The seed you can't eat
The partners call Severo flat, and the diagnosis lands in two layers: users are too lazy to pick exercises (a tutor's whole job is proposing), and the LLM underneath is so deterministic it never varies them on its own, the same way it always tells the same joke and picks the same five numbers between 1 and 100. The fix is 'deslimitarlo': unpack the condensed prompt into visible game modes, Gartic Phone style. Meanwhile the Gemini Flash Lite bill for all of Severo's users arrives: 375 Colombian pesos.
// trace: where this idea came from
- ↳ video diary @ 8:46 (la semilla que no se puede comer)
- ↳ video diary @ 26:41 (la factura: 375 pesos)
- ↳ Entry 201-3: The tutor that repeats itself (el síntoma que esta reunión diagnostica)
The daily three-partner meeting turns into a Severo review, and the verdict is blunt: the app feels flat ▸ 3:18, and he agrees a hundred percent ▸ 3:21. The first insight is about users: people are lazy about choosing exercises ▸ 4:21. When he was learning Portuguese he never once told Julia what today’s lesson would be; the tutor proposes, always ▸ 4:31.
The second insight explains the stuck tutor at the mechanism level. The prompt lists plenty of exercise types, but LLMs are deterministic in practice: ask for a joke, get the same joke ▸ 5:24; ask for a number between 1 and 100 and the same five numbers come back forever ▸ 6:21. So Severo, offered options, picks the most probable one every time and never innovates an exercise ▸ 6:39, and the emotion faces he drew never appear at all ▸ 7:25, except excitement-with-stars on every first exercise ▸ 7:46. His fix is to stop trusting probability and write rules: three mistakes triggers this face, three perfect answers that one ▸ 8:00.
lo condensado no alimenta hasta que explota →
The metaphor he coins deserves keeping: a minimalist prompt with everything condensed inside is a seed, and you can’t eat a seed ▸ 8:46; the job is to “deslimitarlo” and make it explode into the interface ▸ 8:57. So game modes become a visible carousel, the way Gartic Phone puts its fifteen game types in your face while plain Gartic hides one ▸ 10:35, each opening a floating card ▸ 20:34, and Julia’s hated language menu shrinks to a Duolingo-style flag ▸ 9:25. The video’s title fact closes the books: with real users on it, Severo’s entire Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite API bill reads 375 Colombian pesos ▸ 26:41, a tenth of a dollar for a running product…