This didn’t strike me as an AI reply, just OP trying to be considerate when replying. I would have said the same thing. (Also kudos to OP for building a game with NPCs managed by an LLM, I’ve been toying with this idea for a while too, ever since I saw an amazing Skyrim mod where you could freely chat to each NPC and learn their back stories etc). Would love to know more about what it takes to put this type of approach into production and how to constrain the discussions.

Thank you. There's a harness layer that keeps each suspect from deviating from the current storyline. For the moment, I've deployed it to Lambda, where Haiku answers the questions in about 1–2 s.

No, it's me replying, for the record. I read and reply to all the comments myself :) Honestly, that's a month of work with intensive use of AI. I always keep in mind that the game is for humans, so every step, every case is validated and played by me.