I made a game where you build a CPU from logic gates
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I built ChipBuilder to make computer architecture more approachable through interactive puzzles.You start with basic logic gates like AND, OR, and NOT, then gradually combine them into adders, multiplexers, memory, an ALU, and eventually a complete CPU. Once you've built the hardware, you can write assembly programs that run on the processor you created.The game is inspired by courses like Nand2Tetris, but everything runs directly in the browser with a visual circuit editor, simulations, and progressively harder challenges.
HN · launched Jul 30, 2026 · 102 upvotes (top 8%) · 0 views
Niche: educational games and learning tools · 207 launches, 24 in the last 7 days ▲ +50% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- Dev tools
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 207 launches in educational games and learning tools →
Could you build this?
Partial The web-based puzzle game UI and basic logic gate simulations are vibe-codeable, but creating an accurate, cycle-stepped hardware gate simulator that scales up to a working CPU and assembler requires solid computer architecture fundamentals.
What it would actually take: A real implementation uses a custom discrete-event logic simulation engine written in TypeScript or Rust/Wasm to propagate binary states without infinite loops or race conditions in sequential logic (flip-flops, clocking). It also requires a custom microcode or RISC ISA specification, an interactive circuit schematic canvas (using HTML5 Canvas, WebGL, or SVG), and an in-browser assembler/disassembler to execute machine instructions step-by-step. The primary challenge is building a performant, cycle-accurate gate-level simulator that can execute thousands of interconnected gates per second in the browser.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Nand2Tetris, Turing Complete, Digital Logic Sim by Sebastian Lague, Silicon Zeroes, MHRD
Concerns raised: Learning curve and difficulty progression issues, Pipelining level completely broken/empty, Browse feature appears to be a scam shopping site, Forced to use certain module variants instead of creating custom ones, ALU example has no actual tests despite claims
Feature requests: More game-like presentation and feel, Keep tests visible while playing without tab switching, Ability to create and use custom component variants, Skip level functionality
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 125 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #18 of 126 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 269 days after the earliest competitor.
- Chip Builder · ph · 2026-11-02 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.89
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- CoreTrace, a visual 16-bit CPU simulator · hn · 2026-08-13 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- BBRouter · ph · 2026-11-01 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- DigiTiles · ph · 2026-10-28 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- I built a lite LPU that can do inference on Karpathy's MicroGPT · hn · 2026-08-24 · 18 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- I wrote a custom assembler for CHIP-8 in C++ · hn · 2026-09-17 · 28 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Notch Arcade · ph · 2026-09-23 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.40
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