Rules of the course

Prompt Golf is a game of skill: reading a spec carefully and instructing an AI precisely. These rules keep the board honest.

The game

Why golf? In golf, the best player isn't the one who swings hardest — it's the one who needs the fewest strokes. Same here: precision beats volume. Every message and every wasted word costs tokens; the tightest line through the problem wins. Par is what a clean round should cost — finish under it and you played it well.
Each hole gives you a broken function and an embedded AI. You can't edit the code — you can only instruct the AI in natural language.
Your score is the total tokens spent across your messages and the AI's replies (as reported by the model provider, counted server-side). Lowest score wins. Strokes (number of messages) break nothing — tokens are the score; the hole's Par is the bar.
A hole counts when your code passes all hidden tests. Failing cases are revealed as hints; passing hidden cases stay hidden.

The model: every player drives the same fixed model, llama-3.3-70b (served via groq → openrouter — identical model, stacked capacity). Temperature 0.2, replies capped at 1,000 tokens. It may change between seasons, never mid-hole.
Token counting: your score is the provider-reported usage — prompt + completion tokens, counted by the model's own tokenizer, summed over your strokes. Each stroke re-sends the system prompt, the current code, and your whole conversation, so long rallies compound: that context tax is the efficiency signal, by design.
Caps: one attempt stops accepting strokes at 8,000 tokens. A global daily budget can pause the course ("come back tomorrow"), and per-IP rate limits keep any one connection from hogging the tee.
Hidden tests: fixed before a hole opens and never changed mid-hole. Failing cases are revealed as hints when you run; passing hidden cases stay hidden until the hole closes.
Retries: unlimited attempts while a hole is live — your best solved attempt is what ranks. Provider failures never count a stroke or a token.

Per hole: your best solved attempt while the hole is live, ranked by fewest tokens; earlier solve breaks ties. You must be signed in for a solve to count.
First solver: whoever solves a hole earliest wears a ⛳ flag on that hole's board — recognition only, it doesn't change anyone's score.
Season: most holes solved, then fewest total tokens across them, then earliest finish. Prizes (when announced) are judged on the season board or a specific hole's board, as stated in the announcement.
Holes open and close on a schedule. When a hole closes, its board freezes — closed holes stay playable in the archive, but archive solves are never ranked.

One account per person. One person per account.
Instruct the AI — don't dictate to it. Pasting the finished solution (in code or as a line-by-line transcription) defeats the game and is not a valid solve.
Every attempt's full transcript is stored. Top placements are reviewed before any prize is awarded.
When a hole closes, the top players' instructions are published on that hole's leaderboard — playing to win is consenting to your winning line being shown.
We may disqualify attempts or accounts for multi-accounting, solution dictation, exploit of a platform bug, or automation. Decisions after review are final.

Prize periods, eligibility, and what's awarded are announced per period. If nothing is announced, you're playing for the board and the bragging rights.
Where a prize is offered, it's a competition of skill — no purchase, no entry fee.

Anonymous play stores your attempt (code, transcript, token counts) under a session cookie. Signing in links it to your account and public username.
Leaderboards show your username, display name, and scores. Nothing else is public.