From zero coding to ad-funded browser games with `Claude`

Execution beat architecture: crude single-file games reached scale before cleanup. Useful proof that free web games plus ads can work if you ship fast and migrate stacks only when load demands it.

• —A first-time builder shipped a playable browser game in 6 hours, polished it in 12, then added leaderboards and multiplayer within days.
• —Three free games reached 25M plays and 200K daily players, monetized with display ads at low five figures monthly.
• —The first two games stayed as 8,000-line single HTML files; Claude kept extending them until manual refactor pressure became unavoidable.
• —Operating costs are material but sane for the traffic: about $2K/mo for Cursor + Claude, plus $1.5K/mo for Vercel + Supabase.
• —The practical lesson is not 'AI writes everything'; it is knowing when to force a move to Next.js + TypeScript before velocity collapses.