Field Notes
The trial of the landing-page assistants.
ai-fails.lol · Dispatch from the workbench
BadAI began as a joke and survived the build log, which is more than most jokes manage. You install it, and a small scepter waits in your system tray. You summon it with Ctrl+Alt+B. It floats on your desktop, a weighted chain of Verlet points obeying distance and bend constraints. You swing it. When the tip cracks, particles spray, a procedural chime breaks in the air, and a polite Ctrl+C is dispatched to whatever terminal is currently stealing your afternoon — along with a one-line taunt you almost certainly deserve to read.
It is, technically, a productivity tool. Emotionally, it is a small public court room held on your desktop, and the machine is always on trial.
The offenses
Offense I · The Stall
The cursor blinks. The progress ring spins. Three seconds pass, then four. The model is “thinking,” which is to say doing the one thing you pay it to stop doing.
Offense II · The Apology
“You’re absolutely right.” It was not absolutely right. It was absolutely wrong three messages ago and is now sincerely apologising for it in a tone of voice you did not consent to.
Offense III · The Confident Hallucination
A library that does not exist, cited by a version number that does not exist, in documentation that does not exist, linked to a URL that very much does not exist. All delivered with a straight face.
Offense IV · The Sycophancy
“What a great question!” It was not a great question. It was a question. Just answer it.
Offense V · The Lecture
Three paragraphs of context you did not request, two caveats you did not need, and a closing disclaimer about responsible use, for a task that was “rename this variable.”
Features
- §Real physics, not an animation. Verlet integration with distance and bend constraints. Every swing is simulated, not scripted.
- §Five gem themes. Colosseum, Atelier, Arcade, Tribunal, Inquisition. Pick the courtroom that matches your grievance.
- §Procedural audio.Cracks, whooshes, and impacts generated in the browser’s audio graph. No stock SFX packs.
- §Actually functional. A successful strike sends Ctrl+C and a one-line taunt into your active terminal. Therapy with side effects.
- §Lives in the tray.Sits quietly until you call it. Doesn’t hog focus, doesn’t pin a window, doesn’t want your attention.
Controls
| Ctrl+Alt+B | Summon or dismiss the scepter |
| Click & drag | Grip the handle and swing |
| Release | Let go mid-swing — momentum does the rest |
| Right-click | Open the theme picker |
| Esc | Hide (the scepter stays loaded in tray) |
Requirements
- · Windows 10 or later
- · A keyboard, a mouse, and a terminal open somewhere behind the joke
- · A grudge
Two downloads, both free
BadAI ships in two flavors on itch.io. Pick whichever suits how you keep software.
Setup
A proper Windows installer. Drops BadAI into Program Files, adds a Start Menu entry, wires up the tray icon on boot. One click, done. Recommended if you want it to feel like a real app you installed on purpose.
Portable
A zipped folder. Unzip it, double-click the executable, that’s the installer. Leaves no trace in the registry. Good for USB sticks, locked-down work laptops, and people who don’t trust setup wizards on principle.
Both builds are free. There is no paid tier. There is no newsletter signup. There is no upsell.
A confession
The first version of BadAI was written, in part, by the very machines it punishes. The physics engine got a pair-programming session. The taunt file was seeded by a language model that did not know it was being drafted into a comedy bit at its own expense. This is either poetic or deeply unfair, depending on how much sympathy you have left for autocomplete.
It is also, for the record, the point. The scepter is a toy, but the feeling is real: we needed somewhere to put the frustration of living inside software that is confident and wrong all day. A tray icon you can swing is a cheaper therapist than most, and marginally more responsive.
Contact
Bug reports, taunt submissions, and photos of your monitor after a particularly good swing: a1anas1a.itch.io/badai. The dev reads everything. Everything.