The Prompt Heist

Executive Summary

The Prompt Heist is a prompt-building game created by Tim Howley. Play a Context Engineer facing the Bureaucrat, a fictional AI character. Choose among four missions, assemble inquiry blocks or type a request, and inspect the response and debrief.

The Bureaucrat is an authored simulation. Its percentages are game scores, not measurements of a real AI model. No AI service receives or evaluates your prompt. The game offers a starting point for discussing how a request's scope, assumptions, constraints, and missing evidence affect what you ask next.

Before You Play

Choose a mission: The Sycophancy Breaker, The Aperture Squeeze, The Epistemic Lock, or The Grand Premortem. Read its context and objectives. Load Flawed Preset supplies an example; the inquiry cards append suggested text. You can edit the composer, then press Infiltrate Latent Space to receive a response.

Wait for the response before switching missions. Compare the prompt with what the response actually supports. Which claims have evidence, which are assumptions, and what would you need to check outside the game?

The approved prototype has known scoring limitations: selected blocks keep earning points after their text is edited or removed, and a response already running can appear after a mission switch. A success banner alone does not establish that a prompt meets the objectives. Clear Blocks resets the entire composer, including typed text. Progress resets when the page reloads.

Controls and Accessibility

• Use a mouse or touch input to select missions and inquiry blocks. Type into the composer and submit with the run button.
• Clear Blocks is a touch-sized button that also works with the keyboard. Completed runs bring the verdict and start of the response into view and focus the verdict.
• Mission selectors and inquiry cards do not yet provide a complete keyboard-only route. The brief and credits use the shared site's accessible navigation.
• The SFX button toggles synthesized sound effects. Sound begins enabled, subject to browser interaction rules.
• Animated scanlines, color, text, and numbers contribute to the presentation. The original game does not provide a reduced-motion setting.
• The page requests Google Fonts and includes fallback fonts. Prompts remain in the page; there are no accounts or saved runs.

How We Made This with Generative AI

Tim supplied the game through REN-858. The original development model, prompts, and sessions were not included in the ZIP.

Codex assisted with source intake, checksums, playtesting, documentation, and Game Room packaging. Mike approved the supplied game and requested merge, commit, push, Game Room integration, and deployment preparation on September 20, 2026. The approved gameplay file is preserved byte for byte. Creator credit uses the spelling Mike requested; the source ticket's account is displayed as Timothy Howley.

The Gory Details

The HTML file contains the styles, four mission records, scoring rules, response variants, and Web Audio oscillators. Selected blocks add fixed points; substring checks add or subtract more. Score thresholds choose an authored response. The program does not understand an arbitrary request or verify the response against external evidence.

The interface's references to attention weights, latent space, and model behavior are part of the fiction. The supplied output can contain precise assertions that are not supported by the mission briefing. Treat those statements as material to question, not verified advice or a guarantee that a prompting technique works on real systems.

The game repository owns the original source, creator credit, learning record, and portable package. Game Room owns its catalog and room presentation. Future changes can improve scoring and accessibility while retaining the original source for comparison.