Nonoji

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  Main page

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  A nonogram

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  Finished nonogram

Japanese nonograms have been a long-time hobby of mine. I’ve always loved how an image slowly emerges from an empty grid and a handful of numbers. It’s almost meditative — you focus, dive into the logic, and step by step, cell by cell, a picture is born. I’ve tried tons of apps, solved puzzles on paper, and yet each time it feels fresh and engaging in a new way.

When I saw the One-Shot Competition — where the goal is to create an app in a single prompt — I didn’t have to think twice. Of course, nonograms. It was the perfect fit: clear logic, static data, no need for live generation, but plenty of room for nuance. I was curious: could I not only generate an app, but make it so well-crafted and detailed that I’d genuinely enjoy using it myself?

It turned out to be much harder than I expected. The prompt had to be more than technically correct — it had to anticipate everything: from folder structure in Next.js to hydration errors, from supporting output: 'export' to safely working with localStorage. I rewrote it, refined the wording, removed ambiguity. “One prompt” in theory — but in practice, it took multiple tries to get it just right. And that’s what made it so exciting: it felt like I was solving a nonogram of my own — just in the form of text, for an AI.

I wanted the app to be exactly what I would love to use myself. Minimalist. Clean grid. Light and dark theme support. Animations that feel smooth but not distracting. Hints that work intuitively. And if you solve a row or column correctly, the rest of the empty cells automatically get crossed out — a tiny detail that makes the experience so much more satisfying.

Did I manage to pull it off in a single prompt? Did I build something worth coming back to?

You decide — check it out here: 👉 link

Built With

• next.js
• react
• tailwind
• typescript