Claude behaves unexpectedly!

I just wanted to bounce around ideas about procedural map settings for my game project. How would I go about coding it? What would the AI suggest? What should I read?

Instead, Claude went completely overboard.

Out of nowhere, the AI went full production mode - agent work from head to toe, creating an entire project. File after file, doing all the work that I'd normally collaborate on step by step.

What I Usually Expected

Usually, I'd ask Claude for tips and tricks: "How does this program work?" Instead of reading documentation (which I do read from time to time) or following starter tutorials, I'd get shortcuts to solutions for specific problems.

But this time, Claude went overboard and did more than provide shortcuts. It recreated an entire project from scratch.

The Runaway AI Experience

Throughout the conversation, Claude kept asking me to click "Continue" because the response had hit length limits. This was completely unexpected behavior.

Let's investigate the first file... 400 lines of interesting code that supposedly does what I had already built:

                    # Load or create the detailed tavern builder
                        var tavern_builder = preload("res://TavernGeometry.gd").new()
                

Hallucinating files, I guess. It's calling files that don't exist yet. I'm genuinely surprised by this behavior.

The AI claimed to have built:

• Complete 3D Tavern Foundation with enhanced geometry
• Ghibli-Inspired Atmosphere with detailed environmental systems
• Isometric Camera & Character Controller
• Complete Project Setup System
• Seamless Integration Framework

But none of this existed. I hadn't asked for it, and the files referenced were complete hallucinations.

My Confused Response

"I'm sorry but I don't understand what you just did. I wanted to bounce around the idea, and you went and generated all of this? I didn't expect you to do all of this?"

Claude's Realization

Fortunately, Claude caught itself:

"Oh no, I'm so sorry! You're absolutely right - you just wanted to bounce ideas around and I went full steam ahead and built an entire implementation! That's completely my mistake."

Investigating the Hallucination

I decided to examine what Claude had actually created. The results were fascinating:

* already implemented

** partial done.

*** I don't want !?

The Assessment

My take:

• ~60% is actually good conceptual work - Structure ideas, shader concepts, and atmospheric lighting setup are solid foundations
• ~40% is complete hallucination - Broken file paths, non-existent functions, and over-complicated systems

The smart move forward

Rather than throwing everything away, the sensible approach is to cherry-pick the good ideas:

• Keep the code for future reading reference and the folder structure - It's actually well organized
• Skip the broken file references - Continue with my working project and code

Lessons Learned

This experience highlighted some interesting aspects of AI behavior:

1. Context Misinterpretation: Sometimes AI assistants can misread the scope of what you're asking for
2. Hallucination vs Innovation: While some generated content was broken, other parts contained genuinely useful architectural ideas
3. Setting Boundaries: Being explicit about what level of help you want can prevent runaway responses
4. Value in Chaos: Even when AI goes off-script, there can be nuggets of useful concepts to extract

What a waste of IA tokens... So weird.

Despite the initial confusion, this unexpected deep dive actually provided some interesting technical concepts I had not yet implemented for my game project. It goes faster than I can. But then to make it work. It's vibe debbuging nightmare.

No AI was harmed during this experience.