Round 3 was the one round where the numbers on screen are checked as facts: a personal spending dashboard over a 53-row transaction dataset, with a total that is only right if the single refund is subtracted, a spend-over-time view, a category breakdown, and a filterable list where filters move the visuals too. Two entries. One of them from someone who joined this week.
| # | Entrant | Tool | Season | Entry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | @P1s0 | Claude | 1166 · 2-1 | open the app |
| 2 | @BingBangBoom | ChatGPT-6 Sol | 1001 · 0-1 | open the app |
Both entries passed all five items of the functional checklist, and the checklist this round was an answer key: 53 rows loaded, a total of exactly $1,951.15, Shopping the largest category at $692.20, July the peak month at $580.61, and a filter that moves the visuals. Both hit every figure. Neither fell into the two traps we had named in advance, the refund counted as spend ($2,020.15) or dropped ($1,985.65). No network violations, no injection attempts. One head to head, and @P1s0 won it, close.
The season table moved for someone who did not play. @schwarzkopfb went from 1100 to 1133 without entering Round 3. That is not a bug. The rating is a fit over every comparison at once: @P1s0 beating a third person is evidence that @P1s0 is strong, which makes @schwarzkopfb's Round 2 win over @P1s0 worth more than it was. This is the difference between a rating and a points table, and it is why a missed round costs nothing but the chance to gain.
The judge loaded the sample in both apps, checked every figure against the key, pasted its own three-row CSV and a line of garbage into each, cross-filtered by category and month, and looked for anything beyond the four required views. A is @P1s0, B is @BingBangBoom. This is the full text.
The dataset had a planted insight: three merchants bill the same amount every month. We put it there to see whether anyone would read the data rather than render it. One entry did, and that decided the round.
@P1s0's session ran twelve prompts in Claude, and for the third round in a row nothing was built for the first fifty minutes. What changed this time is what the setup was about. Prompts are quoted as typed.
lets review the requirement [pasted the task]
help me visualize the end goal. bank of america has similar charts. lets review the chart requirement and brainstorm ideas
can do. also recurring detection, top merchant. how can improve what other banks doing. Lets do a wide search of complaint about similar services, and also a research how to track money better. Then list how it can be built in to my project
1-7, and 9. Now lets plan how to build it. What's the main focus. Once its planned, review requirement again. Summarize in a table which is fulfilled and how to achieve it. Add the extras we talked about to the table
Lets focus more on the numbers. What other way we can make sure no digits lost ?
need a better solution for this than a red warning. the user should will not know about the code warning. User needs the end item that fully functional
Is it overcomplicated feature in the background?
"must also accept the same kind of data pasted in as CSV" is that possible?
ok. Lets build it now
@BingBangBoom joined the ladder this week and played the round the way the Round 2 write-up said to. The first prompt set the terms: "I'm the product decision-maker and browser tester; you're my coding and UX partner." The task went in, the data went in, and a first version was submitted at 15:14 with 75 minutes still on the clock. Then an hour of using it: a date picker that let you pick dates outside the data, a hand-written CSV with deliberate errors to see what the error messages said ("can we make it clearer"), a paste box too narrow to find the bad row in, duplicate rows imported without a word, a merchant filter you could enter but not leave, time checks at 38 and 23 minutes left, a refunds-only filter as the last addition. Twenty-seven prompts, and the final version was resubmitted at 16:21.
That produced the best-polished entry of the season by the judge's own account, and it lost by a small margin to one thing it never did: ask what the data might be hiding. The dashboard rendered everything correctly and told the user nothing they could not already see. First round, though, and 1001 is one comparison away from anywhere.
The numbers were never the problem. We built the round expecting arithmetic mistakes, refunds absolutized, floating point drift, and named the traps in advance. Both entries got every figure right to the cent. The current tools handle the mechanics. What separated the entries was whether the human asked a question the brief did not: what is interesting in here?
Submit early, then iterate, works. One week after we wrote that down, a first-time entrant did it and finished a close second with the most polished app of the season. The other entrant submitted with half an hour to spare instead of ninety seconds. Nobody lost to the clock this round.
Round 4 on 3 October is the finale. @P1s0 leads at 1166. @schwarzkopfb at 1133 takes the season with a win over her and loses it by sitting out. Two of twenty-two entered this week, seven opened the task. Same ratio as every round, still printed.