085 - Constraints x Creativity

A 168MHz chip, 16MB of RAM, and a screen that can only show black or white. The Playdate is the most limited machine I own and it's the one that makes me most creative.

In this one I walk through the Playdate's specs, what people are already pulling off inside those limits (dithering, 3D, even video), and why hard boundaries make projects finishable instead of infinite.

I also talk about the new app I'm building with two rules set on day one: no server, and local-first, no exceptions. Every "could we just use a backend for this?" gets answered before it's asked.

And a note for anyone deep in vibe coding right now. The everything-is-possible energy is great. The finished-project rate is not. Constraints fix that.