game-kit/README.md

game-kit

The shared infrastructure of Wiz-War and Waving Hands, extracted so the next game starts with all of it in place: the hall, room codes and tables, the Peanut Gallery (and the host's leave for it to talk), table talk, rematches, seats that travel between devices by phrase, the keeper's bell, append-only ledgers replayed through a deterministic engine, the rules revision, the reports desk, the deploy script with its determinism gate, nightly rollup and backup, Sentry with Slack alerts, and the visitors, pulse and reports skills for Claude.

The game itself is one file. src/lib/game/index.ts implements GameSpec (see src/lib/game/spec.ts); the server, the client store, the hall and the ops tools never look past it. The template ships with a demo game, High Card, so everything runs before you have written a line.

Start a game

./new-game.sh <slug> "<Name>" [port] [domain]

That copies template/ to ~/projects/<slug>, fills the name, port and domain in, initialises git, installs dependencies, and prints the steps that remain: write the game, fill in the hall and rules and guide, create the droplet and the Sentry project, deploy. CONVENTIONS.md is copied to the new project as docs/conventions.md; it is the house style.

Run the demo locally from a new project:

npm run server      # the game server on its port
npm run dev -- --host

What is where

template/
  src/lib/game/spec.ts        the contract a game implements
  src/lib/game/index.ts       the demo game; replace it
  src/lib/net/                client.ts (calls, held seats, socket), room.svelte.ts (the room store), talk.ts, view.ts
  src/lib/components/         Hall, Lobby, TableTalk, ReportSlip, Board (demo; replace it)
  src/routes/                 the hall, /join/[code], /rules, /guide
  server/src/                 index (routes), rooms (game-agnostic), store (ledger), reports (the desk), ratelimit
  deploy/                     deploy, setup, Caddy, systemd, cron, gate + replay, backup, rollup, pulse, visitors, Slack alert, reports tools
  .claude/skills/             <slug>-visitors, <slug>-pulse, <slug>-reports

Placeholders: __SLUG__, __NAME__, __PORT__, __DOMAIN__ are filled by new-game.sh; __IP__, __SENTRY_DSN__, __SENTRY_PROJECT_ID__, __SENTRY_SLACK_INTEGRATION__ and __SLACK_CHANNEL_ID__ wait until those things exist.

What the kit is, and is not

The model is copy and diverge. A new game starts as a copy of the template and then goes its own way; the two games that came before it are not instances of the template and were not rewritten to be. The kit holds the reference copy of the shared parts and the conventions they follow, so a third game starts from the best current version of everything.

Drift is meant to be visible, not prevented:

./drift.sh ../waving-hands          # how far each shared file has wandered

drift-map/<slug>.txt pairs files when a game's layout differs from the template's. When a game grows something every game should have (the gallery and the reports desk were both born in one game and ported to the other), bring it back here, with placeholders, so the next game inherits it, and read the drift before assuming the kit has it.

The contract is simultaneous rounds: every seat that needs input submits, then the round resolves; turn-at-a-time games fit as the case where one seat needs input at a time. A game of single commands with out-of-turn interruptions, Wiz-War's shape, does not fit and keeps its own server.

The family

family.json lists every game of the Kestrel's Nest: slug, name, address, one-line pitch, player count and origin. Each game ships a copy as static/family.json (the deploy script takes the kit's latest when the kit is beside the game) and its about panel lists the others under More games at the Kestrel's Nest. Add a game here, then deploy the games; nothing else needs to know.