It’s a special kind of happiness when one can one-shot an app/script. That is, write a single prompt that a capable LLM can use to deliver the whole thing in a single attempt.

For me, the feelings follow this trajectory: smugness that my single prompt actually worked, then a light dusting of shame, because in ye olden days this code would have been artisanally handcrafted by me, and finally happiness, as I got a working piece of code in ~10 minutes, rather than a full weekend.

Here’s a one-shot from yesterday that made me fairly happy. I was playing Guess Who? with my 7-year-old son and started thinking: could this be fun if played with something other than the same old faces, say emojis? Ten minutes later, after some light prompting, it turns out the answer is yes. Try Guess the emoji! here.

Here’s the prompt and response. The model was ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking.