Coding · Snake-Lab AI Camp

Meet the cleverest creature. Then learn to rule it.

The snake is just the beginning. The cleverest things on earth today are machines, games, and AI — and they get cleverer every year. Snake-Lab is where kids learn to understand them, command them, and out-think them.

“Now the snake was the most clever of all the wild animals the Lord God had made.”

Genesis 3:1a

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Think through coding.

Coding is the tool, not the goal

The real subject here is thinking: how to break a problem down, weigh trade-offs, and decide. Code is just how kids make their thinking run.

So we start by looking the clever creature in the eye — and seeing what it really is.

L1 · Part 2 · Lecture

What IS the snake?

⏱ 15 min

Snake.js

constructor(startX, startY, length) {
  this.body = [];
  for (let i = 0; i < length; i++) {
    this.body.push({ x: startX - i, y: startY });
  }
  this.direction = 'RIGHT';
}

In plain English

body is a list.
Each item is a cell — an {x, y}.
body[0] is the HEAD.
The rest of the list is the body.

💡A “snake” is just a list of {x, y} cells. No creature — only data.

🐍 Snake Lab · Code CampL1

Play it now

The games behind the camp — play right in your browser, then work your way up to writing bots that play for you.

🐍 Just play

Classic Snake

The original — eat, grow, don’t crash. See how the game really works.

🤖 Code a bot

The Challenge

Climb a ladder of rival bots: play by hand, then write a bot that plays for you.

⚔️ Compete

The Arena

Live multiplayer — go head-to-head with friends in a shared snake battle.

🧠 Program bots

The Coder

Write a bot’s brain in code and watch it battle other players’ bots, live.

Classic Snake and the Challenge run instantly. The live Arena and Coder are multiplayer servers — they can take ~30 seconds to wake up on the first visit.

Three honest AI threads

Three sentences every kid can finish by Friday.

Build with AI

Use Claude or ChatGPT as a coding partner the way engineers do: show it everything, then ask the right question.

“I asked an AI for help. It worked.”

Think like AI

Tune a bot’s weights by hand and feel what training is. You are the gradient.

“A strategy is just numbers I can tune.”

Watch AI learn

Watch a learning bot go from crashing into walls to eating on purpose — live.

“A bot can do my tuning by itself.”

The camp, day by day

Two lessons a day, no filler — three days that take kids from “the snake is just data” to “I trained a bot to play for me.”

Day 1 · Foundations

The snake is data, code is a map
Two computers talk — and the bot’s brain

Day 2 · Bots + AI

Hello, AI — meet your coding partner
Strategy — tune the bot by hand

Day 3 · Learn + Compete

The bot tunes itself (machine learning)
Tournament + parents demo

Bonus · Family Saturday

Parents welcome — King-snake and Fog-of-war play, and kids demo their bots. (~3 hours)

Take-home

A self-paced 10-level bot ladder — Random Randy to Grandmaster — plus an earned Secret Lesson on out-thinking the champion.

Sit in on the lessons

Real slides from the camp deck — bright lectures and the dark “learns by itself” lesson. Swipe, tap the arrows, or use your ← → keys.

L2 · Part 2 · Lecture

The phone call

⏱ 15 min

Client → Server

📱iPad

💻 THE SERVERthe truth lives here

Your iPad is a CLIENT. One laptop is the SERVER. Everyone connects to the same server — and the server is the truth.

Watch it live — the server log

terminal

[room cosmic-viper]
  +p1 Curly   #4ade80  (1/8)
  +p2 Wiggles #fbbf24  (2/8)

👀Each kid who joins shows up here, live.

🐍 Snake Lab · Code CampL2

L3 · Part 5 · Hands-on

Your first AI conversation

⏱ 15 min

🤖 Your turn

Open Claude / ChatGPT. Ask it to write a bot that does something SILLY.

Try one of these

“A bot that tries to spell my name with its body”
“A bot that runs AWAY from food”
“A bot that only ever turns left”

💡The AI is the partner — but YOU are the boss. You decide what it does; you debug what it actually does.

🐍 Snake Lab · Code CampL3

L4 · Part 1 · Play

The Tunable bot — 4 knobs

⏱ 10 min

tunable.js

const W_FOOD     = 1.0;
const W_SAFETY   = 5.0;
const W_BLOCKING = 0.0;
const W_OPEN     = 0.5;

Don’t change anything yet

Click the Tunable sample, create a room, and just play. The bot is competent — it survives and eats. The four weights at the top are its whole personality.

💡Four numbers decide everything this bot does. Next: how.

🐍 Snake Lab · Code CampL4

L4 · Part 3 · Hands-on

Tune your bot

⏱ 25 min

Open “Edit bot” and try these

Reckless eaterW_FOOD=5, W_SAFETY=1
CowardW_FOOD=1, W_SAFETY=10
BullyW_BLOCKING=5
ExplorerW_OPEN=5, W_FOOD=0.1

After each change, WATCH:

How long did it survive?
How many foods?
Longest length?

💡Change → run → observe → change again. Force 30 seconds of watching between tweaks!

🐍 Snake Lab · Code CampL4

L4 · Part 5 · The reveal

You are the gradient

⏱ 10 min

“What you just did — try numbers, watch what happens, pick better numbers, run again — has a name. It’s how MACHINE LEARNING works. The math version adjusts millions of numbers, but the loop is exactly the same.”

You are the gradient.

After lunch: a bot that does this loop by itself.

🐍 Snake Lab · Code CampL4

Lesson 5 · Day 3 AM · v3 Coder

The Bot Learns by Itself

BIG IDEA Yesterday you tuned weights by hand. Today we hand the tuning to the bot itself. It plays a game, dies, plays again — and gets a little better every round. That’s reinforcement learning.

What you’ll learn

The Learning bot keeps a Q-table: for each situation, how good is each move?
After every move it updates the table from a reward
It explores first (random), then exploits what it learned

The parts

1Watch it be BAD10m
2The Q-table20m
3Explore vs Exploit10m

🐍 Snake Lab · Code CampL5

L5 · Part 2 · Lecture

The Q-table — the bot’s notebook

⏱ 20 min

Per SITUATION it has seen: 4 numbers — one for each direction.

qTable

situation "1,0|2"   →
   UP:   2.1   DOWN: -4.0
   LEFT: 0.3   RIGHT: 8.7  ← best

// "1,0" food right · "|2" danger left

After every move

+10

ate food

−50

died

Mark the move that led here as good (or bad). Next time in a similar spot, it remembers.

💡See → pick → move → see what happened → update the notebook → repeat. Yesterday YOU were this loop.

🐍 Snake Lab · Code CampL5

The part most camps can’t teach

Real game theory: three strategies that beat each other in a rock-paper-scissors loop, so there’s no single best bot. Kids meet reward hacking and AI safety the way researchers do — and learn that when no single strategy always wins, you stop following one recipe and start reasoning about the matchup.

When there’s no perfect move, kids learn to think — not just follow rules.

Clear all ten home levels and an advanced session unlocks — four ideas that turn “I can’t out-survive this bot” into “I’ll out-think it.”

🔒

THE SECRET LESSON

How to beat a bot you can’t out-survive

Earned by clearing Level 10 · an advanced session beyond the camp

1Reward hacking 2Honest play 3Rock-paper-scissors 4Rules make the game

Reward hacking — win by exploiting the rule you were given.
Honest competence — out-play, or counter-pick when you can’t.
Rock-paper-scissors — no single best bot, only a cycle.
Rules make the game — the rule-writer chooses which strategy wins.

Keep climbing at home

A self-paced bot ladder of ten named opponents, from Random Randy to the Grandmaster — plus two expert bots, Achilles and Apex, waiting for kids ready to write a smarter bot.

🏆 Keep going after camp

🏆 Homework Challenge

A 10-bot ladder (Random Randy → Grandmaster), self-paced on your own device. Play by hand early; code your way up. Level 8 is the wall where reflexes stop and you must code.

🎓 Secret Lesson

Earned by clearing Level 10. How to beat a bot you can’t out-survive: find the one mistake it always makes — then let a computer search for the win. You’ll have trained an AI to beat another AI.

🎮Play at home — Challenge ladder runs in any browser · the Arena & Coder live online

For ages 9+.
In-person and remote; schedule varies.
We’re a non-profit — tuition covers cost only.
iPad-friendly; a ‘play + lecture’ format.
Scripture quietly unlocks as kids climb the ladder.

“Rule over the fish in the sea and over the birds in the sky. Rule over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Genesis 1:28b

We don’t fear the clever creature. We learn to rule it.

The snake was the cleverest creature in the garden. Today the cleverest things are machines, games, and AI — and they keep getting cleverer. The camp’s whole arc is one calling, made real: YOU are the boss. You are the gradient. The rule-writer chooses which strategy wins.