Federico KotekProduct Designer

Say the Words

saythewords.xyz ↗

Say the Words started as a mini-game for this portfolio. A fake AI chat types out a prompt for your job, something like “fix the kerning on the entire internet”. Right before it sends, you realise something is missing, the window loses its mind, and you have to type the magic words, make no mistakes, as fast as you can. Five rounds, ranked by your average time.

The prompt types itself, the send button leans in, and the window realises. Rebuilt from the game’s own CSS and copy: the first prompt gets the whole speech, the next two only the words.

The joke is on me. I build most things with agents now, and somewhere along the way everyone started ending prompts with “make no mistakes”, as if the model had been planning a few and this would change its mind. It is blowing on the dice. I love it, because it is the most human line in the whole workflow: someone with a spec and a deadline, still asking nicely for luck. So the game treats it as a forbidden technique and makes you earn it (I still type it, every single time).

The first version worked, and it felt random: some vector, some pixel art, animations that had never met. For v2 I wanted one epiphany, seen in first person, in one visual language. Flat ink shapes and halftone, captions in manga narration boxes, the pixel type kept for the game’s own interface, and a note to myself that just said “go actually insane”. The camera got one rule: it never cuts. It dives through a point or pulls back to one, and every round was built to end on the same ritual. Everything collapses into a point of light, the point stretches into a closed eye, the eye opens, and the camera dives into the pupil, which is a text cursor. The black of the pupil becomes the black of the real interface.

The ritual as it was built: point of light, closed eye, the eye opens, a dive into the cursor, and the black becomes the composer. Then the camera pulls back to the monitor, because it is not allowed to cut.

I built round one around that eye, with equations flying at the camera, an eagle carrying a tiny flag, a galaxy and a green portal full of versions of you. Then I parked the round cutscenes behind a flag until they are ready, and the joke moved into the chat window, which now takes over by itself and says the words one hit at a time. The eye lives on in the reel, fifteen seconds that are code too: every frame is a function of time, and the soundtrack is synthesised from the game’s own sounds. The intro survived whole. It asks your name and a slot machine slows down like a real one to hand you a nickname: designers get Kerning or Forty Figma Tabs (accurate), developers get Friday Deploy.

The intro, under your own date and time. One loop per role: a product designer, a software dev, and someone who is just vibing rn.

Then you type, and a mistake has to cost something you can feel, so I borrowed from Whiplash. A hi-hat counts you in at 120 BPM and speeds up the longer you take. A wrong key stops the band: a cymbal flies across the screen, a card drops in with a line like “Not quite my tempo.”, and a quarter of a second goes on your time. There is no backspace; pressing it only reminds you that backspace is for mortals. The clock starts on your first key, so take a breath first.

Your turn, with the game’s own rules, timer and penalties. Click the window and type the words; on a phone, tap the keys. Sound is off until you turn it on.

At the end you get a rank, from Basically AGI down to Intern who pasted the stack trace, a post for X and a place on a global top ten. The ladder isn’t moderated: it takes whatever name you type, and the only thing it refuses is a score that is impossible for the time you report. It was called Make No Mistakes until it got its own domain and a better name. It is the most fun I have had designing something with no job at all, and it is about the thing I do every day.