The problem
I kept forgetting Claude Code commands and macOS shortcuts. Flashcards are the right learning tool, but they're boring enough that I'd skip them. I wanted something where repetition felt like play — where a wrong answer meant losing a life, not quietly failing a quiz.
The approach
A weekend build in vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No frameworks — that constraint was intentional. Every feature had to be simple enough to implement in pure JS. The Pac-Man mechanics aren't decoration: right answers make Pac-Man eat the dot, wrong answers let the ghosts catch you. The game loop is the learning loop.
Keeping it dependency-free meant it runs anywhere, forever, without worrying about broken packages or build steps.
What shipped
Forty flashcards covering Claude Code commands and macOS shortcuts, arcade mechanics with lives and scoring, zero npm dependencies, and a one-file deploy to GitHub Pages. No build step required.
Reflection
I still use it. The commands I learned through the game are the ones that stuck. Sometimes the right solution is a weekend project in vanilla JS — and reaching for a framework would have been the wrong call.
