This is a submission for the DEV Weekend Challenge: Community
The Community
I'm a mom. My son is three. For the past year, we've been building games together using AI. He tells me what the game should do, I type prompts into Claude, and we ship it. His portfolio lives at madladstudios.com. Nine games and counting.
Through this, I've connected with a growing community of parents who want to do the same thing: help their kids grow up using AI as a creative tool instead of being passive consumers. They're homeschoolers, tech-industry parents, AI-curious teachers. They all say the same thing:
"My kid's just a toddler. I don't know where to start."
That's the cold start problem. It's not that you don't know how to use Claude or ChatGPT. It's staring at a blank prompt box and wondering how to make it relevant to this little human who mostly wants to watch Helper Cars. What do you ask for? How specific should you be? What's even realistic for a toddler?
What I Built
Pixel Foundery — a prompt generator for parents who want to build things with their kids using AI.
Three inputs:
- Age — your kid's age (2-5)
- Interest — what they're obsessed with (trucks, dinosaurs, space, animals, etc.)
- Project type — what kind of thing to build (game, story, art tool, science experiment, math puzzle, music maker)
One output: a ready-to-paste prompt tailored to your kid, designed to produce a working single-file HTML project when pasted into any AI chatbot.
Hit "Generate," copy the prompt, paste it into Claude or ChatGPT, and you have something to build together in minutes.
The prompts are opinionated. They ask for:
- Single HTML files (no setup, no npm, no App Store)
- Touch-friendly controls (tiny fingers)
- Bright colors and sound effects (you're competing with Bluey)
- No reading required (they're toddlers)
- One core mechanic (simplicity wins)
Because that's what actually works when you're building with a two-year-old. I know — I've done it.
Demo
Pick your kid's age, pick what they love, pick a project type, generate a prompt. Paste it into your AI tool of choice. Build something cool with your kid tonight.
Code
meimakes
/
pixelfoundery.com
Build anything with your kid + AI — prompt generator for parents
Pixel Foundery
Your kid can build apps before they can read. This is the tool that makes it easy.
Single HTML file. No frameworks. No dependencies. Fork it, open it, pick an age + interest + project type, and get a ready-to-paste prompt that produces a working app in any AI chatbot.
Quick Start
git clone https://github.com/meimakes/pixelfoundery.com.git
open index.html
That's it. Pick your kid's age, what they love, what to build. Copy the prompt. Paste into Claude / ChatGPT / Gemini. Build together.
What's Inside
25+ handcrafted prompt templates across 6 categories:
| Category | What it builds |
|---|---|
| 🎮 Game | Tap-to-jump, catch, whack-a-mole, memory, racing |
| 📖 Story | Choose-your-own-adventure, interactive storybooks, character creators |
| 🎨 Art | Finger painting, pixel art, stamp tools, coloring pages |
| 🔬 Science | Color mixing, plant growing, weather sim, physics playground |
| 🧮 Math | Counting, shapes, bigger/smaller, addition, patterns |
| 🎵 Music | Drum machine, piano, sound mixer, rhythm games, melody maker |
Every prompt…
The project exists in two versions, both honoring the same idea: a parent and a kid should be able to build something together in five minutes.
The repo: index.html — A single HTML file. No build step. No dependencies. No server. 25+ handcrafted prompt templates across 6 categories. Fork it, open it in a browser, done. The prompts themselves produce single-file HTML projects — it's turtles all the way down.
The live site: pixelfoundery.com — Built on Anything, upgraded with real-time AI generation via Claude Sonnet. Same interface, same inputs, but instead of drawing from templates, it creates unique prompts every time.
One version trusts the templates. The other trusts the model. Both produce the same thing: a prompt you can paste into any AI and build something real with your kid.
How I Built It
The static version is a single index.html — HTML, CSS, vanilla JS. No frameworks, no build step. The irony of a tool that generates single-file projects being a single-file project itself is not lost on me.
The live version is powered by Anything with Claude Sonnet generating prompts on the fly. Same UI, infinite variety. The template library serves as both the standalone experience and the fallback if the AI is unavailable.
Light and dark mode via prefers-color-scheme, fully responsive, mobile-first.
The prompts are the product. The UI took a few hours. Writing prompts that reliably produce good results from multiple AI models across six project categories and eight interest areas — that's where the real work was. Getting the specificity right so Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini all produce something a 3-year-old can actually play with required a lot of iteration.
The gap this fills: Every existing resource for teaching kids to code either assumes coding knowledge, targets 8-year-olds, requires a $200 robot kit, or is too vague to be actionable. Pixel Foundery is just the missing first step — a good prompt, personalized to your kid.
Parents don't need "less screen time" advice. They need better screen time. My community is parents who want to sit next to their kids and make something together. That's a fundamentally different relationship with technology.
I'm also writing Raising Pixels — a newsletter about computational thinking for tiny humans, building with AI as a family, and raising kids who create more than they consume.
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