Understanding what happens under the hood makes you better at prompting, debugging, and reading your usage ledger. Here’s the rundown.

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An agent, not templates

When you send a prompt, Tesana doesn’t fill in a template or retrieve a pre-made game. It hands your request to a real AI agent — a large language model — that works on your project the way a human developer would:
  1. Reads your project. The agent re-reads your game’s code, scenes, and recent history to understand the current state. This is why context grows with your project — and why prompt caching matters so much for cost.
  2. Plans. For new games and big changes it drafts a plan first (Plan mode); for small edits it just gets to work.
  3. Writes real code. The agent writes and edits the game code, plus scenes, shaders, and configuration. This is genuine source code you can read in the built-in editor and export.
  4. Generates assets. The AI also makes all assets. Sprites, 3D models, textures, and sounds are generated to match your art direction (reference images steer this — see Image references).
  5. Tests and self-corrects. The agent runs the game, looks at errors, and fixes its own mistakes before handing the build back to you.

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Why builds take minutes

A build is a long agent session: dozens of read-think-write-test cycles, sometimes with sub-agents working on assets in parallel. A complete first build typically takes between 15 to 45 minutes; small edits are much faster. The progress feed in the chat panel shows what the agent is doing in real time.

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Plan turns vs build turns

Two kinds of turns show up in your chat:
  • Plan turns — the AI thinks and proposes; no game files change. Cheap.
  • Build turns — the AI actually modifies your game. This is where the real work (and the bulk of credit usage) happens. Each committed build becomes a version you can revert to.

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Built on a real game engine

Games run on Godot 4, a free, open-source game engine used by thousands of commercial games. Consequences you’ll appreciate later:
  • The code editor in the Studio shows the real project files.
  • Exports are standard builds — web, macOS, Windows — and the source export opens directly on each platform. Your game is never locked to Tesana. See Exports.
  • Anything the game engine can do is, in principle, buildable — 2D, 3D, physics, shaders, UI.

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What this means for you

  • Iterate in small steps. Agents excel at focused changes and struggle with “build my entire dream game in one prompt” — exactly like human developers.
  • Specificity wins. The agent acts on what you say, not what you meant. See Prompting.
  • Cost tracks work. Long sessions on big projects process more tokens. The Usage page shows exactly what each prompt did.