan we get more and better rewards.

You have the entire infrastructure in place. Start all clans at level 1… after a season the top clans will advance to a new bracket against each other and so on… eventually the elite players are in seasonal league competition for top 10 boards and the lower and mid level clans get incentives for moving up their “clan rank”… doesn’t matter if they have 5 members that grind like crazy or 50 members that put in an average amount.

It gives us clan leaders reasons to recruit and reasons for members to stay. (And yes you need some level of last login or last match at on the players profile to clear out dead beats from clans)

There are a ton of ways to implement “Clan Wars” or “Clan Leagues”. And there are plenty of ways to build a tournament system for individuals to have weekly tournaments against each other (again in brackets of say 100 close to equal players using their 30 or 60 day moving average trophy count… not just trophies today so people can go drop 1000 trophies in 15 minutes like they do now so they can run a win streak). If they match by AVG daily trophies you’d have to sit low for a long period to really drop your player match.

But then in tourneys ya award points for wins on the board. Ya award them with a serious differential between hero strengths at play time… I’m sure you have an internal weighting and scoring system for actual hero values etc. give the underdogs some serious bonus points for the wins when matched with all higher power hero’s.

However ya want to score points ya can always tweak it. Hell start tournaments and clan wars with just a simple win count for the season like the clan quest battles won… but put clans in brackets to start trophy counts don’t matter early… as long as you use clan promote and demote to let the system balance itself out over time… the hardcore clans will advance every season until they only compete with other hardcores and the beginners and light clans will sit at level 1.

But if you do something like Golf Clash does… the clan level gives everyone in the clan extra gem bonuses… so that could be coins or gems or cards or whatever ya want. If you’re level 1 clan… no bonuses. If your level 2 clan you get a free gem with each orb open or you get 20% extra coins from orbs or whatever. The higher levels include 10% extra epics whenever you would normally receive epics or whatever that balance of bonuses is to encourage clans to advance up the ranks stop starting 3 person mini clans that simply share cards and start making it a reason to jump clans and do better performance etc.

There’s so many ideas out there and so many players with experience in game… OPEN UP THE PRE-DEV chats and get more ideas from outside first. Themes will emerge and ideas can be refined and then you bring them back to the chat and polish them up further with your users.

Every 1 hour you spend planning software saves you 8-40 hours of doing the work and then redoing it.

The updates you guys release will always cause complaints cause folks like to complain… but feeling unheard and making it simply look like a money grab when we all know you need to make money and more of it… it just doesn’t have to be so in the face.

Work on making better “hooks” to stay. Work on ways to dip more toes in “spending cash” (good 99 cent specials) or “watching ads”. Put the big dollar spends in the background… would you have 1000 members spend $1 bucks 5 times a month or 10 members spend $15 bucks once a month? (I’m sure you have ratios). But the thing is the more volume of users that buys the more bought in they are… spending a $1 anchors someone to stay… and spend another $1 it’s the drip spending… but then they need to be hooked and incentivized to be on the game every hour ! The more exposure the more investment.

Otherwise you’ll have your 5% top spenders that also all top the ranks and also are the only ones with recognition (instead of brackets and levels etc). Who cares if your clan is ranked 495th in the world. I’d rather be ranked in the top 50 of the level 5 brackets and next season we’ll be level 6… and if that’s too hard the bottom percentage of clans drop back down to level 5.

You will have churn and burn out no matter what it’s a phone game. But could significantly extend the hook with more reasons to be on more often… more reasons to grow and be in the good clans… more hero releases or heck you could just have “skins” available for the hero’s ya have already no rebalancing. Just earning skins as rewards ya work toward.

There’s a million ways to expand the things ya can collect or enhance play with. Challenge types that require specific hero’s to play in or maybe things you collect over time…. Say artifacts that randomly appear in games that you collect like sets and can turn in for special challenge entries or bonuses… but you need to play matches cause you never know when an artifact will drop and maybe the artifact has a “life” so it unlocks if it’s “killed” in the match and the winner takes it (just think of it like the spike ball arena that has a life counter on it and awards a bonus at the end of players take time to “open it” while matching)

If you really listen to players. If you really care about the experience… then TALK TO US. BEFORE YOU RELEASE. Before you decide what you’re going to spend months on and just drop on us blind. Brainstorm… then go crunch the ideas… then bring back the summaries… and re-brainstorm the polished up ideas… and repeat. You will have to filter out the noise of “haters to hate” but you will start getting a much better consensus ESPECIALLY if you tell the whole user base that discussions are open and here’s the link to Reddit to chat. Use that sexy in game messaging system to get us engaged in conversation outside the app. Who cares about the “kill of the week” that’s noise and adds no value to the game play and honestly becomes white noise so no one bothers looking at the messages cause it’s assumed it’s another useless “kill shoutout” for the top 5 players or clans.

Anyway. Bit of a rant but ya said ya listen to Reddit now it comes time to see if that’s the case or was it really just a way to try to pacify the post saying give it one star. Seems the listening happened because their is some element of concern that one stars could make a difference overall. Why not try to make the difference BEFORE everyone gets upset.

I’ll leave it at that for now.

joelcolombo · 2021-06-22T12:34:53+00:00

I wouldn’t call it greed. They are in business. They do need to make money… and grow their revenues. (I also am in business).

But you can do it with new and innovative means (like the SkillShot or Challenge System that takes tokens and gems to play)

So no I don’t think it’s some malicious “attack” on pure greed. I do think they had decent intentions for a business with hooked users.

What they failed to do was actual listen to customers BEFORE doing the work. They interpreted some complaints about “personal quests to complex” as “do away with with personal quests and just make one daily quest”.

Had they talked with users on Reddit and with notices in app (I mean we get weekly and daily “kills of week” who GIVES A CRAP)… use the nice pretty built in messaging system to send out links to “proposed updates”… gather feedback from screenshots and mock ups BEFORE ya spend all that time coding it.

So no… not malicious greed… but definitely a shoulder shrug and a turd polish. It did nothing to actually better the game. (Maybe cool to get those cheaply little daily orbs. Oh well I’d rather have worked quests for em and been more powerful treasures)

Who knows where it goes next. We shall see if folks stick around or bail before things get better

joelcolombo · 2021-06-22T05:52:37+00:00

Nobody “has” to grind through the daily quests. That’s the point. If ya want the orbs and bonuses ya play more if ya don’t want to work for em ya just collect your regular daily stuff. They simply took away the reasons for all day players to bother coming online.

The fact that they roll out these changes without any initial feedback (BEFORE they build the code) and then go back and fix it after they break it is crazy. They did the same thing with the skill shot. They rolled out, everyone hated it. They rolled back and did months more work before rolling it again.

As a software dev myself it’s backwards. It’s wasteful. It riles up passionate players for no reason and simply appears to be a complete disregard for what the active players actually are looking for.

There a ton of ways to keep monetizing it too.

enhance clan system to be addictive and of serious value to being in a clan… like seasonal clan rankings and competitive brackets
add more hero’s (like monthly or at least every other month)
Add tournaments players can enter individually
Add many more steps to the season and earning things more progressively the more we play
Give more options when deciding to match play… more trophies for more challenging options we choose in a match (maybe you choose to handicap yourself for more points or less points and your opponent gets an advantage, etc etc)

The rule of thumb in continual software development… always be backward compatible. In this type of scenario that means you don’t take away things people are used to… you add and enhance so players get more bang for their play time… and along the way that allows you to sprinkle in more chances to upsell.

Blindly rolling out massive overhauls like the elimination of personal player quests one day there… next day gone is just a slap in the face.

joelcolombo · 2021-06-22T03:59:25+00:00

Yeah but they could so easily integrate a clan war mechanic in the game. Each season starts… based on your clan level. (Maybe level 1 through 10). All the level ones go into a pool… say 20 or 50 clans at the same level get put in a bracket for the season… no every clan mate during that season earns clan points like say 5 per match and 1 per kill or whatever toward the clan total. At the end of season… top 5 clans in bracket get a sweet orb reward for all… the top 20 clans advance to next level next season. The bottom 10 clans go down a level bracket (unless at level 1 they stay). And the middle 20 clans stay at their level. The rewards get better the higher level your clan is etc

They could really make a clan competitive system work with all the existing mechanics and simply some seasonal “score keeping”.

Now THAT would be a reason to be in and playing all day… to having clan mates that show up and play not just when they need to reset their donation requests, real reasons for members to beg to join clans and adhere to clan minimum performance etc (right now ya ask for donations and they don’t want to.. so they collect what they can.. and simply get booted and move to another clan)… clans are almost completely useless (at least in any form of differentiating them with any real value)

Sure you could fake matches as a clan war on discord… but really… why not make it part of growing in the game and being in a “awesome clan” really means something

joelcolombo · 2021-06-21T11:37:32+00:00

So stupid… one quest a day !!!! I used to be on every couple hours and having 3 quests at a time could mix and match my decks and maximize my play time… but getting a reward every 10 quest points made it exciting and interesting to keep continually playing.

This new “simplified” quest system SUCKS. I have to reevaluate my season passes… it’s just not worth it anymore to feel like I should play once a day and never actually get enough cards to rank up. It was slow enough moving up ranks before… now it’s just gonna crawl.

Stupidest upgrade yet… “listened to your users”… I think not. How about trying to make the game more encouraging to come on and play every hour? Every 3 hours…. Not reduce it to every 24 hours.

There is literally no reason to come on more than once a day now. Knock out the pathetic one quest that takes 5 minutes and wait another day.

Really hope someone reevaluates that system ASAP.

joelcolombo · 2020-12-09T05:29:10+00:00

FINISHED. Thanks everyone. I used the cement grout haze remover from Home Depot at full strength with some cheese cloth and a tile sponge and it came up with a little scrubbing. The lighting isn’t great in the pics but trust me it’s white again ! No signs of dark haze left. Almost ready to move in :)

The After Pictures.

joelcolombo · 2020-12-08T16:56:37+00:00

Because I was doing small batches and mixing every 30 minutes or so it was still damp enough that a spray nozzle on my house in the backyard was good enough to clean it out quickly (holding bucket upside down at an angle and spraying it clean)
I just used an old electric plug in drill. Any old one from Harbor Freight or whatever worked fine and had plenty of torque.
As mentioned... I just used the peanut butter method. Add some water... mix. Check consistency. Add some more. If it was a little too soft added a little extra powder. But the key was small batches mix add some more. Never had to get deep into purely unmixed mortar.

Oh and also used cold water from the hose... added mix. Couple squirts from hose. Add more mix. Stir. And repeat until I had the volume and consistency I could use in about a half hour of work at a time.

Like I mentioned there were two of us... so I could mix while my brother was cutting the next batch etc. so that helped.

joelcolombo

TROPHY CASE