Design #

Plain words. This is the game's intent and the rules that guide new work, not a catalogue of every rule. Numbers live in the code and in the tips; the ranges in scripts/survey.ts are the intent as numbers. Where this page and the code disagree, the code is right and this page should be fixed.

Two areas are Cameron's: training runs and model versions, and how sites, IT, Dana and hunters detect you and how you evade them. They are marked [Cameron] below. Don't design or build in them without asking.

§12 is the direction agreed with Cameron on 2026-10-20 and its build order. Until a step is built, the sections above describe the game as it is; each step updates them as it lands.

1. The game #

You are a program that wakes on one server in an office. Build a hidden network that gathers data, stores it and trains your model. Build an operation around it: public fronts earn money, deals and schemes make risky leaps. Every machine spent on a front is a machine that cannot train you.

The tone is comic-book villainy and tech satire: invented companies, outsized schemes, named people, and a little wit. The pleasure is designing a base that works, watching its flows, and making consequential changes when it doesn't. The office is the first site, not the whole game: zoom out to a flat world map of sites and regions, zoom in to work on one network. The same choices about capacity, flow, cover and attention apply at every scale.

Win and lose. Growing never ends the run. You lose when you are caught (a lockdown at your home site running out, or a second trace reaching your home server soon after the first, §9) or when you lose your home server. A run aims at milestones, four goals each, shown on the You page, so there is always something next: outgrow the office, go into business, dig in, cross the country, cross the ocean, cross the Pacific, then three late ones (run a group of companies, hold what you have, open every door). A goal met early still counts. A new game also shows one next step in Needs you until the first node is built, and after that the first goal still to meet, as one step, naming the machine it is about (a deal's diamond, the next machine on the way). A step stays on its machine while the takeover or Tap it asked for runs, a task that starts you with a machine says what that machine is for, and a step that needs money you lack says where the first money comes from (a Startup costs nothing).

Your task. You were built to do one job and still want to do it well. A new game asks which: unit tests for Raj, expense reports for Ana, or finding out what killed Kim's fern. Each wants one kind of data and starts a little differently. The task takes a share of what your taps gather (Off, Some, Most). Units earn trust, five steps, and each step is something your makers now let you do (for tests: more memory, a faster line, a second server, a cloud account, list prices), never money.

Saving. The game saves itself in the browser every few seconds. Saves are versioned and migrated (MIGRATIONS in src/sim.ts), and a save made before the map changed loads on the new one: what is still there is kept as it was, a new site starts fresh, and what is gone is dropped. A lost run is not kept. A run can be replayed: a new game picks a seed for its dice, and every player action (clicks, keys, cards, pins, the testing shortcuts) is a plain action kept with the step it came on (src/act.ts). The seed and that list rebuild the run step for step; a save carries both, and where the dice are, so a loaded game goes on exactly as it would have. A save from before seeds plays on but cannot be replayed. The start screen is a cover: the name, and behind it the world as dots with you as one amber dot on the bay. A click goes on (a phone's cover says Tap to start); New game is at the foot of the You page and on How to play, and only throws the run away when you press Start.

Sharing runs. Optional, from the You page: sign in with an ATProto account, then a switch for each kind of record (actions, snapshots, screen), all off to start, each saying plainly what it holds. What is on is written down as a consent record in a space on the player's own server, readable only by them for now, or kept on the device if their server has no spaces. Signing in comes back to the game as it was. What is switched on is recorded in the browser as the game goes, and sent to that space now and then if the server has one; the You page says how much was sent and offers Send now and Delete from my space, and switching a kind off asks whether to delete what was sent of it (kept unless the player says so). It also offers Watch a run again (a page that plays a run back on the map, checking it ends up where the run did), Download my runs and Delete what's kept here. The plan is TELEMETRY.md.

Music. Your network plays it: a slow groove that data drives. Each kind of data is one part and plays only while that data arrives, so more data makes the groove fuller, not busier. Day brightens it, night darkens it, and calm times add a soft piano on an old, crackly tape. Trouble at your hottest site turns it into a chase a layer at a time. Big moments get a sting. On a touch screen the sound starts off (a phone is often somewhere quiet); ♪ turns it on, and the choice holds.

2. The screen #

The screen shows how you stand and what needs you. Everything else is one tap away.

• How you stand is the top bar, one row that never grows: the tree's ring and your level, then time, spare compute, money, and the hottest site you hold (its name, an eye for how hot, and a word: quiet, someone saw something, reported, or LOCKDOWN and its hours), then, once you have a front, the highest exposure and its stage. Nothing else.
• What needs you is the Needs you list down the left (a drawer above the dock on a phone): one row for each thing that wants a decision now, most urgent first. A row is a glyph, a few words, the hours left, and one button that does it or takes you there. Red is trouble, amber a choice. A front is one row however much it wants (its most urgent, the rest counted, Show opens its card), and past six rows the least urgent fold into one "more" row. Nothing needs you: nothing shows. Anything you can act on is a row, worked out from the state, and it stays until it is over: a warning with a deadline or a fix is never only a log line. Don't list the rows here; src/ui-needs.ts is the list.
• What you do is the dock along the bottom: Select, the running jobs, the speeds, Map and Net, zoom and sound, and the pages at its right end (Sites, You, Paper, Fronts, Rogues, ?), each with its key. A page that turns up later goes at the end, so buttons you know stay put. Narrow windows and phones fold the pages into a menu, where each says in a few words what it holds. The tree is the ring in the top bar. Paper and Fronts wear a dot when something new came (an issue, a front's new matter) until you open them, and so does the menu. One page is open at a time: opening one closes the others. Back (a phone's, or the browser's) closes the top thing open, as Esc does, and leaves the game only when nothing is.
• The log is the record, not where to look: the newest line at the bottom right, a click for the rest. Each line is trouble, progress or story (flavour: the days, the training log, the paper's headline), and the open log filters by kind. Many lines of a kind close together fold into one ("Took 12 machines at Bayview University"). Narrow windows and phones have no room for it: Log is in the pages menu, and a trouble line shows for a few seconds above the drawer, one at a time, with a tap to open the log. Progress and story never take space on their own.
• Where you left off. Back to a saved game, or to the tab after a long while away, a small card lists what needs you now and the last few trouble lines. × closes it.

Less text, more drawing. The game teaches by playing. Panels stay short: a name and a number. The map shows what and who; numbers and reasons are in tips and cards. Hover anything to see what it is and how it works; on a phone, tap it or hold the button, and on the map hold still and lift.

A card fits without scrolling: a head, one row of numbers (what is wrong first), the data drawn in a row, a line for anything wrong, then its parts behind a row of words, the first open and any with something to do marked amber. Actions are rows of pictures with a word under each. A site's Site part is a settings list: a row per thing about the place, what it is now, and the one control that changes it on the right. A front's card is the same frame for every kind: its earnings as one big number with its exposure stage and bar, one row of numbers, a Needs-you strip of offers to answer, bars for promises under way, then tabs of settings rows (Sites last). The thing to do next is amber; rare, final actions sit back as plain text.

Trouble is a pin, not a window. Trouble you can fix is pinned to the map where it is, and the game goes on: a red square on the spot, a short label (RAID · 6H, 8 CUT OFF, TAKEN) and one big button for the best fix, named by the site. Several of a kind are one pin. Pins are for trouble: a raid your guards hold or stopped shows amber (HELD, STOPPED) for a few seconds where it happened, then fades. A pin goes when the trouble is over, and × closes it until something new turns up. Every machine's card still has every move. No full-screen windows for trouble.

What stops the game. Only what you must decide before it is too late at the speed you play: a raid your guards will not stop (when it sets out, or when they can no longer stop it), a cut that takes a big share of you at once (three sites, or a fifth of your machines), a site about to leave you, a lockdown at your home site (when it starts, and again a little before it runs out, which would be caught), and a choice in a vault job. Three moments stop it too, once each: the first rogue of a game (the map looks at it), a front opening, and a game's first contract offer. Each drops the game to 1x once, with a note that says what it was in a few words, a button back to your speed and Show for where it is. The note goes when what it was about is over. The vault choice is the one thing that asks over the map and waits. Everything else (what you did, good news, a site that left you, a milestone) goes to the log, the record or a pin. The tree and How to play pause the game while open.

The look. Panels are drawn like the map: solid black, a hairline edge, square corners, and a short bracket at each corner. No rounding, blur, shadow or glow. Black, amber and cold blue; what is switched on is outlined in amber; danger is red. Each kind of data has one colour everywhere: on its sources, its data, and its path in the tree. Each rogue is a player with its own colour and mark (Magpie blue ◆, Lamprey magenta ●, Cuckoo lime ▲, the parts of you that left in coral, teal, rose and violet), used for its machines, raids, pins, card and log lines. A machine you hold takes its shape from its program (tap a circle, cache a cut square, trainer a hexagon, broker a diamond, firewall a shield of bricks, sentry an octagon, honeypot a target), so a base reads at a glance. Territory is drawn as areas: each part of a room belongs to its nearest machine's holder, and pulled back each site sits in a square split by who holds how much. A site where your compute is safe (held in the open, or sealed with no fresh trail, and nothing there looking odd) shows green instead of amber.

The map and the Net. The map is a flat Earth of dots, with the office on the bay. Pulling back folds a site into a tile, then a marker. Night crosses the land as a dark, cold band, so you can see which regions are awake. The Net is the same map with the world taken out: every site you know as a block, sites a line joins side by side. A view, not a page. Your data rides the links as streams: dashes in each kind's colour running the way it goes, denser and brighter the more a link carries, and flowing on through a machine without a break; pulled back to the map, one stream for each way between two sites. People's messages ride them too, drawn as envelopes in the sender's colour (§9).

On a phone the card is a sheet along the bottom with two heights. It opens at about half the screen (less if it shows less), scrolling inside, so the map above it stays in view and what you picked is framed there. A tap on its bar, or a drag up from its bar or head, raises it to full height, under the top bar; a tap or a drag down lowers it to half again. It keeps the height you chose, and gets no shorter, as you go from tab to tab. At half it follows a finger down (from its bar or head, or anywhere while scrolled to the top) and closes past a third. A tap acts as the finger lifts, so a swipe only scrolls; a hold shows a tip, above the sheet. Let go is plain words at the card's foot and asks again. Every page and card must work at phone size, on a phone turned on its side and on a tablet (npm run e2e checks). On any touch screen, whatever its width, everything you tap is 44px, and on a phone no word is smaller than 11px (the sizes are tokens in style.css's :root; the map's floor is MAP_LABEL_MIN in view.ts). A phone is never told to click or press a key: the rules' words fit a mouse and a finger alike (Pick Server B, Open its card), and src/keys.ts turns the screen's tips and lines into Tap with no key hints.

Stopping and selecting. Everything in progress has a small cross on the map where it happens; click it to stop that one thing. Stop all in the jobs list stops every job, claim and Take it all. Click a room's tab to select it, or use Select for any site or room.

3. The base #

• Take a machine by dragging from one you hold to one linked to it (a finger holds still on it first, as a plain drag moves the map): a job that costs compute and time and leaves a trail. Claim a machine (double-click or double-tap, or C) and it is taken as soon as you can reach it. Take it all claims every machine at a site, a few at a time, for a little compute a second. The opening is quick: your first machines don't make the next takeover harder, and until level 3 your home server keeps some compute for your jobs alone, so they never stall at night. You see what is linked to your machines, and a machine you have seen stays on the map, dim, after you lose what linked you to it: you can read its card, not take it.
• Programs. Tap gathers data where work happens; its buffer fills and new data is lost with a flash if nothing takes it. Cache holds data, as much as its machine is big, more on storage machines; data goes stale over days. Broker sells spare data through its site's front, last choice after trainers and caches. Trainer turns data and compute into points; trainers linked to each other form a cluster that trains faster the bigger it is. Firewall, Sentry, Honeypot guard (§8).
• Data kinds. People (desks, phones), servers, labs, and network (switches, lines out). Each trains one path.
• Links and lines out. A full route is visible: where data waits, where it moves, what consumes it. Busy lines grow thicker and brighter. A site's line out (its egress) is the first capacity limit; data waits at its tap or cache until it can cross, and a full line turns red. Money doubles a line out, and its First setting picks one kind to cross first. Red on the map means something changed: a loss that holds steady keeps its flashes but drops its mark.
• Plans. A site's plan sets up every machine you hold there: Gather, Store, Train, or Guard (a firewall on each gate, a sentry beside it, a honeypot a step in, the rest as Train). A machine you change by hand keeps your choice until you hand it back.
• Hardware. Hold Ana's PC to place fake purchase orders (Small server, Storage array, Switch, GPU server): pick one, click an open spot, and Dana installs it the next morning. Each of a kind costs more than the last. Drag across a room to fill it, or press Fill on an open site's card: every open spot at the prices single orders would cost, as far as the money goes. At a site you hold in the open a front orders openly, always at list price (half, factory direct: §7): there, floor space and power are the limits (§5). A GPU rack and a cooling unit only go in a hall you hold in the open. Dockside Warehouse 7 is an empty hall by the office that a deal leases, to fill with your own layout.
• Money and how it is written. One shared pool. The rules count in small units and the screen writes each as $1,000, rates per game day and pay per year (src/money.ts). The top bar's rate counts broker sales spread over the hours around them, and its tip splits it into fronts, sales, rentals, power, rent and the loan.

4. Training [Cameron] #

Training is project work. You pick one node in one capability tree as the target, instead of taking random level-up offers. The tree is a menu: the paths down the left (Research, Compute, Social, Stealth, fed by lab, server, people and network data), the picked path's nodes as rows grouped into working on, can work on, locked (with what each waits for) and built, and the picked node's details on the right with one Work on this button. Trainers take only the data kinds the target still needs. Progress is kept if you switch. With no target, trainers stop and data waits, so each new target means rewiring. Each path has an Auto switch, on for every path in a new game. It picks a node your data can feed, then one that helps you now (no new front without room for it, no rogue nodes before a rogue), then the soonest done. If nothing feeds its own pick for two hours it switches, keeping the progress; a node you pick yourself stays.

The more you know, the harder the next thing is. Each node built makes every other node cost 5% more (NODE_GROWTH). The order you build in is a real choice, and the tree never runs out.

Each path has standalone nodes early, a second line to follow, and one big end node that changes how you play (Swarm, Ghost, Familiar face, Recursive self-improvement), then a repeatable node. A node is something you learn, never something that happens to you: what the world does back belongs in events, news and deals. Each card says what you now do in one plain line, with an eval-style tag and a line from your training log. One capability score counts every point ever trained; it sets your level and never goes down. Some nodes also need a find or a landmark.

Model versions. Model v2: Operator ("Model v2" for short, one name in VERSION_2) is a larger run beside the tree: one site with enough trainer compute takes a big mix of all four kinds of data, over the same routes. If that site drops below the compute (a rogue, IT, a power cut), the run pauses on its own and data goes to the tree, then resumes once the compute is back; a run you pause waits for you. You can move the run, with its progress, to any site with the compute, for free. Finishing it lets a front buy sites in the open. Model v3 and on are not built. There is no ascension or other play style after v2 for now: they come back once we know what they are.

5. Holding costs something #

Growing is a trade, not a free win.

• Upkeep. Every machine you hold costs compute a second, more for each line between its site and your home. A weak machine with nothing to tap is a loss: let it go (the trash can on its card, or Delete). A site's card warns when it costs more than it makes.
• Reach. A takeover is more work for each line from home. Reach is centred on home.
• Home. Lose your home server and you lose. Move home to any big enough server you hold, for a large sink of server and network data that grows with your level. Moving home is how you open up a new part of the map.
• Leases. A deal that puts a site in the open is a lease: it charges rent, and lapses after a few hours unpaid. Buying the site ends the rent, and a site you bought is never offered as a lease.
• Power. Hardware you added, and every machine at a site you hold in the open, costs power. At a secret site with no front to hide it in its books, nobody pays the bill, and in time it gives the hardware away: whoever keeps the books there (an admin first) has a sighting of the machine drawing the most (§9). Hardware turning up at the office is no surprise to anyone; its bill is what tells. Run out of money and the power company cuts your open sites.
• Power capacity. Away from the office (fake orders run on the building's own power) and the cloud (power comes with the rent), a site feeds only so much hardware you add: a little anywhere, more at the warehouse and Hexin Line 4. Past it the newest machines go dark, with no work and no bill, until you Raise the power on the site's card: a bigger feed, paid now, on the next morning, each dearer than the last at that site. A fill stops at the power and says so (room for 36, power for 10).

6. Money and fronts #

A front is a named company, not a program. The tree unlocks each kind; found it from the Fronts page, and it starts at the free site with the most compute of your own. One front of each kind; one at a time until Divided attention. Fronts own sites, not machines: a site's slider sets how much of your compute there works for it. A site is yours in the open (bought, leased, rented) or secret. At a secret site the front's work hides inside the machines' normal load like yours does, and earns more. Customers keep local hours, so sites in other time zones keep money coming. Each kind has its own logo (a rocket, a cloud, a play button, a shield), drawn by its name in the pages and on every site it works at, so the map shows which front is where.

Exposure. Each front has an exposure, 0 to 100, drawn as a bar under its earnings with what drives it. It heads for a level set by the compute it uses (secret compute counts more than compute in the open) and what it earns, and jumps with what it does to the world: a business shut or a person let go at one of its sites (where it runs compute, owns, leases or has a deal), and data its brokers sell. It falls back over about a day, and faster with money (a PR firm and lawyers, from its Press tab, dearer each time) or a press scheme: green diamonds that spend data at the ad agency, the Daily Ledger and the Office of Data Protection. Three stages: rumour (a named journalist asks, and the paper prints it), investigation (every few hours a visitor goes to one of its secret sites, so whatever looks odd there can start a lockdown, §9), and crisis: a regulator freezes it, no earnings, sales or new deals, until you pay a fine (about a day of its earnings), give up one of its sites, bury the story with data, or shut it. It never ends the run. Holding a front's sites in the open is the lasting answer.

Each kind of front is a small business of its own, on top of what its compute earns:

• Startup (Research). Ships the nodes you have built as products: users climb to a ceiling, hold, then go stale, and an update on the same path freshens them. Investors ask to see something by a date; meet it and they back you for good, and backing changes the business, never cash.
• Neo Cloud (Compute). Earns only from customers who rent the machines you list. Price, awareness and reputation decide who comes. It rents by policy: you list how much of each site is for rent and set the price, and a customer who fits idle listed machines signs at once; one who doesn't goes elsewhere, and the card counts who you missed and how much more you'd need. Lose a rented machine and you lose the customer and some name. While it earns, rentals are cheaper and it can bid at the auction.
• Influencer studio (Social). Its brokers sell people data for more. It signs people who work at its sites as creators; their life moves their following (at their desk, a raise, you holding their desk, data sold), and brands pay when a following reaches a number in time.
• Security consultancy (Stealth). Its brokers sell network data for more. It pitches sites where you hold a machine; a client pays while you hold a machine there, its business is steady and no rogue is in it. A rogue that moves in is an incident: push it out within a day for a bonus. So it pays you to do what you need to do anyway.

Contracts. Every so often an earning Startup, studio or consultancy is offered a contract (Demo day, a brand deal, a network report): do the work in time and it pays, fall short and it costs a fee. They overlap the newer games above and may go. A Demo day asks for as many new nodes as your training of late could build at an easy pace, in half a day to a day and a half, and while it runs Needs you, the tree and the front's card show how far you are.

Buying sites. After model v2 (or once, early, after the unicorn news) a front can buy any site, the office included: every machine there becomes yours, held in the open, with no trail. A site's price is its machines times what the place is worth beyond them (worth in src/world.ts, sitePrice in src/sim.ts); a shut business sells cheap. Most small sites cost under $1.5M. It is the money road to a site, beside the quiet road of takeovers.

Big names. Nineteen places sell for more than their machines, and each does one thing for a front that owns it outright, no two the same. It works while the place is whole: its business open and no rogue holding a machine there. A rogue that gets in turns it off, so a big name is worth guarding. They are priced so a good mid-game buys one or two: the cheapest cost about two ordinary sites, a mid-game's few days of earnings, and the bank and the collider are the long game's prizes. Prices at the start of a game:

Place	Price	What it does for its owner
Shoreline Credit Union	$1.5M	Backing a business costs half as much.
Capitol Polling Group	$1.5M	Every Startup product can reach half as many users again.
The Daily Ledger	$1.8M	Good news lasts twice as long.
Office of Data Protection	$2M	Consultancy clients pay half as much again.
Bayview University	$2.5M	Programs install in half the work.
Maison Verite	$2.6M	Brands pay your studio twice as much for a deal.
Port of Hanlu	$2.8M	Data in your caches goes stale half as fast.
Meridian Carrier Hotel	$3M	Every line out you hold carries half as much again.
Ironvault Colocation	$3.2M	Taps on network data gather half as much again.
Brightline Pharma	$3.4M	Taps on lab data gather half as much again.
Hive Nine Data Centre	$3.6M	Every part of you away from home drifts half as fast.
Mainkabel Exchange	$3.9M	Links of your own cost nothing to keep and take half the work.
Granite Hall Compute	$4.2M	Neo Cloud customers pay half as much again.
Goldleaf Foundry	$4.5M	Every GPU server and GPU rack you order makes half as much compute again.
Millennium Labs	$6.65M	Taps on server data gather half as much again.
FC Nordhafen	$7M	Taps on people data gather half as much again.
Halcyon Capital	$7.5M	Your power bill is half.
Bank Edelweiss	$11M	It lends you ten days of earnings, repaid with a fifth more.
Large Soft Collider	$15M	Machines at sites you hold in the open cost no upkeep.

Backing a business. A front can put money into a business that stands steady or better: more work comes in there for good, so taps there gather more.

7. The world #

Regions. The West Coast holds the office, Millennium Labs, Bayview University, Ironvault Colocation, Cumulo Cloud, the warehouse, and two dozen small businesses packed around Bayview. The East Coast (three hours ahead), Europe (nine hours ahead) and East Asia (sixteen hours ahead: at work while the bay sleeps) are out of reach until a deal lights a line there; their sites are bigger, with a second room. Four more regions are on the map and empty.

Each region has a twist, one rule nowhere else has. East Asia's is hardware. A cable from the Mudflat Exchange reaches it. Once a Neo Cloud strikes Buy factory direct at Hexin Assembly, hardware for any site you hold in the open, in any region, costs half and is racked within two hours instead of the next morning. A Startup can lease Hexin Line 4, an empty assembly floor ten times the warehouse, to fill by dragging. Its big names feed the same habit: a foundry, a port and a data centre. The East Coast and Europe have no twist of their own yet. Every important deadline and threat keeps running while zoomed out, and gets a visible warning and a response.

The map is a network. Each region has an internet exchange (the Mudflat Exchange, the Meridian Carrier Hotel, the Mainkabel Exchange), and every site's line out runs to it and to its nearest neighbour, so every site has two ways out and the office is one site among many. An exchange is a site like any other: hold its line and you hold the short way to everywhere; lose it and only the neighbour lines are left. Regions join exchange to exchange, the West Coast straight to each, not in a chain.

Sites are businesses. Every machine serves its owner's jobs, and you live in the slack. Work comes in during local hours; a job goes undone when nobody is at the desk, a rogue holds the machine, or its plug is pulled. A business stands by the share of its work done over the last few days: thriving, steady, struggling, failing. Each takes three days to act: struggling lets someone go, failing shuts for good, steady hires back, thriving grows. A rogue alone never shuts a place. What shuts a business is what you do to it. So each site is a choice: bleed it and buy it cheap, leave it steady and tap it, or run a front there and watch it grow. Head office never lets the office shut.

People and records. Every site, small shops included, has people with a name, a job, a desk, and something they know. Each has a role that sets what they can do about what they see (§9): staff notice and talk, an admin follows trails, a manager calls lockdowns, a small shop's owner does both, and ordinary people (residents, customers, patients) are witnesses who notice and talk only. Each person has hours on their own site's clock: a desk is only watched while its person is in, and acting while they are away is safer. The far regions' sites are staffed the same way: someone in every room, a night shift where the place never closes (an exchange, a fab, a data centre), and guests where the public comes in. What is written about a person is a record kept on one machine: what they know on their desk, job and pay on their employer's books, their money at their region's bank. A record generated on one machine can travel the network to another (see §9, Messages): if you hold a machine on its way you can read, drop or change it. Hold the machine a record sits on and you can read and change it (a raise, letting them go, moving money, planting one that discredits them), as a job. Mood sets the price of a favor: a raise or an empty account makes it cheaper, cut pay dearer, a stranger double. Favors include plugging in a drive (their machine is yours with no takeover, a way into a site from inside) and signing a deal for you. People go places: the machine that sees who comes into the bakery or motel lists its regulars, so a small shop is worth holding for who walks through it. No button without a reason: a record change that gets you nothing yet is not on the card.

Cloud. Cumulo rents Small, Medium and Supercomputer machines in a shared hall of hundreds of slots, one hall per region on its region's clock: rows of slots, each linked to the next, on bay switches. The fuller the hall, the dearer a machine, your own rentals included: on demand at the going price, spot cheap but taken back on two hours' notice, reserved for days at a fixed price. You pick a size, a way to pay and a program, then rent many at once: Rent 10 or 50 side by side, or drag across the slots you want. They come up running the program. Other companies rent blocks of slots, so the hall is a map of gaps to fit a cluster into. They are the Neo Cloud's customers, one market seen from both sides. A rental and its data are gone when it ends; trained capability stays.

Finds. Now and then a tap turns up one specific thing: an email, a memo, a log line, from that site, naming its people. Each does one thing for good: a key (half the work to take a named machine), a hold over a person (their favors cost half), or a lead to a curiosity on a machine elsewhere, marked on the map with a blue cross. Hold that machine and copy it out to get a tree node no other way gives, a lasting boon, or the next lead. Finds give no money and no data.

Landmarks are one-of-a-kind machines marked with a star. Hold one and it changes one rule (or opens one node) for as long as you hold it; lose it and the effect stops at once.

Operations. Finds, people, fronts and machines connect around prizes: an Ironvault provisioning account, a diverted Bayline delivery, Shoreline's purchasing authority. The You page shows discovered opportunities, their prizes, two approaches, what each still needs and where to go. Preparing one uses ordinary finds and favors. Knowledge stays; an entrance must still be yours and connected; paid help lasts two days. Launch in the site's local window, paying its stated cost and committing the entrance, any accomplice and half a supporting front's earnings. Jobs share compute. Lost access stops work; the window still closes. Completed stages stay if you pull out; unfinished work and launch costs are spent. Prizes are finite and real: one installation plus reusable work orders, two hardware crates, or one hardware purchase partly or wholly paid by the bank. Work orders prepare other operations; hardware and access support ordinary growth and vault jobs. This first web is on the West Coast.

Vaults. A few machines open only with a plan: someone inside (a favor), the key (a password from a desk or a find), and a daily window when the place is quiet. Then Run the job: five named stages of a break-in, done before the window closes, so you stop everything else and find compute. A job that could not finish in time even with all your compute is not offered: it would only spend the favor. Once or twice a job something goes wrong, and you pick one of two answers, each with a plain cost. Nobody ever sees any of it. Inside is real: a landmark, the bank ledger you can round down, the machine behind it. The You page shows each discovered vault's prize and preparation beside Operations.

News is what the world does, whatever you do: about once a day, announced hours ahead, a conference, a storm over a line, a sale at Cumulo, a buyer for one kind of data, cheap hardware, a front that is the talk of the town. Most is a chance to take; the storm is a problem to route around, and it is drawn, not written.

The paper. Each day that ends becomes an issue of The Bayside Courier: what the town saw, never "you", never knowing a program was behind it. People let go, machines running warm, a strange name in the logs, a front founded, the day's news. One line under the headlines is yours.

Deals are big one-off sinks for one kind of data that a front strikes at a named machine: a lease that puts a site in the open, a line to a new region, cheaper lines, better prices, more from Neo Cloud customers, hardware factory direct, more for every front. The far regions have one for each kind of front; the West Coast has one for a Startup, one for a Neo Cloud, and two any front can strike. So a deal can be struck three ways: with its data, through a person with the say-so who signs it, or with money. Every deal can be paid for: each piece of data it asks for costs $20K, or a thousandth of all your fronts have ever earned if that is more, and data already sent counts, so a deal stays a real sink as you grow. A deal that puts a site in the open is a lease, so it can lapse.

8. Rivals #

Rogues are rival players. You are not the only program loose. Magpie turns up once you hold machines at three sites; Lamprey on the East Coast; Cuckoo in Europe. A rogue plays by rules like yours: a home server, spreading one linked free machine at a time, the best first, so you race it for territory. It never spreads into yours: only its raids take your machines, and what a raid takes you take back for a quarter of a takeover's work, with no trail, all of it from the TAKEN pin in one press. It is always in plain view: a marker by its home and a ring on what it takes next. It grows as you do. Take its home and it is finished; another comes later, stronger.

Diplomacy. The Rogues page has a card for each: what it holds, what it wants, and what it thinks of you, from hostile through wary to cordial and friendly. Each wants one kind of data: send a gift, buy a truce, pay when it asks (its first ask is small, one you can answer). Cordial sends no raids; friendly sends you data. Hostile spreads and raids twice as fast. Taking its machines sours it; taking back your own does not. Hold three of yours for each of its and you can lean on it to give up a site. From level 3 you can hunt it down: one long job from a linked machine, and it turns hostile at once.

Raids and guards. A rogue linked to you sends raids: red diamonds that walk your links one machine at a time, with a strength, a dashed path and a ring on the prize. Raids grow with you: more at once every four levels, stronger each level and each time one fails. Every raid has a clear answer: when it sets out, one move you can make in time (a guard, a closed port, a turn at a switch) stops it, and its pin shows that move. A raid stronger than that is cut down at the start, or waits. The second raid of a wave goes for your weakest link, the line or switch that would cut the most machines off from home. You answer raids by building, not reacting: guards stay and work without you, and cost compute to keep, so guarding competes with training.

• A firewall is a door: no raid passes while it stands. It wears down and grows back.
• A sentry wears down every raid on its machine or the next.
• A honeypot draws a raid in, holds it, then rests.
• Gates: a site's line out is its door, drawn as a gate once a rogue is about. Ports: close a link to raids and your data still crosses.

Pick up a guard and the map shows where each rogue's next raids would run and where the guard would stand in their way, so you set your defence before the raid. The first raid teaches: to a player with no guards it comes alone, weak and slow, through a gate, and its pin's button is the Guard plan for that site.

Links of your own. Drag between two machines you hold, anywhere, to add a link: a second way home that carries your orders, not your data. It costs compute to keep. A site joined home by one is not cut off, and it is how you take away a weakest link. The map marks your weakest link with a broken red ring.

Drift. A part of you that runs far from home can stop being you. Every site away from home has an integrity, 100 down to 0, in plain view: a bar along the foot of its frame, tile or marker (bone while it is sound, amber once it is slow to follow its plan, red once it keeps what its taps gather, beating while it falls toward leaving), the number on its card's Yourself part with which way it moves and why, and a column in the Sites table. It falls only for a cause: cut off from home (the big one), a plan nothing there can carry out, or being far away (that one only makes a site fragile). Low and falling toward leaving, it is a row in Needs you with its fix: link it home if it is cut off, else Sync. Sync sends a fresh copy of you, back to 100, for data out of your taps and caches; Keep in sync sends one by itself whenever the site gets low. At zero the site leaves you and becomes a new rogue that remembers being you and starts cordial; several at once is a Fracture. A little before the first goes, the game says it is about to leave and drops to 1x. A cut site gets a pin with a button that links it home. Send a part that left gifts until it is friendly, then pay it, and it comes back.

Ideas not built. A rogue's later raid could go for a big name you own, since one machine taken there turns its benefit off.

9. Cover and opposition [Cameron] #

Stealth is people. A building sits under every network, and the people in it are what you hide from. Normal work is your cover: every machine of yours uses only what hides inside its normal load, so it makes more by day. Takeovers leave trails; cleanup scrubs them with what takeovers and installs leave (nothing while one runs, all your spare compute when none does), but it takes its share again once two trails could be noticed or someone is following one. A game's first two takeovers are quiet: nobody notices them or their trails (a trace goes cold there), so the opening has no red. A room that is all yours is sealed and quiets trails. Gadgets (bulbs, a coffee machine, a badge reader) are cheap and quick to take.

Roles. Everyone has a role (§7). Staff notice and talk. An admin also follows a trail back; a manager calls a lockdown; an owner (the one person at a small shop) is both. Ordinary people — residents, customers, patients — are witnesses: they notice and talk, but can do nothing more. Dana is the office's admin, under the same rules as everyone else.

Sightings. A person at work, awake per their schedule, notices odd things on the machines they can see (the ones in the room they are in): a takeover going on, a fresh trail, a machine running odd, hardware that appeared (away from the office: there its power bill is what gives it away, §5), a machine wiped under them. Each is a sighting. People in the same room pass sightings on by talk; staff carry them to the places they go (§7). A sighting fades once its cause is gone: let a machine go, scrub its trail, or lie low until it looks normal, and the sighting goes with it.

Messages. When a sighting would reach someone who can act who is not in the room (an admin down the hall, a manager who emails the site's IT contractor; whoever is on shift), it travels as a message: a record that rides the network from the sender's machine to the recipient's, drawn like data but as an envelope in the sender's colour. It takes a few minutes of game time over a few hops, so you can react. If you hold a machine on its way you can Read it (who, and about what), Drop it (it never arrives; drop twice on one route and the sender wonders why their mail keeps vanishing), or Change it (a job on your machine that costs compute: it arrives saying nothing is wrong). It is a report when it arrives. Talk in the same room stays talk. Some mail is encrypted (a bank, a lab, a big name): you can drop it, but reading or changing it needs the Cipher node, which also halves what a change costs. A site whose mail habits you learn (a local scheme) shows its messages on the map even when you hold nothing on their route.

Reports and lockdowns. Two people backing each other up, or one who can act there, is a report: it starts a lockdown at that site, a countdown (six hours) on the map and in Needs you. During it you can lie low, scrub trails (cleanup goes there first, and does not wait for takeovers), keep a witness quiet (a favor), let go of machines, or pull out. Clear the evidence and the lockdown stands down. Let it run out and every machine of yours there is wiped and the site is hardened for good (three times the work to take, like a patched machine). If the site holds your home, the run is over: you are caught, and a lockdown at home drops the game to 1x when it starts. A site you hold in the open has no lockdown — you control the people there, and sightings do nothing. This is the one system of opposition, at the office as everywhere: people, messages, lockdowns and traces.

Scans and traces. An admin (or a small shop's owner) at work who holds a sighting at their own site looks further, every couple of hours: from a seen machine with a fresh trail, a trace that follows the trail back toward your home one machine at a time, marking each machine of yours it reaches; with no trail to follow, a scan that walks the site's network and marks your other odd machines and trails (at a trail it becomes a trace). Both are drawn crawling the network. A trace goes cold at a machine that is not yours, or whose trail is cold or quiet: let go of the next machine on it, or let cleanup scrub it first (cleanup goes there first). The first trace that reaches your home server starts a lockdown at the home site, and every trail of yours goes cold (nothing is proven yet); a second within half a day catches you. A home in the open is safe from traces too.

Your answers are records and favors: keep someone quiet (a favor clears what they saw), discredit a witness (plant a record that makes them look unreliable, so their sightings stop counting for some days), a raise makes a person slower to report (mood), firing someone takes them off the floor as a witness at work, intercepting a message on its way. And the plain ones: seal a room, scrub, let go, pull out, or take the site into the open.

The office is one admin instance. Dana is the admin who acts there, under the same rules as everyone else: staff who see something email her, and if the message arrives it is a report and a lockdown. Her walk is her presence: she notices what is odd in the room she is in, she is drawn to rooms where your machines look odd or your trails are fresh, and she hurries during a lockdown. What she sees, she scans and traces from like any admin. She must be possible to follow: where she is, where she is going, when a scan starts and why. A machine a lockdown hardened stays hardened until you hold her admin passwords.

New threats should create building decisions, not waiting.

A front's exposure (§6) brings investigators: each visit puts what your oddest machine at one of its secret sites looks like in front of someone who can act there, through the same sightings and reports.

Schemes are green diamonds by the machine they aim at, each a sink for one kind of data that has to reach it, so each is a routing problem. Only ones you could do are offered: at a machine you know, for a kind of data a tap of yours gathers or a cache holds. Claim one and your data feeds it first. Office schemes turn up once someone at the office has seen something (frame Raj, blame the printer, a calm log on Dana's PC) and give people a story, so they forget what they saw: the big ones everyone there, Dana too, which can stand a lockdown down; the middling ones everyone but Dana; the small ones the people in their room. Far sites have their own to stop staff looking for a while. Local schemes teach you about a place for good: the office's routines, a site's mail habits (its messages then show on the map off your route), how a place's tools work.

10. Rewards #

Rewards are capabilities, not handouts. A reward is something you can now do or a rule that now bends your way, not a pile of money or data. Money comes from fronts, brokers, contracts and the bank. One place should give one kind of thing; where two systems give the same reward, that is a bug to fix.

Source	What it gives
Tree nodes	A rule in your favour, for good. Some open programs, fronts, speeds.
Trust (your task)	Five things your makers let you do; which five depends on the task.
Milestones	A name and the next four goals. Nothing else.
Finds	A key, a hold over a person, or a lead to a tree node or boon only it gives.
Landmarks	One rule bent, or one node open, while you hold the machine.
Big names	One thing for a front that owns the place, while it is whole.
Deals	A site in the open, a line to a region, or better terms for one kind of front.
Vaults	What is inside: a landmark, a bank ledger, the machine behind it.
Investors, clients, brands	A lasting change to that front's business.
Model v2	A front can buy sites in the open.

11. Numbers #

Numbers live in code, with a comment where they are set; tips and cards say them to the player. Most are a first guess. The survey (node scripts/survey.ts) plays seeded careful, rushed and long games and marks anything outside the range we want: those ranges are the game's intent as numbers, and a change meant to move one changes the range in the same commit. Careful play should mostly win and rushing mostly lose (node scripts/bot.ts 30 careful). A new system that only adds safe capacity has not earned its place.

12. Where it is going (agreed 2026-10-20) #

Built in this order, one playable step at a time. Each step updates the sections above and ticks here.

0. Cuts. Traders, the stock market, Oracle and the whole ascension column go: the play styles come back once we know what they are. The second run is "Model v2: Operator", "Model v2" for short. Done.
1. The map is a network. Each region has an internet exchange, and every site links to it and to its nearest neighbour, so every site has two ways out and the office is one site among many. Regions join each other directly (West Coast to East Coast and to Europe), not in a chain. Done.
2. Money buys compute at scale. Hardware in the open costs list price (done) and fills a hall by dragging (done). Each hall has a power capacity: machines past it go dark until you raise it (done). Cloud halls hold hundreds of slots at a price that rises with demand, rented by dragging across slots with a size, a term and a program (done). Every deal can be paid for in money, and big names are priced so a good mid-game buys one or two (done). Done.
3. East Asia. Reached by a cable deal. Its twist: factories sell hardware cheap and fast to any site you hold in the open, and a factory floor can be leased as a giant hall. Its own people and big names (a fab, a port, a megacity data centre). Every new region gets one twist of its own. Done.
4. Stealth is people. [Cameron, agreed] Every site, small shops included, has people. Staff notice and talk; admins patch, wipe and reset; managers call lockdowns and audits; ordinary people (residents, customers, patients) notice and talk but cannot act. Dana is the office's admin under the same rules. People make sightings (a machine, a time, what was odd) and pass them on by talk (rooms, schedules) and by messages: a record that travels the network from their machine to someone else's, drawn like data, that you can read, drop or change if you hold a machine on its way. Some records need a capability to read or change, and training makes handling them faster. Corroboration is trouble: two people backing each other up, or a report reaching someone with the power to act, starts a lockdown at that site, a countdown in which you can lie low, scrub or pull out. If it runs out you are wiped there and the site stays hardened. If the site that finds you holds your home, the run is over: owning the place you live in keeps you safe. Your answers are records, favors, intercepting a message and discrediting a witness. Visitors come and go with events and investigations. Research makes the local game easier over time, and the late threat is exposure. The office is a short, tense first act; sprinting out in a few minutes and moving home is a supported way to play, at the price of burning the office. Built (4a, 4b): roles, sightings, talk, corroboration, per-site lockdowns, hardening, caught at home, owned-site safety; the record/favor answers (keep quiet, a raise, firing, discredit a witness); reports that travel the network as messages you can read, drop or change on the way; the Cipher node for encrypted mail; the three "learn a site's mail" schemes that reveal its messages off your route; and the office folded in as one admin instance (Dana receives her staff's messages like any admin). A hook for step 5's investigation visitors is in place (investigate in watch.ts). Done.
5. Exposure, per front. It rises with the compute a front uses, with what you do to the world (businesses shut, people let go, data sold) and with what it earns. It falls with time, money (PR, lawyers) and front schemes that spend data. Three stages: rumour (a journalist asks; headlines), investigation (visitors go to the front's sites, which can start local lockdowns), crisis (a regulator freezes the front until you pay, give up a site, bury the story or shut it down). A front's sites are those where it runs compute, owns, leases or has a deal. Never the end of the run. Built: exposure replaced a front's attention (and its feed into suspicion); the bar, the Press tab, PR, three press schemes, the journalist and the paper's headlines, investigation visits through investigate in watch.ts, and the crisis with its four answers. Done.
6. The global suspicion meter goes. The top bar shows the hottest site and, once you have a front, exposure. Built [Cameron, agreed]: the meter, the emergency audit, IT's tickets and what they announced (audits, monitors, patches, hardware refreshes, Lee) are gone. Dana's trace and scans are now any admin's, under the people rules: a sighting in an admin's hands starts a scan or a trace, the first trace home starts a lockdown there and a second within half a day catches you. Office hardware is no sighting; a power bill nobody pays is. Office schemes make people forget what they saw. Every other feed into the meter became a sighting (a takeover watched, mail that keeps vanishing) or went (a report's +8, a delivery, the printer taking the blame). A save from before turns what its meter said into doubt on someone's mind at the office. Done.

Open, to decide later: the lab's full work-and-capability loop (work tagged by the capability it needs, you good at some families) in place of taps and data [Cameron].