Introducing Copilot Fun Mode - Play Games While Your AI Codes 🎮

This is a submission for the GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge

What I Built

Using TUI tools is great, but we often tend to switch back to the browser when we finish our prompt. Most of the time it's awesome to watch your virtual brain thinking and doing stuff, managing multiple agent sessions, approving tool calls. But sometimes, you just want to VibeCode.

I decided to create a wrapper around GitHub Copilot CLI, called Copilot Fun Mode. It's a cross-platform TUI multiplexer that hosts a Copilot session in one "window" and a suite of terminal games in another.

Key Features

• Seamless Multiplexing: Toggle between the AI and games instantly with Ctrl-G.
• Auto-Switch Mode: Press Ctrl-S to automatically flip to a game when the AI starts working autonomously, and flip back to Copilot the second it needs your input.
• Game State Preservation: Pause a game, jump back to refactor your code, and resume exactly where you left off.
• WASM & JS Games: Includes 10 games compiled from C to WebAssembly, plus 3 built-in JS classics.
• Extensible: Add your own games as simple Node.js scripts.

The Game Library

Demo

• GitHub Repository: sirluky/copilot-fun
• Detailed Game Guides: GAMES.md

Quick Start

npx copilot-fun

My Experience with GitHub Copilot CLI

This project was completely coded using Copilot CLI. I used it for everything: from architecting the PTY multiplexer logic to writing a C-to-WASM ncurses shim. It was a meta-experience: using an AI to build a tool that makes using that AI more fun.

I really liked the interactive options. They provide a list of ways to proceed without needing to write them out manually.

In cases where I don't really care about how something is achieved, YOLO mode is particularly interesting to me. In this mode, Copilot doesn't check permissions and only asks about those interactive options. It's like a coworker you've lent your PC to and just trust. You just have to be careful not to tell them "please delete my PC".

I also enjoy having options of different LLMs, mostly Opus 4.6 blew my mind, it helped me solve difficult PTY terminal stuff. This is something I really appreciate in comparison to other tools.

The Virtual Terminal Breakthrough

The hardest part was switching screens without losing state. I couldn't use standard ANSI "alternate screen" codes because Copilot CLI uses them itself.

Guided by Copilot's suggestions, I implemented an in-process multiplexer using xterm/headless. Instead of just piping output, I maintain virtual terminal buffers for both the AI and the games. When you switch screens, the wrapper serializes the inactive screen's buffer into ANSI sequences and replays it — making the transition pixel-perfect and preserving every bit of scrollback and history.

The WASM & JS Game Engine

I wanted a wide variety of games without requiring users to have a C compiler. I compiled nbsdgames to WebAssembly. This required writing wasm/curses.h — a shim that maps ncurses functions to raw ANSI escape codes.

For simpler games, I implemented a JS Game Engine. The wrapper can launch any single-file Node.js script. You can even add your own by dropping a file into ~/.copilot-fun/games/:

// @game.id my-game
// @game.name My Custom Game
// @game.controls W/S to move

// Use process.env.LINES/COLS and raw ANSI to draw!

Hooking into the AI's Brain

To show the status bar (e.g., ⟳ AI working), I used Copilot Hooks. Since there isn't much public info on hook timing, I asked Copilot CLI to help me write a debug logger.

I discovered that preToolUse and postToolUse have specific patterns when permissions are required. By tracking these, I could drive the Auto-Switch feature, ensuring you never miss a prompt while you're busy setting a high score in 2048.

What I Learned

1. ANSI nesting is hard: You can't safely wrap a program that uses mouse tracking or alt-buffers (like Copilot does) without a full terminal emulator state machine.
2. PTY nuances: PTYs send \r (13), but most C games expect \n (10). A single byte translation 13 → 10 in the input pipe fixed every game.
3. Focus Reporting Noise: Copilot CLI enables focus reporting (\x1b[?1004h), which produces ESC[I and ESC[O events that clutter the input stream. I had to learn how to filter these to keep games responsive.
4. WASM is viable for TUI: You can run complex C applications in the terminal via WASM with zero native dependencies if you provide a thin enough shim.

Conclusion

Building Copilot Fun Mode showed me how powerful Copilot CLI is for exploring "uncharted territory", it's like bridging 90s ncurses games with modern WebAssembly and Node.js PTYs. It transformed my "code-switch-wait" loop into a "code-play-vibe" loop.
If you like this project, please consider visiting the GitHub repository and giving it a ⭐!