A satirical idle game about running an AI startup
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I made an idle/clicker about running an AI startup. You start with a cat-vs-dog classifier and try to make it to AGI, but the NYT sues you for training data, Yann tweets that scaling is dead, and your fired ML engineer leaks the Slack.
HN · launched May 23, 2026 · 12 upvotes (top 36%) · 0 views
Niche: browser-based video games · 380 launches, 21 in the last 7 days ▼ -28% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 380 launches in browser-based video games →
Could you build this?
Yes An incremental idle clicker game is driven entirely by client-side numerical state, interval timers, and humorous text events that AI excels at writing.
Discussion
4 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Prestige available too quickly, unclear moment to step away, Step training limited to x0.1 increments only, Excessive monetization (4 microtransactions + 4 subscriptions) for shallow game, No clear hardware upgrade system, Endgame lacks meaningful progression and narrative
Feature requests: Increase step training increment options, Add compelling endgame narrative and progression, Clearer hardware/upgrade purchasing system, Make hiring employees strategically valuable
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 251 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #90 of 252 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 206 days after the earliest competitor.
- Series Z: Idle Startup Tycoon · ph · 2026-10-23 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- Orchy-AI · ph · 2026-11-06 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Loss. a tiny satire about AI progress · hn · 2026-09-15 · 38 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Compounding: The Startup Game · ph · 2026-09-18 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- FailUnicorn · ph · 2026-10-14 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Premortem · ph · 2026-11-02 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Just describe your idea and let AI build a playable game for you · hn · 2026-08-21 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- uncensored-ai-starter-kit · github · 2026-10-26 · 25 upvotes · similarity 0.42
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