this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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Perchance - Create a Random Text Generator

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⚄︎ Perchance

This is a Lemmy Community for perchance.org, a platform for sharing and creating random text generators.

Feel free to ask for help, share your generators, and start friendly discussions at your leisure :)

This community is mainly for discussions between those who are building generators. For discussions about using generators, especially the popular AI ones, the community-led Casual Perchance forum is likely a more appropriate venue.

See this post for the Complete Guide to Posting Here on the Community!

Rules

1. Please follow the Lemmy.World instance rules.

2. Be kind and friendly.

  • Please be kind to others on this community (and also in general), and remember that for many people Perchance is their first experience with coding. We have members for whom English is not their first language, so please be take that into account too :)

3. Be thankful to those who try to help you.

  • If you ask a question and someone has made a effort to help you out, please remember to be thankful! Even if they don't manage to help you solve your problem - remember that they're spending time out of their day to try to help a stranger :)

4. Only post about stuff related to perchance.

  • Please only post about perchance related stuff like generators on it, bugs, and the site.

5. Refrain from requesting Prompts for the AI Tools.

  • We would like to ask to refrain from posting here needing help specifically with prompting/achieving certain results with the AI plugins (text-to-image-plugin and ai-text-plugin) e.g. "What is the good prompt for X?", "How to achieve X with Y generator?"
  • See Perchance AI FAQ for FAQ about the AI tools.
  • You can ask for help with prompting at the 'sister' community Casual Perchance, which is for more casual discussions.
  • We will still be helping/answering questions about the plugins as long as it is related to building generators with them.

6. Search through the Community Before Posting.

  • Please Search through the Community Posts here (and on Reddit) before posting to see if what you will post has similar post/already been posted.

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I just put together a Tutorial for those new to Perchance, on how to use the AI Helper to build their first generator — 10 minutes, no coding. If you build gens, I'd love your honest review. (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by daveed@lemmy.world to c/perchance@lemmy.world
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I've been building generators with the AI Helper for a couple of months now. Lately I've been getting a few questions that could easily be answered with a beginner's tutorial that takes you from zero to a working generator in about ten minutes. No coding needed.

Eleven steps, roughly ten minutes:

  • What Perchance is, and what a generator actually is
  • Meeting the AI Helper and how to talk to it
  • Finding your way around the editor
  • Your first prompt — hands-on, you build something real
  • Making it yours, adding a feature, saving and sharing
  • The 3 golden rules for prompting the Helper
  • Common mistakes and quick fixes, plus a quick-reference step to bookmark

It's interactive — each step has a "try it now" box, and your progress saves on your device, so you can work through it in bits. It's written for total beginners, so it's important that I get it right.

Here's where I need you. I've been staring at this thing too long to see my own blind spots, and I'd rather have the community sharpen it than leave it being just okay. If you build generators — experienced creators especially — I'd genuinely love your review. Specifically:

Is there anything a new builder NEEDS that I left out? Any step still too jargon-y for a true beginner? Anything wrong, outdated, or misleading? Does the order feel right to you? And if you're new and you work through it, tell me where it lost you — that's the review that matters most. You can comment here, or leave a note in the guestbook at the bottom of the tutorial.

I'm not pretending it's perfect — it's a first version. If you've got five minutes, I'd love your honest take, especially if you think a beginner would trip over something I missed.

The tutorial is here: https://perchance.org/ai-helper-tutorial

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[–] Hotstillnasty@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

i guess you mean this url??? https://perchance.org/ai-helper-tutorial

[–] daveed@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks! Missed that when I copy pasted.

[–] Einskjaldi@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This seems to be a empty page, did you intend the two dash on the end to be in the url?

[–] daveed@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Nope. Fixed.

[–] RandomHugs@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

It's a decent tutorial. I'm very inexperienced with coding and solely rely on AI Helper for my projects. I skimmed through it, hoping to find some secret prompts for the AI Helper, didn't find any. Still a good tutorial. I tried to think of something else to add that you didn't already cover, but I couldn't think of anything.

The only feedback I have, is that the guide pretty much repeats the perks of prompting correctly and splitting up the tasks. All good tips imo.

[Edit] Perhaps briefly go over the plugins, explain what they are, how they work, the differences between a plugin and a generator, and when a plugin might be useful.

[–] daveed@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't know about "secret" prompts for the AIH, but there are a lot of my own prompt examples in the Guides at https://perchance.org/my-gen-tracker#guides you might find somewhat useful.

[–] RandomHugs@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Nice work! I'm sure it'll be useful. I've learned a lot from just trial and error while building, I can easily spend 30-40mins on phrasing a prompt, just to make sure my vision is explained thoroughly. It does a lot of difference.

Oh, another suggestion I have is to directly explain that if there's an situation where the AIH is unsure how to proceed while working on a task, it should pause the task to ask you rather than assuming or making a decision.

It also works to keep an eye on the actual work being executed while AIH is working, even if you don't understand the code. The reasoning () blocks can be a very good indicator if there's something wrong. It's a good habit to go over the process every once in a while during the wait.

[–] daveed@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you for your feedback! Sounds like you already figured out how to use the AIH effectively, and I appreciate what sounds like much the same process I went through. I put together this simple tutorial as a kind of introduction to the AIH that isn't scary or intimidating, and I hope it helps ease a few people into the process of "figuring it out"!