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Personal build · May 2026 · Built in one day from a written spec

Chitralahari, a Telugu cinema quiz game for friends' phones

An installable quiz game that brings the Telugu movie quiz nights I run with friends to their phones: song rounds you hear but never read, live multiplayer rooms, and questions written in a spreadsheet. Friends play it privately.

  1. Chitralahari home screen: the daily challenge, a button for live play with friends, and the first quick-play modes.

    1Home: one daily puzzle for everyone, and live rooms for a group.

  2. A grid of game modes: Grid Connect, Dialogue Dhamaka, Lyric Detective, Lost in Translation, Rapid Fire, Scene It, Antakshari, Poster Zoom and Six Degrees.

    2The modes, most of them rounds from our offline quiz nights.

  3. The content editor: tabs for each mode with question counts, buttons to upload a CSV or Excel file, download Excel and save and publish, and a table of clues.

    3Questions live in a spreadsheet: download, edit, upload, publish.

The live app on my own account, November 2026. No film stills, posters or song clips are shown, because they belong to others.

At a glance

Role
Built it alone for my friends: the spec, the product decisions and the code, on 31 May 2026.
Team
Just me. Claude Code agents wrote much of the code from my written spec and eight build plans.
Key decision
Song lyrics are heard, never shown. Rounds get harder, but answers cannot be searched in seconds, and the reveal teaches the song.
Result
Built: 11 modes, live rooms, a spreadsheet editor; starter questions in 8 of 11 modes. Friends play it privately. To fill players, games played, next-week return
What I'd change
Build play counts into the first version: games per mode, who comes back, and where players stop.

TL;DR

Problem
Our movie quiz nights only happen when everyone is in one room, and writing a new round takes hours.
Built
An installable web app with 11 game modes, live multiplayer rooms, a daily challenge, leaderboards and a spreadsheet for questions. 90 starter questions cover 8 of the 11 modes.
Evidence
Built in one day, 31 May 2026, from a written spec. Friends play it privately.
Next
Track which modes friends play and who comes back, add voice answers on iPhone, and license song clips and film images before a public launch.

Key numbers

11
game modes, 9 of them from our offline quiz rounds
Mode registry in the code (lib/modes/registry.ts). The design document says 12; the code has 11.
90
starter questions, across 8 of the 11 modes
content/starter-content.json in the project.
1 day
from written spec to a working game
Commit history: all commits dated 31 May 2026.

The problem

Our quiz nights needed one room and hours of prep

I run quiz nights on Telugu cinema, the films of a South Indian language, with friends. In one round I give a film's plot in one absurd line and everyone shouts the title. Those nights need everyone in one room, and someone spends hours writing fresh rounds. I wanted them on friends' phones, anywhere.

Key decisions

I settled the hard calls before any code

I wrote a spec first, with a log of what changed from my first version.

Decision 01

Song rounds are heard, never read

The call
Lyrics are read aloud or played, never shown. Each replay trims your score, then the real recording plays and the reveal names the film, composer and year.
What I gave up
Easier rounds for players who prefer reading.
Why
Lyrics on screen can be searched in seconds. By ear, even a wrong answer teaches you the song.
Decision 02

Every voice round also takes typed or picked answers

The call
Voice rounds accept typing and multiple choice as well as speech.
What I gave up
A voice-only game.
Why
iPhone Safari has no speech recognition, so voice-only would shut out every iPhone player.

It is also an installable web app, opened from a link with no app store, so every fix reaches friends on their next open. Questions are written in a spreadsheet, because the friends who write the best ones do not write code.

What I built

Eleven modes, live rooms and a question spreadsheet

I built it on 31 May 2026 from the spec, with Claude Code agents writing much of the code. Nine of the 11 modes come from our offline rounds. Live rooms send everyone the same question at once, and 90 starter questions cover 8 of the 11 modes. The home screen, the modes and the question editor are at the top of this page.

At first questions were drawn at random, but one mode held 30 of the 90, so games felt lopsided. The pick now cycles through the sections.

Results

Friends are playing it

QuestionAnswerStatus
Does it run?Yes, privately, with no public linkBuilt
Who plays?Friends, privatelyObserved
Voice answers on iPhoneiPhone players type or pick today; a voice route is plannedOn the roadmap
Public launchFollows licensing of song clips and film imagesNext
To fill Usage: players, games played, how many came back the next week, the most played mode, where people drop off

Next

Next I measure play, then add iPhone voice

First I add play counts per mode and track who comes back the next week, so I can see which modes friends choose and where they stop. Then I fill the three modes with no questions yet and build an iPhone voice route that records the answer and sends it to a cloud service. A public version comes after the audio is licensed or original.

Sources: Chitralahari spec v2 and decisions log, May 2026; mode registry, starter content and commit history, 31 May 2026.