What Five Days And 19 Games Revealed About Coding With AI

🔍 Read the full analysis: What Five Days And 19 Games Revealed About Coding With AI on ThorstenMeyerAI.com

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Thorsten Meyer says he built and published Altersteilzeit, a free web app for counting down the working days of Germany’s partial-retirement block model, in five days with Claude Opus 5.5 acting as a coding agent. His account, published October 13, describes a project that expanded from a short animated film into a countdown service with a narrator, multilingual features and a 3D game collection Meyer says offers 19 ways to play.

Meyer began the project on Monday, September 28, asking the agent for a short film about the two phases of Altersteilzeit: an active period of work followed by an equally long passive period away from work. By Friday, October 2, the app was online. Meyer says all 24 commits were co-authored by Claude Opus 5.5, while he gave instructions, made decisions and approved releases.

Users enter a date for the start of either phase and choose a model ranging from 1:1 to 5:5. The app calculates the other date and counts working days, subtracting public holidays for the selected German federal state and leave entered by the user. Its daily view includes a countdown, milestones and a saying of the day; other features include a short film, a bridge-day finder, a team countdown and printable or calendar-export options.

The development account describes a sequence of additions across the five days: the countdown and game prototypes came first, followed by language support, more game modes, badges, sound effects and narration. Meyer says the project included 1,224 voice clips, 17 sound effects and more than 1,800 text strings per language across 12 languages. He also reports about 18,000 lines of JavaScript and Python and 15 test scripts. These figures and the account of the work come from Meyer; no independent technical audit is provided in the source material.

Where Human Judgment Remained

The account offers a specific example of how a coding agent can contribute across a software project, beyond generating isolated code. Meyer describes using the agent for implementation, testing, translation work, audio production and deployment while he directed the product and reviewed the results. The app’s range—from date calculations to browser-based 3D games—makes the project a useful case study in the breadth of tasks he says were handled in a short period.

It also draws a boundary around that contribution. Meyer says decisions about the app’s humor, cinematic style, voices, dialects and legal contact details remained his. He describes listening to the sound effects and approving them before release. The project therefore does not establish that an agent can independently create and ship a finished product; it documents one developer’s account of a collaboration in which human direction and release approval remained part of the process.

For users, the app is aimed at a defined audience: people tracking the work and leave dates associated with Germany’s block-model partial retirement. Meyer says calculations happen in the browser and that the service has no accounts, cookies or tracking. Those are claims in his published description, rather than findings from an outside privacy review.

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From Countdown Film to Web App

In the block model of Altersteilzeit, a person works for a set period and then enters a similarly long period away from work. Meyer uses a 4:4 model as an example. Because the app counts working days rather than calendar days, its calculations account for weekdays, state public holidays and user-entered leave, according to his description.

The project’s central design idea was to make the wait feel more engaging than a number on a screen. Meyer says the film moves from an office setting during the active phase to images of the sea, sky and sunrise during the passive phase. In the games, calendar time becomes the game structure: months, weeks, working days and holidays shape levels or mechanics. Meyer says the names were chosen to avoid other companies’ trademarks.

The published timeline says the first version was online on the evening of day one, with further features added through day five. That progression included a fix for an iPhone scrolling problem and a final review before Meyer added five German dialects as full language options. The account is a retrospective report by the project’s creator, not a controlled comparison of AI-assisted and conventional development.

“I wanted the counting to be fun.”

— Thorsten Meyer, describing the project’s purpose

What the Account Does Not Verify

The development details are based on Meyer’s own account. The source does not provide an independent review of the app’s code, the accuracy of its holiday calculations, its privacy practices, or the reported development metrics. It also does not compare the five-day timeline with what a human team would have required without an AI agent.

There is a count discrepancy in the account: it describes the game collection as having 19 ways to play, but later says the game rule applies across “all nineteen games” while also giving an earlier timeline that refers to fifteen modes before further additions. The source does not explain how those figures relate, so the exact distinction between games and modes is unclear. Meyer’s account also does not provide user numbers, independent evaluations or evidence of how the app performs across devices and regions.

What Users Can Check Next

Meyer’s account describes Altersteilzeit as a public web app, but it does not announce a scheduled update, product roadmap or next development milestone. Readers interested in using it can check the live service and its published legal pages for current availability, supported languages and the details of its calculations. Those details may change after the October 13 account.

Any broader assessment of the project’s significance will depend on evidence beyond the creator’s report, including independent testing, user experience across devices and confirmation of the privacy and date-calculation claims. For now, the documented development is a five-day project in which Meyer says an AI agent handled substantial technical and production work, while he retained creative direction and final approval.

Key Questions

What is Altersteilzeit?

Altersteilzeit is a form of partial retirement in Germany. In the block model described by Meyer, a person works during an active phase and then spends an equally long period away from work in a passive phase.

What did the app include when it launched?

Meyer says the app included a working-day countdown, a short film, a 3D game collection, language and dialect options, a bridge-day finder, badges and a team countdown. It also offered calendar and print features.

What role did the AI coding agent play?

Meyer says Claude Opus 5.5 helped with implementation, testing, translations, audio production and deployment. He says he set the direction, made design and product decisions, and approved releases.

Does the source independently verify the app’s privacy claims?

No independent privacy review is included in the source material. Meyer says the app uses no accounts, cookies or tracking and calculates data in the browser; those statements remain claims from the project’s creator.

Why do the game counts appear different?

The account refers to 19 ways to play and later to nineteen games, but also mentions fifteen modes at an earlier point in the development timeline. It does not clarify whether “games” and “modes” refer to different counts.

Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com