Opinionated agent skills for developing a small indie game from the first browser prototype through public playtests and desktop release. They are based on lessons learned while building Marque & Reprisal: make the game easy to play early, instrument the real build, recover gracefully for players, fail loudly for developers, and establish durable architecture before content makes change expensive.

This repository covers development practice. Marketing strategy, Steam page audits, tags, trailers, and launch planning live in the separate indie-game-marketing-skills repository.

For someone who has never coded, the agent starts with two prerequisites:

1. Set up a GitHub account and repository for the game.
2. Set up a free Cloudflare account and paste the required scoped credentials into the local, ignored .env, privately, so the agent can configure the web prototype and related services.

The architecture skill walks the user through any missing steps, performs the technical setup it can handle, and verifies access without revealing secrets. Existing setup or an explicit choice of another version-control/hosting provider is respected. Credentials never belong in chat, commits, or browser builds.

• architect-web-first-indie-game: choose the renderer and technical boundaries early, establish a consistent pixel grid when using pixel art, ship a browser prototype on Cloudflare Pages, and preserve a path to desktop storefronts.
• instrument-resilient-game: combine consent-based telemetry, narrow production recovery, fail-fast development builds, and useful diagnostics.
• design-durable-game-state: build canonical identities, deterministic state transitions, versioned saves, migrations, and safe autosaves.
• build-cross-input-localized-game: make every player-facing feature work across touch, mouse, keyboard, controller, languages, fonts, and layouts, with accessibility options built into feature design.
• maintain-game-credits: record every asset, license, contributor, and consenting playtester when they enter the project.
• triage-game-playtest-feedback: reconcile reports with the actual build and telemetry, prioritize fixes, and keep the action ledger synchronized.

The lessons that recur across the skills are deliberate: stable IDs before content proliferates; generated artifacts that can be rebuilt; testable domain logic outside rendering; real-browser and production-build checks; a visible build revision; and a living feedback ledger that is updated with the code.

Clone this repository somewhere stable. Link individual skill directories into one game's .agents/skills directory:

mkdir -p /absolute/path/to/game/.agents/skills
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-vibe-coding-skills/skills/architect-web-first-indie-game /absolute/path/to/game/.agents/skills/architect-web-first-indie-game
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-vibe-coding-skills/skills/instrument-resilient-game /absolute/path/to/game/.agents/skills/instrument-resilient-game
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-vibe-coding-skills/skills/design-durable-game-state /absolute/path/to/game/.agents/skills/design-durable-game-state
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-vibe-coding-skills/skills/build-cross-input-localized-game /absolute/path/to/game/.agents/skills/build-cross-input-localized-game
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-vibe-coding-skills/skills/maintain-game-credits /absolute/path/to/game/.agents/skills/maintain-game-credits
ln -s /absolute/path/to/indie-game-vibe-coding-skills/skills/triage-game-playtest-feedback /absolute/path/to/game/.agents/skills/triage-game-playtest-feedback

Linking them into ~/.codex/skills instead makes them available to every project. Do not install the same skill at both scopes.

These skills encode a development philosophy, not a game engine or a promise that one architecture fits every game. They should adapt to the game's actual scale, genre, devices, team, and release plan. Cloud services, browser APIs, storefront requirements, and pricing change; verify current first-party documentation when implementing them. See SOURCES.md.