Gaming in the Agentic Era

The Old Ways

Getting stuck in a video game is a timeless experience. For decades we have turned to guides, wikis, walkthroughs, and faqs to progress. In the era of agentic coding, this concept is changing. Manipulating data into a new format is easier than ever.

We had several options before, lets talk about them briefly.

Physical Walkthroughs

Older games would release as a feature complete product, they rarely changed over the years. They kept their bugs and secrets exactly as they shipped. Alongside many of these an official Walkthrough / Game Guide would be released. This guide covered every detail about the game you could need, stats, locations, items, and more. Because the game didn't change, these were fantastic.

Over the years, people would go on to notice that a lot of the strategies in these guides were suboptimal, and there were much better ways of accomplishing these goals.

The largest issue with Walkthroughs was the price, these would cost up to $30 USD. The biggest benefit was if you didn't have internet you still had access to help while being stuck.

GameFaqs

Enter Gamefaqs, one of the earliest text-based gaming cultures online. Here users were hand crafting FAQ Guides and Walkthroughs for games in plain .txt files. While these were sometimes inaccurate as they were reverse engineering a lot of values themselves... they often had much better techniques as the authors had thoroughly tested these themselves as a super fan of the game. Why else would they be writing these guides?

They were difficult to write, edit, share. They were difficult to read and process information. It was just a large .txt file, separated with ===== dividers and manual formatting and "links" with ctrl+f. You'd have something like Weapons Section1 -- sec1 and then later you'd have sec1 -- The Weapons Guide. And you'd know to search for sec1 to get there.

An imperfect system, but it was the height of gamer knowledge at the time. Since this was a community generated resource, guides often took a long time to be written.

Wikis

As time went on, different wikis started to pop up as game-specific resources. These were deep community driven knowledge bases, often including game details, mechanics, characters, techniques, strategies, etc.

We now had an all encompassing source for this data, and it was better to navigate.

As time grew, these became less and less bespoke, and now often run on things like fandom.

These options were all manageable, but in 2026 we can shape data in any manner we want, such as a slideshow.

Enter Agentic Coding

In 2026 writing code has never been easier. With Agentic coding we can easily pump out thousands of lines of code without blinking, and it instead becomes a matter of engaging with ideas and expectations. One of the biggest keys of Agentic Abilities to me is the idea of shaping data. We can take data, manipulate it into another form, and present it to humans in any shape we prefer.

In this new era, on a whim we can create fully featured apps and get them live and functional. You can even do it from your phone while on a walk (or gaming on the couch).

Agentic x Gaming

If we have data, we can shape it -- this is the underlying concept of gaming in an Agentic era.

We have extensive data on Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, we know nearly every detail of the game. Community Favorite Kiranico has been a central resource for all things MHGU. This website is incredible, super informative and feature rich.

One thing to understand about MHGU is the Questing:

• There are ranks of quests (Low 1-7, High 1-7, G 1-4).
• There are many quests per rank (up to 60 per rank).
• To progress to the next rank, you must complete all key quests.
• Key Quests are not identifiable in game.

This means as a new player, you can end up doing 18 quests or so before you unlock the next rank instead of the 5 required to progress.

Because of this you would find yourself playing MHGU with Kiranico open on your phone so you can double check which quest you should be doing. It's entirely serviceable and the information is there, but the mobile experience is just poor.

So there I was, sitting on the couch looking up my next Key Quest and thought I wish it was easier on mobile. And then the claude-itis hit and I had to make it.

Creating MHGU Autopilot on a Whim

I opened up Github on my phone, created a new repo.

I opened up Vercel on my phone, created a new project and linked to my repo.

I opened up Claude on my phone, started a new chat and dropped in.

Code

Alright, bet.

I hunted a Gendrome, it was quick.

My app was live, https://mhgu-autopilot.vercel.app/, and it worked. It was a bit rough around the edges, but it showed me my next quest, and I could just know what to do next. The autopilot was there, I was happy. I shared with a few friends and let them use it.

Dogfooding my own tool

Over the next few days I found myself wanting some more tweaks. Well I hit Low Rank 3*, what weapon should I build? So I asked Claude to add that feature.

Code

Weapons are now suggested.

Code

Done.

Code

Your wish is my command.

Suddenly I am creating the exact app I need as I play the game in real time. It's incredible. This is a much more fun version of "present me data as a slideshow".

The excitement of building this FOSS app for MHGU makes me want to play MHGU more. I don't think a regular user would feel quite the same, but I'm excited to see this thing I spun up on a whim working.

Quest Complete!

For years I dreamed of building the perfect Binding of Isaac item guide app, but could never get the data in the shape I wanted or build the app fast enough. Someone else always released something better than I was building. I was able to make my dream MHGU app in minutes this time. At this point, even if there is already a great version of something you want you can make something custom for yourself on a whim.

This was an experiment in vibe coding, doing this entirely from my phone while I game or while I walk by the river. You can see the Github Repo and all the commits Claude made here, https://github.com/unr/MHGU-autopilot

You can try it for yourself at https://mhgu-autopilot.vercel.app/ -- all data is stored in your browser locally. No cost to use.

I've built this extremely useful, hyper specific tool, hosted it for free, and opening it up to other players to provide me feedback. As a seasoned developer whose self worth is lines of code shipped to production, vibing a full product from idea to production in a matter of hours is an incredible experience.