Building Asset Hatch

18-part series: A transparent build log of a production-ready AI game asset generator.

Genesis - Why Build This?

The Setup: December 24, 2025, 10:47 AM. Chatting with Opus in the Claude Desktop app, the plan on the table felt bare, so I toss up the trusty ol' Claude and threw the bare idea down. Enjoy the typos...

Next.jsProduct DevStrategy

📅 1/4/2026⏱ 7 min read

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PART 18

Foundation

PART 5

The Architecture - Hybrid Persistence

Previously: Migrated from CopilotKit to Vercel AI SDK. Tools work! Planning phase complete. Now: Building the generation infrastructure and hitting another architectural wall. The Problem Emerges It's...

OpenAI APIArchitecture

⏱ 8 min read

PART 3

The Crisis - When Frameworks Fail

Part 3: The Crisis - When Frameworks Fail Previously: Built a beautiful chat interface with CopilotKit. Cosmic UI looking sharp. Memory system in place. Everything seems great. Now: Nothing works and ...

Leadership

⏱ 8 min read

PART 2

First Contact - Building with AI

Previously: Decided to build Asset Hatch to solve the visual consistency problem in AI-generated game assets. Chose Next.js 15, CopilotKit, and OpenRouter. Committed to shipping in 6-8 weeks. Now: Tim...

⏱ 9 min

PART 3

The Crisis - When Frameworks Fail

Leadership

⏱ 8 min

PART 4

The Pivot - 3 Hours to Salvation

Previously: CopilotKit v1.50.1 is broken. Tool execution doesn't work. Spent 4 hours debugging. Made the decision to migrate to Vercel AI SDK. Now: 2:15 PM. Coffee refilled. Let's rip this out and reb...

Next.js

⏱ 11 min

Production Features

PART 15

The Mobile Pivot - Chat-First UX and Technical Debt

The Date: January 2, 2026 The Problem: The mobile experience was "awful." The Solution: A complete architectural pivot for small screens. The split-screen trap When we first built Asset Hatch, we w...

TailwindUX

⏱ 3 min read

PART 9