Workshop · W11

Vibe Coding: Make Your Own Interactive Story with AI

  • Wednesday, October 14, 2026 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
  • Wednesday, November 25, 2026 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

North York Central Library · 5120 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON M2N 5N9

Moderator: Ryan Kelln, Innovator in Residence, Applied AI

Write a story where the reader decides what happens.

Use an AI coding assistant to build a branching adventure, a mystery, or a small game. You design the branches, describe the rules in plain language, test the tricky edge cases (what if the player picks the weird option?), and end up with one file you can share with anyone. Bring a story you want to tell.

Where next? Keep working on my story · Start a new story · Build something else · Hand this to my AI

Get started vibe coding

Vibe coding means describing what you want in plain language and letting an AI write the code. You do not need to know how to program. You do need to look at what it made, try it, and say what is wrong.

  1. Pick an AI chat. Claude, Gemini (including Google AI Studio), ChatGPT and Mistral all have free versions with daily limits. Use one in your web browser. A free account is fine, and so is a temporary email address made for this.
  2. Ask for one small thing. “Make a one-page story where the reader picks between two doors” is a good first request. Ask for the whole file back and save it with a name you will recognise.
  3. Open it and try it. Double-click the saved file and it opens in your browser. Try the weird option. Try every ending.
  4. Change one thing at a time. Keep a dated copy before each change, so a change that breaks the story costs you nothing.
  5. Have it checked twice. The AI that wrote the file should not be the only one that checks it. Open a new chat, give it the file, and ask it to read it like a careful reader and find choices that lead nowhere.

The Vibe coding at home card has the same steps on one page. Keep real names, addresses and your own life out of the story and the chat. If the AI says your story is great, that only means it works. A person can tell you if it is good.

Make an interactive story

You can build a branching story two ways, and the workshop used both.

With Twine. Twine is a free tool where each scene is a box and each choice is an arrow. It is the clearest picture of branching there is, and it publishes your story as one web page that works offline. Start with Twine and the Twine Cookbook. You can also ask an AI to write the story for Twine: ask it for a Twine 2 archive file, then use Library, Import.

With your own engine. Ask an AI to write the whole story as a single HTML file: the scenes, the choices and the rules in plain language. There is nothing to install, and you can read it top to bottom. It is the most flexible route, because you can describe any rule you can think of, such as “if the player lied earlier, she remembers”.

Whichever you pick, three habits make the story better:

  • Short scenes. 40 to 120 words, one concrete image, and every scene ends on a decision.
  • Choices are actions. “Knock on the glass”, not “Knock and find out she is lying”.
  • Test the odd option. Ask the AI what happens if the player does something strange, and play it straight inside the world.

The writing guide is the one the workshop gave the AI. Paste it into a chat before you ask for scene text.

Try the Lighthouse. This prompt turns an AI chat into the game master of a short story about a dark lighthouse and a boat still out at sea. Paste all of it as the first message of a new chat and play. Then read it again as a recipe: a place, a problem, three people who each want something, a pressure and a tone.

Build a world

An AI cannot hold a world you never wrote. Left alone it invents, drifts and forgets. Short notes fix the parts you care about, and they are where your voice lives.

Start with five lines: where it happens, who you are, what is wrong, what is at stake, and what you can do about it. If your story has people in it, add what each one wants and what each one would never say. Do not ask the AI to write your world, because its version will be smooth and generic. Ask it to interview you, one question at a time, and write the answers down in your own words.

The Build a world card has the full sheet, the interview prompt and The Flip, a ten-minute game for three or more people. No AI at home? Everything on the card works on paper.

More to explore is in the list below. Books link to the Toronto Public Library catalogue, so you can borrow or place a hold.

More world-building resources

Free guides

Free tools in your browser

A game to play with friends

Books at the Toronto Public Library

Keep working on your story

You took home a zip file. Unzip it into a folder you will find again. Double-click index.html in the story folder to play. Then:

  • Made with the engine (one HTML file): give the file to an AI chat and ask for one change.
  • Made with Twine: give the AI twine-import.html from the story folder (the playable file is too big to paste). Then open Twine, go to Library, Import, then Build, Play.
  • No AI at home? Everything works on paper. Number your scenes and draw arrows between them.

Hand this to your AI

A coding assistant works much better with a short brief than with a blank page. AGENTS.md is a starter brief for continuing your story: how to help a beginner, what a good branching story looks like, how to check it, and what to keep out of it. Put it in your story folder, with the writing guide, and assistants that read an AGENTS.md file will find it on their own. In a web chat, paste it as your first message.

Edit it. When the AI does something you did not want, add one line to the Lessons list at the bottom, and it will not do it again.

If you only have a web chat, paste this first:

I am continuing an interactive story I started at a library workshop. Ask me one question at a time. Keep replies short. Change one thing at a time and give me the whole file back. Do not invent anything I have not told you. Before you finish, check that every scene can be reached and every path ends.

Other things to vibe code

An interactive story is a good first project because the pieces are small and you can tell if it works. The same method, describing it, trying it, changing one thing, works for a lot more. Each idea below has a prompt to start from. Use any free AI chat: Claude, Gemini or Google AI Studio, ChatGPT or Mistral.

  • A small tool for a real problem. “Make a one-page web app for tracking my library books and due dates. Keep it in one file and keep my data on my computer.”
  • A game. “Make a quiz game about the history of my neighbourhood, with ten questions, a score and a final message. One file, no internet needed.”
  • A personal page. “Make a one-page website about my hobby, with a photo area, a short bio and a list of links. Plain and readable.”
  • A picture from data. “Here is a list of what I spent last month by category. Make a chart I can open in a browser, and explain what it shows.”
  • Something for your community. “A person new to Toronto wants to find free things to do near them. Make a simple page that lists them and lets you filter by day.”

Whatever you build: ask for one change at a time, test it like a stranger would, keep dated copies, and keep your own personal details out of it. Do not publish anything you do not understand.

The residency has more:

Licence

The take-home cards, the Lighthouse prompt, the writing guide and the example story “The Ask” are by Ryan Kelln and licensed CC BY-NC 4.0: share and adapt them for non-commercial use, credit Ryan, and say what you changed. The Twine version of the story contains the Harlowe story format, which keeps its own MIT licence. The full notice is in the downloads.

Keep reading

  • Twine twinery.org

    Free tool for branching stories. Its story map shows the branches as boxes and arrows, and it publishes to one web page.

  • The Twine Cookbook twinery.org

    Short recipes for the things stories need, such as remembering a choice or keeping an inventory.

  • Google AI Studio Google

    A free way to ask an AI to write and change your story file, in the browser.

  • In This World Ben Robbins

    A short game for building a world with friends. The workshop's ten-minute Flip is a cut-down version.

  • Microscope Ben Robbins

    A game of building a long history together. Its rule that nobody contradicts what is already said is worth stealing for any group.

  • Dungeon World, free rules Dungeon World SRD

    Its game-master chapters are the clearest short guide to making a setting together at the table.

What you can take home

Sessions