I forced Claude to play Tetris in Emacs
The point of this seemingly useless exercise was to stress-test my elisp-eval MCP https://github.com/agzam/death-contraptions/tree/main/tools/... AI hands it a string of Lisp, it runs inside live Emacs session, poking into it via emacsclient. Behaves like a REPL the LLM can drive - state persists between the calls. Emacs is a Lisp machine. Buffers, files, network, subprocesses, games, major modes, the UI itself: every feature is already an elisp function. Hand an LLM a way to run arbitrary elisp and it inherits the entire Emacs API for free. No…
I forced Claude to play Tetris in Emacs launched on April 11, 2026 with 13 votes, #1,135 of 21,248 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was not reachable when checked in September 2026.
In plain words
This project demonstrates an elisp-eval MCP (model context protocol) that allows AI language models to execute Lisp code within a live Emacs session via emacsclient. The tool functions as a persistent REPL where state persists between calls, giving AI access to Emacs's full API—including buffers, files, subprocesses, and UI features. The creator used Tetris as a stress test to showcase the capability, but the same MCP can control any Emacs tool like Magit, Org, or Dired without additional glue code. It's designed for developers exploring AI-driven Emacs automation.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
The point of this seemingly useless exercise was to stress-test my elisp-eval MCP https://github.com/agzam/death-contraptions/tree/main/tools/... AI hands it a string of Lisp, it runs inside live Emacs session, poking into it via emacsclient. Behaves like a REPL the LLM can…
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Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs LispFeb 2026 · github.com · ▲176This is a little game implemented over a week of tinkering and targeting Emacs. The point is both to have fun with this kind of simulations, and also explore the "functional core / imperative shell" approach to architecture. I also developed a tile and tile effect definition DSL, which makes this even easier to extend. From this point of view it's a success: easy testing, easy extension, Gameplay-wise the simulation is too simplistic, and needs input from people interested in this kind of toys. The original Micropolis/SimSity is the last time I built a virtual city.
- IWI wrote a technical history book on LispFeb 2026 · berksoft.ca · ▲252
The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…
Interactive Common Lisp: An Enhanced REPLDec 2025 · github.com · ▲101I created this because sometimes I want more than rlwrap but less than emacs. icl aims to hit that middle sweet spot. It's a terminal application with context-aware auto-complete, an interactive object inspector, auto-indentation, syntax colouring, persistent history, and much more. It uses sly to communicate with the child lisp process and aims to be compatible with any sly-supporting implementation. I hope others find it useful!
Iterm-Mcp – AI Terminal/REPL Control for iTerm22025 · github.com · ▲43Hi HN! Ever wish you could just point your AI assistant at your terminal and say 'what's wrong with this output?' That's why I built iterm-mcp. It lets MCP clients like Claude Desktop directly interact with your iTerm2 terminal - reading logs, running commands, using REPLs, and helping debug issues. Want to explore data or debug using a REPL? The AI can start the REPL, run commands, and help interpret the results. This is an MCP server that integrates with Claude Desktop, LibreChat, and other Model Context Protocol compatible clients.…
Claude-replay – A video-like player for Claude Code sessionsMar 2026 · github.com · ▲105I got tired of sharing AI demos with terminal screenshots or screen recordings. Claude Code already stores full session transcripts locally as JSONL files. Those logs contain everything: prompts, tool calls, thinking blocks, and timestamps. I built a small CLI tool that converts those logs into an interactive HTML replay. You can step through the session, jump through the timeline, expand tool calls, and inspect the full conversation. The output is a single self-contained HTML file — no dependencies. You can email it, host it anywhere, embed it in a blog post, and it works on mobile. Repo:…
Emacs4CL: 35 line .emacs to turn Emacs into Common Lisp dev environment2020 · github.com · ▲80A tiny DIY kit to set up vanilla Emacs for Common Lisp programming - susam/emacs4cl
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