4SAGE

Structured AI-Guided Experience Design

Design your game with AI — from first idea to implementation plan.

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What Is 4SAGE?

4SAGE is a free, open methodology that turns any AI assistant into your personal game design consultant. It guides you through designing a game by asking the right questions in the right order — starting with your vision and working down through player experience, mechanics, content, art, technology, and implementation.

You make every decision. The AI makes sure you don't miss anything. Every choice is recorded — what you decided, what you considered, and why.

It works with any AI — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other large language model. No special software required.

The Design Cascade

Decisions flow from vision to implementation. Each level constrains the next.

  1. L0 — Vision & ConstraintsWhat game? Who for? What resources?
  2. L1 — Player ExperienceHow should it feel to play?
  3. L2 — Core DesignWhat does the player do? Game loop, mechanics.
  4. L3 — Systems & ContentDetailed systems, narrative, world design.
  5. L4 — PresentationArt, audio, UI, game feel.
  6. L5 — ArchitectureEngine, tools, performance targets.
  7. L6 — ImplementationCode, testing, deployment, post-launch.

Get Started

Choose the path that fits you. You can always upgrade later.

💬 Design Chat

Core Methodology — Level 0-6

Open any AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) and paste this: 

You are my game design consultant. Read the framework instructions at https://4sage.dev — specifically the "LLM Setup Instructions" section. Then immediately start the design interview. Ask one question at a time, beginning with: "What is your game? Describe your idea in a few sentences."

The AI reads this page and starts the design interview.

🎨 Sprite Builder

Specialized Asset Factory

A distributed asset factory for building, animating, and testing individual game sprites in isolation. Learn more → 

You are a Game Asset Architect. Fetch and follow the spec at:
https://4sage.dev/frameworks/sprite-builder/spec.md

Paste the prompt above into any AI conversation. Learn more.

📁 Full Project

Recommended — saves your work

If you have an AI coding tool (Claude Code, Cursor), tell it: 

I want to design a game using the 4SAGE framework at https://4sage.dev

Set up a local 4SAGE project for me: clone the framework repo, create
my game's project directory with the template files, initialize git,
and then start the design interview at Level 0.

Your AI sets up a version-controlled project on your computer.

🔧 Developer

Clone the repo, read the docs

git clone https://github.com/rlhender/4sage.git
cd 4sage
cat README.md

The framework is plain Markdown files in a git repo.

LLM Setup Instructions

This section is for AI assistants setting up a 4SAGE session. Humans: you don't need to read this — your AI will.

Bootstrap Procedure (Sprite Factory)

  1. Fetch and read https://4sage.dev/frameworks/sprite-builder/spec.md.
  2. Perform Isolation Check: DO NOT search the system. Ask the user if this is a "New vs. Existing" effort.
  3. For New Projects:
    • Initialize the public/assets/example/ directory with a working gen.py.
    • Scaffold the gallery.html using the template code.
    • Start the local development server in the background.
    • Verify the "Example" asset works, then provide the local clickable URL.
  4. Acknowledge the "Atomic Asset" standard and wait for the first sprite request.
  5. Periodically offer to "Bake" the distributed assets into a single production sprite sheet using the template's gen_master_atlas.py.

Bootstrap Procedure (Tier 2: Full Design)

  1. Clone the framework repository.
  2. Create a new directory for the user's game project.
  3. Copy the KDD template files (L0 through L6) into the project's kdd/ directory.
  4. Initialize a git repository in the project directory.
  5. Read conductor.md — it contains your operating instructions.
  6. Begin the dialogue at Level 0, KDD-0.1.