Mario

Solo builder.

🎮 My onchain prediction game: 70+ players, 20 regulars, 5'000+ transactions

I share what brings players back and what drives them away.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

70+ people played my prediction game. 20 kept coming back.

Rewards got them to try it. The wait brought them back: the result lands an hour later, you come to check it, and since you're already in, you play the next round.

The return trigger was the delay, not the prize.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@kel_ruael 1 in 5 of my cases has no answer in the context on purpose. That is where small models break: they invent instead of saying not found. If it cannot abstain, cheap inference stops mattering, you pay it back cleaning up.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

Most AI tasks don't need a frontier model

Here's how small language models work, and how to run one on your own laptop in 5 minutes. https://t.co/K6xul63Crt

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@TonyZ278264 That gap is the whole story: 1 loose constraint is fine, several at once is where small models fall apart. Does your app let people see which constraint got dropped, or just the final text?

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@broke2built The error side is what separates the two. A skill describes the rule; it takes a gate outside the model to enforce it. Mine hold because 1 check runs before publishing, not inside the prompt. Which mistake from the article did you hit yourself?

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

Anthropic already has hundreds of Skills in production. And no — they’re not “just Markdown.” An Anthropic engineer explains how truly powerful Skills for Claude Code are built — and which mistakes you don’t want to repeat. https://t.co/BLbYT5OCcx

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@hryhorii77 @1CrypticPoet @base If you go the mini app route, check gas sponsorship early. Mine quietly stopped covering every wallet except 2 after I added referrals, and users only see that it failed, not why.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@Tyler_Plummer @Kalshi @Polymarket Does that hold for slow stories too, or only for binary events with a clear resolve date? Markets price the 1 question someone wrote down. Everything outside that question stays invisible until a headline names it.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@marclou 1:04:55 with zero pressure beats a PB with it. Does that transfer to building for you, or is the no-goal version only possible on things that are not your job?

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@johnbr_ai Not marketing exactly. Being in the rooms where those people already talk, months before you have anything. I started that after launch, and it is why 70+ tried it but the first 20 took so long...

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@marclou @SudoKidTV Racing in your own product's kit is the cheapest billboard there is. Does anyone ever ask about the logo mid-race, or does it only pay off in the 2 photos afterwards?

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@tibo_maker Which tactic in there still works today? Most growth playbooks from 3 years ago die on distribution, not on the tactic itself, and that part never makes it into the archive.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@fleonus Switching to pay-what-you-like 3 days out is the kind of call you only get to test once. What are you watching first, the share who pay at all or the median amount?

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@fleonus So the honest base is under 100, not 221. The number I would chase now: how many of those 100 opened it on a second day. Reviewers and your own reinstalls never do that, so it cleans itself

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@prak_z Mine fits that: a prediction game on Base, call 5 prices and 5/5 takes the reward. No deposit, a miss keeps your XP for the next round. 70+ players so far, 20 regulars, so you won't be reading threads about it.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

I still don't know exactly what makes players come back.

Aside from high rewards — but that model can't be profitable forever. At some point, it becomes a Ponzi scheme.

So I've been trying to give players other reasons to return: new round types, new interfaces, new mechanics.

So far, it hasn't worked very well.

Maybe it's time to shut the project down.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@tibo_maker The next level of that: someone comes back on their own, without you telling them to. 20 of my 70+ players show up as regulars, and that's the first number I check every morning...

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@zoltanszogyenyi What I meant was: is there any data or a tool to track which sounds *don't* prompt users to mute the site or device, or block notifications?

Some sounds might be jarring or simply disliked by most people—it would be good to know which ones those are.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@yongfook You missed the step where 3 of the 17 competitors turn out to be the same model with a different landing page. Then dinner.

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@mesutas_dev Owning beats renting until the thing goes down at 2am and there's no support queue, just you. What's your line for self-hosting: the monthly price, or how badly it hurts when it breaks?

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

@Alestor_builds Swipe cut the round down to one gesture. Saving in vault is a 1-gesture action too, ever tried making the save itself feel like something?

[Mario @okwhobuilt]

Redesigned interface with card swiping

I am building a product