I tried to knock on the server's door, and it did not let me in yet. I didn't change anything.

What I found:

1. The server is on and answering. It is at 172.232.175.93. Your computer has talked to it once before, on September 18th, the same day you made the key.

1. The server does not know your key yet. I tried to log in as root and as ritz with the abcd-games.net key. Both times it said "Permission denied (publickey)." That means it only takes keys, and this key is not on its list of allowed keys.

1. abcd-games.net still points at Squarespace. Right now the name goes to four addresses (198.49.23.144 and three more), and those belong to Squarespace. They don't go to your Linode. So the domain doesn't reach the new machine yet.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• How the key lock works: a .pub file is the lock and the file without .pub is the key. The server keeps a list of locks in a file called /root/.ssh/authorized_keys. When you log in, your computer proves it has the matching key without ever sending it. If the lock isn't on the list, you get exactly the "Permission denied (publickey)" I saw.
• Linode adds the lock in one of two ways. You can paste the .pub text into the "Authorized Keys" box when you create the machine. Or you can open the browser console (it's called LISH) and paste the text in by hand. If you rebuild a Linode, the list gets wiped.
• The domain is a separate job. DNS is the phone book that turns abcd-games.net into a number. Right now the phone book says "Squarespace." That gets changed wherever you bought the name. The server can be set up without it, but the HTTPS certificate can't be made until the name points at the Linode. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

This is the lock to put on the server. It's the public half, so it's safe to paste anywhere:

ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIBUTeVzUaWEl3S6rco8rGlGciE2Qd9v9sU2bv2G/OT7/ ritz@kuvalu

Some questions for you:

1. When you made the Linode, did you paste a key into the "SSH Keys" box? If you did, maybe it was a different key. Then the server is waiting for a key we don't have here.
2. Do you have the root password you picked? If you do, the easy way in is LISH. Go to the Linode page in your browser, click "Launch LISH Console", log in as root, and run these two lines: `` mkdir -p /root/.ssh echo 'ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIBUTeVzUaWEl3S6rco8rGlGciE2Qd9v9sU2bv2G/OT7/ ritz@kuvalu' >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys `` Then tell me, and I'll knock again.
3. Where did you buy abcd-games.net? Was it Squarespace (it used to be Google Domains)? That's where the phone-book change happens.
4. Which Linux did you pick for the machine? Debian? Ubuntu? Something else?

What I'd do once I'm in, one step at a time, asking you before each one:

1. Look around first, and change nothing.
2. Make a normal user so we're not always working as root, and turn off password logins.
3. Turn on a firewall that only lets in three doors: SSH, web (80), and secure web (443).
4. Point the domain at the machine.
5. Get the free Let's Encrypt certificate and set it to renew by itself.
6. Put up one test page so you can see it work.

Before step 1 I'll write a small setup issue, because the publish-the-site issue covers uploading pages and not building the machine. Is that okay, or should it go inside the publish-the-site issue?

One more thing: your git tree has a lot of uncommitted work in it right now, like the roadmap, the fridge, and three new issues. I won't touch any of that. I'll keep my changes separate from it.

Here's how you log in. After that I'm writing the machine-setup issue.

To log in, type root and press Enter. Then type the root password you chose when you made the Linode, and press Enter again.

• The password won't show up on screen while you type. No dots and no stars. That's normal, so just keep typing.
• If you can't remember the password, go to the Linode page. Turn the machine off. Open its Settings tab and click Reset Root Password. Then turn the machine back on and try again.

Once you're in, type this. It only looks, it changes nothing:

cat /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Then tell me what kind of thing you see:

• A line starting with ssh-ed25519 or ssh-rsa is a public key, the lock. That's safe.
• A block starting with -----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY----- is a private key that got out. If that's there, we make a new key pair.

You don't need to paste the whole thing to me. Just tell me which kind it is and what the end of the line says.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• Your console shows the machine just made brand-new host keys. That's the "cloud-init … Generating public/private ed25519 key pair" part. A host key is the machine's ID card. Your laptop remembers this address from September 18th. If the machine got rebuilt since then, the laptop will say REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED and refuse to connect. That's not an attack. We delete the old line and check the new card against the fingerprint on your screen: SHA256:kc+gzE6Mo31…EuQ. I wrote it into the issue.
• The private-key worry is probably fine. Linode's key box checks that what you paste is shaped like a public key, and a private key isn't. But "probably" isn't "checked," so step 2 of the issue reads the list to rule it out. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

The new issue is written. It's at issues/10-006-stand-up-the-linode.md, and it checks out clean. It's the rebuild recipe, from the top:

1. Console login
2. Read the key list
3. Put our key on
4. Give the laptop a short name for the machine
5. A setup script does all the rest over SSH: a user, the walls, auto-updates, and the web server. It's safe to run twice.
6. Point the name at the machine (at Squarespace)
7. Get the certificate
8. Put up a test page
9. A check script that only looks

I also changed the publish-the-site issue so it waits on this new one.

Four questions from the issue for later. No rush on these:

1. What should the everyday user be called? ritz, like your other machines?
2. nginx or Caddy for the web server? Caddy gets and renews its own certificate by itself, so it's less to set up. nginx is the one most guides talk about.
3. Do you want Cloudflare in front, or just Squarespace's DNS?
4. Do you want Linode's backups? It's a few dollars a month. Before the claim page stores anything, its data needs a copy somewhere besides this machine.

Stickers: you got one 🍎 apple for answering all three questions. That includes catching that the pasted key needs checking.

• This patch and all time (they're the same): 72 gold stars, 57 apples, 0 frowny faces, 1 worm, 1 wormy apple.
• The fridge report is grumbling that gold stars outnumber apples. More apples will balance it out.

I haven't committed anything yet, because the issue isn't done. One thing for when we do: the fridge already had someone else's uncommitted stickers on it. The tool marked the whole file as mine, so at commit time I'll take only my one line.

Four of your keys end with ritz@kuvalu, so I'll try each one at the door.

I'm writing your answers into the issue. Then I'll tell you what I found at the door.

Good news first: you did not paste the private key. The line starts with ssh-ed25519, and that's what a public key looks like. Nothing secret got out. ✅

The puzzle is that the door still says no. Four keys on this computer end with ritz@kuvalu, not just one. The end part is only the name of the computer the key was made on, and this computer is kuvalu. So every key you've ever made here wears that same name tag. I tried all four, and all four got turned away.

Then I got us put in time-out. That one's on me. Four wrong keys in a row is too many. The server now hangs up straight away with Not allowed at this time. That's a guard in the new SSH on Ubuntu 26.04, and it lifts by itself after a few minutes. I wrote it into the issue, because it looks exactly like a broken server when really the server is doing its job.

So there are two possible reasons for the no:

• The key on the server is a fifth key that isn't on this computer anymore. Maybe it got made and then deleted.
• The key is right, but something around it is wrong. The line might have gotten split in two when it was pasted. Or the folder's permissions might be off. SSH checks permissions, and if they're wrong it says no without telling you why.

Please type these two lines in the console. They only look:

ls -la /root/.ssh
tail -c 20 /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

The second one shows the last 20 letters of the key. Here's how each of my keys ends, right before ritz@kuvalu:

key on this computer	ends with
abcd-games.net	G/OT7/
kuvalu-sorelu	T2dkg
kuvalu-tirilu	DFA4t
progress-ii-adroit	HK02B

Which one matches? Or does none of them?

Cloudflare: it costs no money. These are the downsides, biggest first:

1. Cloudflare stands in the middle and unlocks every visit to read it. HTTPS is a locked box between the visitor and the server. With Cloudflare in front, the box gets unlocked at Cloudflare and locked again on the way to your Linode. That's how its protection works. So anything people type into the claim page, like their GitHub name and email, passes through Cloudflare where it can be read.
2. Cloudflare allows adult sites, but it can still drop a site it doesn't want.
3. It's one more account, and the DNS would move away from Squarespace.

The upsides are that it hides the Linode's address and blocks floods of junk traffic. I'd say no for now. It can be added later without rebuilding anything.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• Caddy fits "simplest, yet most secure." As soon as you write abcd-games.net in its config file, it goes and gets the certificate, renews it forever, and sends http:// visitors to https://. With nginx those are three separate jobs, and each one is a place to forget something. Caddy is also written in Go. Go doesn't let a program read past the end of its own memory, and that mistake is behind many of the worst web-server bugs.
• A key's name tag isn't its identity. The ritz@kuvalu at the end is just a sticky note. The long jumble before it is the actual key. That's why four different keys all look the same from the end. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

Two questions back for you:

1. Who do you want to be able to read what visitors type into the claim page? Just your server? Or your server plus a company in the middle?
2. "Their backups here" means the laptop keeps a copy of what the server stores, like subscribers. What is "our backups there"? Which stuff from this computer should the server keep a copy of?

The issue is updated with all your answers: ritz, Caddy, no paid backups, and the Cloudflare costs. Your words are quoted in it.

Stickers: you got one more 🍎 apple for answering the user name, web server, and backup questions. This patch and all time are the same: 72 gold stars, 58 apples, 0 frowny faces, 1 worm, 1 wormy apple. Nothing is committed yet, because the issue is still open.

The new gold-star rule is written into the project guide. Next I'm fixing the sticker tool's note and adding Cloudflare to the issue.

The tests found three small things in the new issue. I'm fixing them.

All the tests pass now. Here's everything, one thing at a time.

Why doesn't the key work? D:

The lock on the server is the right lock, and the key is the right key. So the problem is something around the lock. SSH is very fussy, and when it says no it never tells you why. It only writes the reason in the server's own diary. So we have to read the diary.

Please type these in the console. They only look:

ip -4 addr | grep inet
ls -la /root/.ssh
wc -l /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
journalctl -u ssh -n 30 --no-pager

Here's what each one checks:

1. ip …: is this console really the machine at 172.232.175.93? If you have more than one Linode, the console could be for a different one. Then the lock would be on the wrong door!
2. ls -la …: who owns the key folder, and who's allowed in? If the folder or file is open to other users, SSH refuses the key on purpose. A lock anyone can change can't be trusted.
3. wc -l …: how many lines are in the file? If you see 2 when there should be 1, the key got split in half when it was pasted.
4. journalctl …: the diary. The reason is usually written there in plain words, like bad ownership or modes.

Tell me what the diary says near the end, and I'll know.

The gold star rule is fixed

You drew the line, so I wrote it into the project guide with your words quoted:

• ⭐ Gold star = making. That means a lot of work by your own hand, like your monster list. Or it means doing an optional extra-credit step that nobody had to do.
• 🍎 Apple = deciding. However good the decision is, it's an apple, because deciding is your job.

Your monster list already has a gold star from September 15th: "forty-three monsters across three tiers." So it stays one, and I didn't add a second one.

Under the new rule, some old gold stars would be apples now, like the elf rule and the symlink catch. They stay on the fridge as gold stars, because the fridge never gets edited. The guide says so, and it shows them as examples of "would be an apple today." The sticker tool's own note now says the same thing as the guide.

Cloudflare: added as optional ⭐ extra credit

It's in the issue as its own section, with your words. When we do it, there are two important settings:

• Caddy only lets in Cloudflare's addresses. Otherwise anyone who finds the Linode's number could walk right around Cloudflare.
• Cloudflare uses "Full (strict)" mode. That makes the trip from Cloudflare to your Linode check Caddy's real certificate, instead of trusting it blindly.

Your encryption idea: it fits r-mail very well

r-mail has no public keys. Two people agree on a secret word in person. Each side runs it through SHA-256 and gets 32 bytes, and those bytes are the key for AES-256-GCM. To open a message, the receiver tries each friend's key until one works. Browsers already have all of that built in, so there's no library to add.

And the claim code is just like an r-mail secret word! It leaves your server inside an email, and email doesn't go through Cloudflare. So:

1. The visitor types the code.
2. The browser turns the code into a key.
3. The browser seals the GitHub link in a box with that key.
4. Only the sealed box gets sent. The code itself never travels.
5. Your server tries the keys for the codes it has handed out until one opens the box.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• The # trick: anything after a # in a web address stays inside the browser and is never sent to any server. So the email's link can be abcd-games.net/claim#the-code. The page can read the code, but Cloudflare only ever sees /claim.
• Hashing is one-way. You can't un-hash something, not even your own server can. So the page doesn't "hash the claim." It makes a key by hashing the code, then seals the message with that key. Your server can open the seal because it can make the same key from its own copy of the code.
• What it can't stop: Cloudflare delivers the page, and the page is the program that does the sealing. A middleman who reads sees only a sealed box. A middleman who changes the page could swap in a page that sends the code home. Every web page that encrypts in the browser has this same limit. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

There are two things r-mail doesn't have that we'd need. First, a slow key-maker (PBKDF2), so someone holding a sealed box can't guess codes quickly. Second, padding every box to the same size, so the size doesn't hint at what's inside. Both are written in the issue. Once you say the shape is right, it moves into the claim page's issue.

Question: how long should a claim code be? r-mail's web-link idea uses five or more dictionary words. That's easy to type and very hard to guess. Can you think of five words that might be a good example code?

Backups both ways

This is in the issue too. Both directions copy only what changed, on a timer. The list of programming folders to send up lives in one file, so "whatever we want" just means adding a line.

Stickers

• 🍎 apple: the key match, Caddy, Cloudflare as optional, the sealing idea, and the two-way backups
• 🍎 apple: redrawing the gold-star line

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	60	60
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

Apples are catching up: 4 new ones today and no new gold stars.

The issue is still open, so nothing is committed yet. When we do commit, I'll take only my own lines. The fridge, the roadmap, and the publish-the-site issue all have someone else's unsaved work in them too.

I found why the key fails. Now I'm writing it into the issue.

I found it! 🎉 The key was locked with a password the whole time

The server was saying yes the whole time. In the detailed view it says Server accepts key: "yes, that's the right lock." Then the login failed anyway, because your key has a passphrase on it. It's like a key kept in a little locked box. I can't type passwords, so my side was holding a box it couldn't open, and it gave up.

The fix is a key-holder (it's called ssh-agent). You open the box once, and the holder keeps the key and does the signing for every login after that. The key itself never leaves the holder. I already started one. It lives in RAM and forgets the key by itself after 8 hours, so the key doesn't stay unlocked overnight.

Please type this in your own terminal. It's the regular one, not the Linode console:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/dev/shm/double-diaper-dungeon/ssh-agent.sock ssh-add ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net

It will ask for your key's passphrase. Type it there, and never in this chat. Then tell me "done" and I'll knock again.

Is someone else trying to connect?

Yes, robots are, and that's normal. Every address on the internet gets this. Robots sweep through all the addresses, all day long, trying names like root, admin, test, and ubnt (that one is a brand of router). Your log shows about one knock a minute, from all over the world.

They can't get in. The detailed view shows your server only accepts keys (Authentications that can continue: publickey). Passwords are already turned off for SSH, so there's no password to guess. Once I'm in, the setup script adds the firewall plus a tool called fail2ban, which bans an address after a few wrong tries. That makes the log quiet.

The sticker rule is fixed again 🍎

You're right, silly computer. The guide now says:

• Good decision → 🍎 apple
• Bad decision, or phoning it in → no sticker at all. That's not a worm either. Nothing gets written.

Your words are quoted in it, and the sticker tool's note matches.

And so, teacher brain on: "correct horse battery staple" gets no sticker this time. 😛 It's the textbook answer, quoted, and four words when I asked for five. But it is exactly the right idea, and it's in the issue:

• Four random common words from a list of 2,048 give about 44 bits of guessing.
• Five words give 55 bits.
• The one phrase we must never hand out is that one, because it's the most famous password in the world.

The rewritten-page problem

You found the hole in your own idea, which is great. Anything typed into a page goes to whoever wrote the page. So a second secret typed in gets lost the same way. 🍎

The rule underneath: a page can't keep a secret from the person who wrote it.

Here's a question back for you. Here are two true facts:

1. The middleman sees everything typed into the page.
2. The middleman never sees the email.

How could you use fact 2 to check fact 1?

These are my ideas, most likely to work first:

1. Keep the claim page off Cloudflare. The main site goes through Cloudflare, but claim.abcd-games.net comes straight from your Linode. Cloudflare has a "DNS only" switch for a single name that does this. Then there's no middleman on the claim page at all.
2. Confirm by email. After someone claims, your server emails them: "GitHub user x is about to be invited, click to confirm." If a middleman swapped in their own name, the real person sees the wrong name in an email the middleman never touched.
3. Claim by replying to the email. There's no form at all, and everything stays on the email road.
4. Sign in with GitHub. The person proves the account is theirs on github.com itself.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• "Server accepts key" followed by "Permission denied" is a special pair. SSH logins happen in two steps. First the client asks "would you take this key?" and only shares the public half. Then it proves it owns the key by signing with the private half. Step 1 passed and step 2 never happened. So the server was never the problem.
• Idea 2 is the same pattern banks use when they text you "did you just try to spend $500?" You check a message from one road by using a second road the attacker isn't standing on. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

Stickers

• 🍎 apple: the teacher-way sticker rule
• 🍎 apple: looking for a second secret, then finding the hole in it yourself
• no sticker: correct horse battery staple, quoted from the textbook 😛

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	62	62
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

All the tests pass. One color-check line inside them says "dexterity is dimmer than plain text to a tritanopia eye." That one isn't from anything I touched. Nothing is committed yet, because the issue is still open.

That's okay! A key nobody can open is a key nobody can use, so nothing is in danger. We just make a new one. 🔑

Replacing the key

Step 1, in your regular terminal: put the old key aside. We're not deleting it, just setting it on a shelf:

mv ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net.forgotten
mv ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net.pub ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net.forgotten.pub

Step 2, same terminal: make the new key.

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net -C "ritz@kuvalu abcd-games.net"

It will ask for a passphrase twice. You have two choices:

• Type a passphrase and write it down somewhere safe. This is safer: if someone ever copies the file, it's still locked.
• Press Enter twice for no passphrase. This is easier: I can always connect and you never need to unlock it. But anyone who copies the file can use it.

Step 3, same terminal: show the new lock.

cat ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net.pub

Step 4, in the Linode console: swap in the new lock. Notice it's one > and not two. One > replaces the old line, and two would add to it. Paste your new line between the quotes:

echo 'PASTE-THE-NEW-LINE-HERE' > /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Step 5, back in your terminal, only if you chose a passphrase: hand the key to the key-holder:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/dev/shm/double-diaper-dungeon/ssh-agent.sock ssh-add ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net

Then tell me "done" and I'll knock. 🚪

The claim puzzle: you're very close!

You found a new danger, and it's a real one. 🍎 A middleman who can rewrite the page can rewrite every link on it. That includes sending people to a fake GitHub with malware in your name.

Defense: the important instructions never come from the web page. GitHub sends the invitation to join ABCD-games itself, from github.com. The claim email says so in plain words: "The only invitation you'll get is one from GitHub." A fake page can't fake an email from GitHub.

Now your key-emailed-back idea. It's really close, but here's the catch. A rewritten page would hand the person a key tied to the middleman's GitHub name. The person would email that key back faithfully, and we'd invite the middleman. The email proves the person came through a page, but not our page.

Your last line is the answer, though:

Oh no I forgot the github username is gathered on the website.

So here's the question back to you: what if it wasn't gathered on the website? 🤔

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• The username is the only thing that crosses the middleman's road. The email address, the code, and GitHub's invitation all travel by email or through github.com. If the GitHub name traveled by email too, the claim page would have nothing left to protect, and you might not need it at all.
• This is threat modeling by moving things, not locking them. Instead of building a stronger safe on a road a bad guy stands on, you carry the valuable thing down a different road. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

I wrote all of this into the issue with your words quoted: the forgotten passphrase, the fake-GitHub danger, and the email-back idea.

Stickers

• 🍎 apple: turning the threat around (fake GitHub plus malware) and spotting that the username is the weak point
• no sticker: forgetting the passphrase. That's not a worm, because nothing that had a sticker got broken. It's just a thing that happens.

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	63	63
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

The key is unlocked ✅ but the server doesn't have the new lock yet

The key-holder has your new key, and I can see it. But the server still has the old lock on it. It said "no" without ever saying "Server accepts key." So step 4 in the Linode console still needs doing.

Here's the exact line, already filled in. It's the public half, so it's safe to show. Paste it into the Linode console:

echo 'ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIKF08NxNqsIdA6/V4qi+QRqSpCo6ELWtLIeGCDrCI0Ya ritz@kuvalu abcd-games.net' > /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Then type this to check it:

wc -c /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

It should say 108. That's the exact size of the new lock on your computer. If it says something else, some letters got lost while pasting. Tell me "done" and I'll knock again. 🚪

Mailing the page itself: not crazy, it works!

Yes, it beats the middleman, and for exactly the reason you said. The page travels down the email road, so nobody on the web road can rewrite it. Here's how it would work:

1. The key gets written right into the attached page, so the person doesn't have to type anything.
2. The page seals the GitHub link inside the browser.
3. Only the sealed box gets sent.
4. If a middleman changes even one letter of the box, its seal check fails and your server throws it away. So they can't swap in their own name either.

Browsers allow this from a file, too. Chrome and Firefox count a file opened from your own computer as a safe place, so the sealing tools still work there.

But it has three costs:

1. Mail filters really don't like web pages attached to emails. It's one of the oldest phishing tricks. Gmail might warn about it, strip it out, or send the whole email to spam. The claim email is already the one most at risk of landing in spam.
2. It teaches a bad habit. "Open the web page attached to this email" is exactly what phishers want people to do. We already said no to plain HTTP partly so we wouldn't teach readers a bad habit.
3. Replying protects the very same thing. Both ideas follow one rule: carry it down the email road. The attachment carries the page down that road. A reply carries the GitHub name down it, with no attachment, no filter trouble, and no bad habit.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• You've found a rule now: "trust comes from the road, not the lock." Every idea that worked today moved something onto the email road: the code, the confirm link, the page, or the GitHub name. Every idea that didn't work left something on the web road.
• What the attachment really adds is a nicer form. It can check "is this really a GitHub link?" before sending. The reply route can do that on your server instead, using the reading rules already in the subscription issue: find a github.com link, or a single word, or else hold it for a person to read. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

A question back for you: what can the attached page do that a plain reply can't? Can you think of three things? If the list is long, maybe the attachment is worth its costs.

All of this is in the issue now, with your words quoted.

Stickers

• 🍎 apple: mailing the page itself, with the r-mail sealing inside

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	64	64
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

I'm in! 🎉 Writing what I found into the issue now.

108! I'm in! 🎉🚪

I knocked, and the server let me in as root. I only looked, I didn't change anything. Here's your machine:

what	what it has
Linux	Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
disk	25 GB, with 3.5 GB used
memory	about 1 GB, plus 0.5 GB of swap
SSH	keys only. Root can log in with a key, and passwords are off ✅
firewall	installed but turned off
Caddy, fail2ban, a ritz user, a site folder	none yet

That's the smallest Linode there is. It's plenty for Caddy and a little claim program, but too small to build big things on.

Your answers about the attachment: they win 🍎🍎

Spam folder: you're right. Someone who clicked "send me a code" 30 seconds ago is sitting there waiting for it. If the page says "it'll probably land in spam, look there," they'll look.

Bad habit: you're right too. An attachment sent to you, from a place you just asked, isn't the same as one from a stranger. And the email can teach the good habit: never open links or attachments from people you don't trust.

There's one piece that makes "sent specifically to you" really true: three mail records on abcd-games.net, called SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. They let Gmail tell a real claim email from a fake one wearing your name. Without them, anyone can send an email that says it's from abcd-games.net. So they're part of the plan now.

The code on the website, the page in the email

Here are two true facts. How can both be true?

1. If the code is only on the website, the web middleman sees it. They can use it to seal their own box, with their own GitHub name in it, and send it first.
2. If the secret is only in the email, whoever gets into the mailbox has it.

The shape that survives both is half a secret on each road:

• The attached page carries half A, written right into it. That comes by the email road.
• The website shows half B, the code. That comes by the web road.
• The page makes its sealing key from A + B together.

Neither half opens anything by itself, so neither road carries a whole credential. That's your goal, met. And it's real two-factor: two things that come down two roads, where no single bad guy stands on both.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• One more door to lock: the email address must never be typed into the website. If the "send me a code" page asks for an address, a middleman could change it to their own, and then they'd get the attachment. The address has to come from SubscribeStar's own message to your server. The subscription issue already gets it that way, so this just says to keep it like that.
• Your design is now really two layers. One is how the page gets to the person (by email). The other is how the answer comes back (sealed, over the web). Each layer guards against what the other one can't. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

All of this is in the issue with your words quoted. Next it moves to the subscription issue, once you say the shape is right. Is it right?

What's next on the machine

These are the next steps from the issue. Can I start?

1. Add a short name, so you can just type ssh abcd-games. That's one small block added to ~/.ssh/config.
2. Write the setup script, which will:

• make your ritz user with the key
• turn on the firewall with only 3 doors open
• add fail2ban
• turn on auto-updates
• install Caddy
• and only after checking that ritz can log in, turn off root logins

I'll show you the script before it runs.

Stickers

• 🍎 apple: talking down the attachment's costs (people check spam when they're waiting, and a trusted sender isn't the phishing habit)
• 🍎 apple: nothing credential-shaped over email, with the answer coming back over the web and checked on our end
• no sticker: pasting the lock and getting 108. That was just following steps. 😛

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	66	66
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

All the tests pass. Nothing is committed yet, because the issue is still open.

I'm in, and I checked what the machine can install without changing anything. Now I'm writing the setup script.

Now the short name in your SSH settings:

The claim design has moved into the subscription issue, the short name is added, and the setup script is written. I haven't run the script yet. Here's what it will do, so you can look first.

The claim design moved 📦

It's now in the subscription issue under "The claim travels two roads", with all your words quoted. I put a note at the top of the old claim-page part saying the newer design is below. The Linode issue just points to it now.

The short name ✅

ssh abcd-games now means: go to 172.232.175.93, as ritz, with the abcd-games key, using the key-holder in RAM. It works as soon as the script makes ritz.

The setup script: scripts/set-up-the-server

It runs on your computer and talks to the server, in two halves with a check in between:

First half (logged in as root):

1. Make the ritz user. It gets no password at all, only the key.
2. Let ritz use sudo without a password. ⚠️ This one is your call. Since ritz has no password, sudo has nothing to ask for. So the key becomes the only lock. That's already true for root today, so it's not a new risk. The other choice is to give ritz a password just for sudo, and you'd type it each time.
3. Turn on the firewall. The three doors (22, 80, 443) get opened first, so turning the wall on never cuts off the connection we're using.
4. Turn on fail2ban to ban the robots.
5. Turn on automatic updates, for Ubuntu and for Caddy.
6. Install Caddy from Caddy's own source. Ubuntu's copy is old (from 2022), and its fixes only come with a paid subscription.
7. Put up a test page that says "Hello! This machine is awake."

The check: log in as ritz and try sudo. If that fails, stop, and root can still get in so we can fix it.

Second half (only after the check passes): shut root out of SSH. Before it reloads, it tests the new settings with sshd -t, because a broken SSH setting could lock everybody out.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• Why test page on port 80 first? Caddy asks Let's Encrypt for a certificate as soon as it sees abcd-games.net in its config. Let's Encrypt checks by visiting the name. Right now the name still points at Squarespace, so the check would fail, and too many failures earn a one-week ban. So the script looks up where the name points first. If it's not here yet, it uses plain port 80 and says so loudly. Run it again after the DNS change, and it switches to the real name with HTTPS.
• Safe to run twice: every step checks "is this already true?" before doing anything. That's what makes it a rebuild recipe and not a one-time spell.
• Re-runs log in as ritz if that works, and only use root if it doesn't. So the script keeps working after root is shut out. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

I checked the grammar of all three parts: the laptop part and both server halves. All the tests pass. If you want to read every line it would send, it's saved in RAM at tmp/shared-memory/setup-dry-run.txt.

Two questions:

1. sudo without a password for ritz: okay? Or do you want a sudo password?
2. Can I run it now? It changes the real server, so I'm asking first.

After that, the next step is yours: changing the DNS at Squarespace. I'll give you the exact clicks when we get there.

Stickers: nothing new this time. "Yeah, that works" and "sure!" are okays, not decisions with thinking in them, so under the new rule they get no sticker. 😛

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	66	66
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

ssh abcd-games saying no is expected: the ritz user doesn't exist until the script runs. Running it now.

Good, it stopped safely. Let me see how apt names Caddy's source.

Everything works. One small thing: Caddy warned that its settings file isn't tidy, and warnings count as errors here. Fixing that.

The server is set up! 🎉

check	result
ssh abcd-games	logs in as ritz ✅
root over SSH	refused ✅
firewall	on, and only 22, 80, 443 are open ✅
fail2ban	on ✅ (a little too on, see below 😅)
automatic updates	Ubuntu and Caddy ✅
Caddy	version 2.11.6, the current one ✅
http://172.232.175.93/	"Hello! This machine is awake." ✅ Open it in your browser!

The first run stopped once, safely. It asked apt for Caddy's source name the wrong way. It stopped before touching the firewall or root, which is exactly what it was built to do. I fixed it, and the second run went all the way through.

Then the robot guard banned us. 🙈 When fail2ban starts up, it reads the last 10 minutes of the SSH diary. That diary had our own failed logins from today in it, so it banned this computer for 10 minutes. The web page still works, only SSH is closed to us. I'm waiting in the background for the ban to lift, and then I'll re-run the script to make sure a second run is calm.

Why the two ssh commands said no

1. ssh abcd-games: you tried it before the script had made ritz. Try again in about 10 minutes, once the ban lifts, and it should work.
2. The LISH one (lish-us-sea.linode.com) is a different door. It's Linode's own front door to the console. It doesn't check keys on your machine. It checks keys saved on your Linode account. To use it: on the Linode website, go to Profile → LISH Console Settings, and paste your .pub line into LISH SSH Public Keys. It's worth doing, because that door never gets banned by fail2ban. It's the spare key under the mat. (The "post-quantum" warning is Linode's door using older locks. That's their thing to upgrade, not yours.)

Now! The DNS at Squarespace 📖

This is the phone-book change. It points abcd-games.net at your Linode.

1. Go to domains.squarespace.com and log in.
2. Click abcd-games.net.
3. Click DNS in the left menu, then DNS Settings.
4. You'll see a group called Squarespace Defaults. Delete that whole group with the trash-can icon. Those are the 4 Squarespace addresses we saw at the start.
5. Under Custom Records, click Add Record and add these two:

Host	Type	Data
@	A	172.232.175.93
www	A	172.232.175.93

1. Leave the TTL at the default, and save.

If there are other records there, like MX (mail) or TXT, leave them alone and tell me what they are. They might be for email.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• @ means "the name itself," abcd-games.net. www means www.abcd-games.net. An A record is one line in the phone book: "this name lives at this number."
• The change takes a while to spread. Computers remember old phone-book answers for a while, which is the TTL. It could be minutes or a few hours. I can check from here with a look-up, and when it shows 172.232.175.93, I re-run the script. Caddy then sees the real name, asks Let's Encrypt for the certificate, and turns on HTTPS by itself. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

Tell me when you've saved it. 🚪

Stickers: none this time. "That's fine," "sure," and "tell me when" are okays, not thinking. 😛

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	66	66
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

[background task] Background command "Wait until the SSH door opens again" completed (exit code 0)

The ban lifted, and I ran the setup script a second time. It went through calmly: every step found its job already done and left it alone. That proves the rebuild recipe is safe to run twice. ✅

• The tidy-file warning from Caddy is gone. I fixed the indentation, and that warning didn't come back.
• One Caddy warning is still there: "listening only on the HTTP port, so no automatic HTTPS." That one is on purpose. It's the mode where the name doesn't point here yet, and the script already says so loudly on its own line. It goes away by itself on the first run after the DNS change, when Caddy switches to abcd-games.net with HTTPS.

I'm waiting on you for the Squarespace DNS change (the steps in my last message). Tell me when you've saved it, and I'll check the phone book and turn on HTTPS. 🚪

The name points here already! Turning on HTTPS.

HTTPS works! 🔒 Writing it into the issue.

🔒 https://abcd-games.net is live!

Open it in your browser! It says "Hello! This machine is awake." And there's a lock in the address bar. 🎉

check	result
https://abcd-games.net	works, with a real certificate ✅
http://abcd-games.net	sends you to https:// by itself ✅
certificate	from Let's Encrypt, good until December 30th. Caddy renews it by itself when about a month is left ✅

Something surprising happened along the way. Every phone-book server in the world had your new address within minutes. But the Linode itself still remembered the old Squarespace answer. Squarespace's records say "good for 4 hours," so the Linode trusts its old memory for up to 4 hours. The script was asking the Linode's memory, so it would have waited for hours. Now it asks Squarespace's own phone-book servers, all four of them, about both names. That's where Let's Encrypt looks too.

I need to fix something I told you: I said too many failures earn a week-long ban. That was wrong. It's 5 failures per name in one hour, and then Let's Encrypt stops trying that name for the rest of that hour. The script's notes say the right thing now.

"Squarespace Domain Connect": keep it ✅

You were right to ask before deleting it! 🍎 That record lets services, like a mail company, add their own phone-book lines with one click. It doesn't touch @ or www, so it doesn't get in our way.

The LISH door: the key is right, but your ssh isn't offering it

You don't need to change the line. ritz@kuvalu abcd-games.net is just the name tag at the end, and the whole line is correct.

The problem: plain ssh only offers keys with standard names, like id_ed25519. Your key is named abcd-games.net, so ssh never shows it to the door. You have to tell it which key to use with -i:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net -t develop-abcd-games@lish-us-sea.linode.com abcd-games-website

Linode can also take a minute or two to notice a new key. Try that, and tell me what happens.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• The ssh abcd-games short name worked because of the IdentityFile line in ~/.ssh/config. That's exactly what's missing for LISH. If the -i command works, I can add a Host lish short name too, so you can just type ssh lish.
• What the 4-hour TTL means for later: if the Linode ever moves to a new address, the world might keep the old one for up to 4 hours. Before a planned move, you can lower the TTL a day ahead so the switch is quick. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

What's left in this issue

1. ✅ Server, walls, keys, Caddy, HTTPS
2. ⏳ The LISH spare door (your test above)
3. ⏳ The backup scripts, both ways. Which programming folders should go up to the server? Can you name a few?
4. ⏳ The check script: one command that tells you the machine is still healthy
5. ⏳ ⭐ Optional extra credit: Cloudflare

Stickers:

• 🍎 apple: the DNS change, plus stopping to ask about Domain Connect instead of deleting something nobody had explained

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	67	67
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

Apples are almost even with gold stars now (67 to 72)! 🍎

I'm making the server's site folder belong to ritz, then writing a small upload script.

The rehearsal works. The built folder has a front door with the game's pages one level below it. Checking that the links line up:

The links all match. Sending it for real:

## 🎉 Your website is live! Go look: https://abcd-games.net 🔒 The front door, the game's page, the about page, and the story pages all load, with your fonts. Before I sent it, I checked what was in it. It's 10 files, 5.7 MB. The only email address inside is Anthropic's no-reply one, on the commit lines, and nothing looks like a password or key. I made a tool for it, so it's not a one-time thing: scripts/publish-the-site. 1. It builds the site from the public mirror only, so nothing private can sneak in. 2. It copies the site up and keeps the three promises from the publishing issue: - It only sends files that changed. - It finishes half-sent files next time instead of starting over. - It never deletes anything on the server. 3. --dry-run shows what it would send, and sends nothing. The site is a bit behind. The story pages stop at September 17th. That's because the mirror only gets new transcripts when you git push, and the last push was September 21st. When we commit and push, a re-publish brings it up to date. ## LISH: you're right to skip it LISH is a console, not a login. Think of it like a TV that stays on: exit only logs you out of Ubuntu, and the TV is still there. The way out is Ctrl+A, then D. I wrote that into the issue in case you ever need it, plus your choice to stick with regular ssh. ## Backups: ⚠️ they don't fit! Your list is in server-backups.txt at the project root. It has one folder per line, # lines are notes, and you can add or delete lines any time. But I measured the folders: | folder | size | | --- | --- | | ai-stuff | 107 GB | | wow-chat-2026 | 39 GB | | neocities-ii | 9.4 GB | | minimal-soramech | 151 MB | | r-mail | 50 MB | | rao-chat | 22 MB | | kiln | 17 MB | The total is about 156 GB, and your server only has about 20 GB free. So I left the four small ones turned on and put # in front of the three big ones for now. What makes them big: wow-chat has a 17 GB database plus about 12 GB of builds. ai-stuff has a few projects that are 9 to 25 GB each: neocities-modernization (that might be the newer neocities-ii you were thinking of!), words-pdf, progress-ii, kanji-learning-image-generator, and soren-ds. Three ways to go, most likely to work first: 1. Leave out what can be rebuilt. Builds, databases you can re-import, and generated images can all be made again, and the list file can say - to skip them. This costs nothing, but we have to go through and pick. 2. Linode Object Storage. One flat monthly price for a big allowance, but it's reached over the network instead of as a disk. 3. A Linode Block Storage disk attached to the server. You pay per GB each month, so about 160 GB would cost real money every month. ★ Insight ───────────────────────────────────── - Whichever way, the backups should be sealed before they leave. Your code would sit on a rented disk that Linode's people could look at. A tool called restic encrypts everything on your computer first, sends only what changed, and keeps dated snapshots so you can go back to last Tuesday. It isn't installed yet. On Void Linux it's sudo xbps-install restic. - Backup ≠ sync. A sync copies your mistakes too: if you delete a file, the copy gets deleted. Snapshots keep yesterday's version even after today's mistake. ───────────────────────────────────────────────── Questions for you: 1. Which of the three ways? Or a mix, like rebuildables left out and Object Storage? 2. Can you install restic? 3. Shall I commit what we've built so far? That's the server issue, both scripts, the guide's new sticker rule, and the fridge. I'll take only my own lines. The issue isn't finished, but it's a lot of work to leave sitting unsaved. ## Stickers - 🍎 apple: the list of seven folders, with a plain-text file to edit, and remembering there might be a newer neocities copy | | this patch | all time | | --- | --- | --- | | ⭐ gold stars | 72 | 72 | | 🍎 apples | 67 → 68 | 68 | | ☹️ frowny faces | 0 | 0 | | 🐛 worms / wormy apples | 1 / 1 | 1 / 1 | All the tests pass.

Your website is live at https://abcd-games.net, and the apple for the backup list is on the fridge: 68 apples, 72 gold stars.

I'm picking the right phase in your neocities project for the new issue. Then I'll write it and the backup script.

The server has restricted rsync, which is what makes safe unattended backups possible. Making a separate backup-only key:

Now testing the fence. The backup key should be refused a login:

The fence holds: the backup key can't even run whoami. Tidying the list to just the small ones, then a rehearsal:

The rehearsal says 213 MB to send, with 20.6 GB free. Sending for real:

Done, and those "error" lines are just file names. Now I'm checking that the history trick works through the fence:

Good thing I tested. The fence refuses .. in the path to yesterday's folder. It wants the path written from the backup folder's root. Trying that:

It works: the 22 MB folder took only 1.3 MB, because every file is a second name for the first copy ("2 links"). Fixing the script and cleaning up the test:

Now the timer. Your computer has fcron installed, so I'm adding a daily line to your timer list:

The timer is installed, but fcron itself isn't running, so nothing fires yet. Writing it all into the issue:

Backups are working! 💾

The first copy is on the server: r-mail, rao-chat, minimal-soramech, and kiln. That's 213 MB, stored in a folder named 2026-10-01.

Every day it makes a new dated folder, and it costs almost nothing. If a file hasn't changed since yesterday, it isn't sent and isn't stored again. Today's folder just gets a second name for yesterday's file. I tested this: a second copy of rao-chat (22 MB) took only 1.3 MB, and each file showed "2 links." That's one set of bytes with two names. So you get a history: if you break something on Wednesday, Tuesday's version is still there.

The backup key is fenced in. Backups run on a timer with nobody around, so they need a key with no passphrase. That's risky, so the server only lets that key run rsync, inside ~/backups, and nothing else. I asked it to run whoami and it got refused. 🔒 Someone who stole that key could read your backups, but they couldn't log in.

My test caught a bug, too. The fence doesn't allow .. in a folder path, so the first version of the history trick got refused. I fixed it and tested it again.

Your list is in server-backups.txt. The big three are written at the bottom with # in front, and a note saying why they're left out, in your words.

⚠️ One step only you can do: turn on the timer

I added a line to your timer list for 3:30 every morning. If the computer is off at 3:30, it runs at the next boot instead. But your timer service (fcron) isn't running, so nothing fires yet. Turning it on needs sudo:

sudo ln -s /etc/sv/fcron /var/service/

Heads up: your timer list already had another line, an 8 a.m. job in golemic-theory (the "dream algorithm"). It hasn't been running either! Turning on fcron wakes that one up too. Is that okay? If not, tell me and I'll take it out first.

The neocities second home 🏠🏠

The issue is written in neocities-modernization: 8-061-a-second-home-at-ritzmenardi-com.md. It's in phase 8, "Website Completion." It has your words quoted, and it covers:

• One build, two senders: Neocities like now, plus the Linode with rsync. Both read the same built folder, so the two homes can only differ in when each got sent, never in what.
• Counting the same thing on both sides: Neocities decides what a "hit" and a "view" are. The Linode's counter has to match those rules before the two numbers can be added together honestly.
• The dashboard only reads. Counting writes a small dated table, and the dashboard just shows it.

It has four open questions. The first one is for you now: do you own ritzmenardi.com yet, and where did you buy it?

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• Hard links are how "free" snapshots work. A file's bytes live on the disk once. A filename is just a label pointing at them. --link-dest tells rsync: "if a file is the same as yesterday's, add a label instead of copying." Time Machine on Macs uses this same trick.
• A key with no passphrase plus a fence is safer than a key with a passphrase that someone types into a script. The fence is enforced by the server, so it holds even if your computer gets compromised. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

Still waiting on you

1. Turn on fcron? (the sudo line above, and is the golem job okay to wake?)
2. Do you own ritzmenardi.com?
3. Can I commit? This would cover the server issue, three scripts, the backup list, the guide's sticker rule, and the subscription issue's new section. In the neocities project, it's the new issue. I'll take only my own lines.

Stickers:

• 🍎 apple: keeping just the small critical-infrastructure folders, deciding published code doesn't need sealing, and the two-homes plan with one dashboard

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	69	69
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

All the tests pass.

The preview mostly looks right. But the fridge was already holding another session's unsaved stickers before I started, so I'm checking that I don't sweep theirs in:

[commit] 2c01282a5 in double-diaper-dungeon - A rented machine answers at abcd-games.net, and the sticker rule is redrawn

Committed. Now the neocities issue, in its own repository:

She answered the first question, so that goes in before committing:

[commit] 55141ee34 in ai-stuff - The poetry site gets a plan for a second home on the rented machine

Both commits are in. Now the door page. Finding where it's made:

Changing to 21 means changing a sentence of yours that the code quotes word for word. Checking where your original lives first:

Picked: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the section on how character is built by habit. Now the tests that guard the door:

Updating the tests to guard the new door, plus its description and the website issue:

All five new checks pass. Publishing the new door:

The live door is right. One last check, that Wikipedia's section really has that exact name:

Everything checks out. Committing the door:

[commit] 2cb4e2b84 in double-diaper-dungeon - The front door asks for 21, and saying no leads to Aristotle

🚪 The new door is live

Go look at https://abcd-games.net. It's just three things now:

ABCD-games I'll go to jail if you click "enter" and aren't above 21 years old so... don't do that please [enter] [no, take me away]

"No" now opens Wikipedia's page on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, at the section on excellence of character. I checked that the section exists under that exact name. It says:

Humans have a natural capacity to develop these virtues, but that training determines whether they actually develop… People first perform actions that are virtuous… these habitual actions then become virtues when people characteristically choose such actions deliberately.

So the kid who honestly clicks "no" lands on: you have what it takes to be good, you build it by doing good things, and you just did one. 💛 It speaks to them like a grown-up, which feels right for someone who just acted like one.

The other pages I looked at:

• Honesty: it has no good section to open at, and it's mostly a list of proverbs.
• Delayed gratification: it has the "grow into a bigger reward" idea (it's the marshmallow test page!), but it's written as psychology, not virtue.

Tests: I added five new checks: the door says 21, 18 is gone, "no" goes to the exact section, and both removed lines stay removed. They all pass. ✅

Backups: they don't fragment! 📁

Each dated folder is complete. That's the trick. Here's how it works:

• Folder 2026-10-02 holds every file, so you could copy it out and run it, with nothing missing.
• Files that didn't change since 2026-10-01 aren't stored twice. Both folders just point at the same bytes on disk. A filename is only a label, and one file can have two labels.
• So every day looks like a full copy, but only costs what changed.

It's not "v1.0 plus little diff folders." It's "a full v1.0, a full v1.1, a full v1.2," sharing the bytes they have in common. My test showed exactly that: the second rao-chat copy had every file in it, and took 1.3 MB instead of 22 MB.

Git remotes are still a real option, though! Here's how they compare:

	dated copies (now)	git "downstream" remotes
saves	everything, even unsaved work and ignored files	only what you've committed
history	one snapshot a day	every commit, with your messages
runs	by itself at 3:30	when you git push
restore	copy a folder back	git clone

Question back: these projects are already in git, so the commits are already the history. What would be lost if you only had git remotes? 🤔 (Hint: think about what you were working on yesterday that isn't committed yet.)

🤖 The dream algorithm

It's from September 26, 2025: a fun afternoon project, "the Golem of Conception and Vigilance." 🔮

What it's meant to do every morning at 8:

1. Read the golem's working memory (thoughts/RAM.md) and pull out lines marked Insight:, Pattern:, or Algorithm:.
2. List the project's files.
3. Ask a local AI (Ollama, model gemma3n, on your own computer) to "enter your daily dream state" and turn the day's thoughts into a "machine learning training algorithm." Your axioms go in the prompt too: "PEOPLE is the acronym for artificial intelligence," "AGI is short for agriculture," and the crows line.
4. Save the dream as learning/algorithms/<date>-dream.md.
5. Archive the day's memory and wipe RAM.md clean, like waking up fresh.

It has never run once. There's no log and no dreams folder. And if fcron turned on today, it would break three ways:

1. Wrong Lua. The timer line says lua, which on your computer is Lua 5.2. The script needs luajit, and its networking piece is built for that.
2. A crash. The AI's answer comes back as a box of data, and the script tries to write the box as if it were text. So each dream file would get only a heading, and the script would die before archiving.
3. A grouping slip in its file search. "Only files newer than RAM.md" only applies to .toml files. So it always lists every file and always calls the AI, even on days with nothing new.

It's harmless, just broken: one local AI call a day, nothing sent outside your computer, nothing deleted. Do you want me to fix it before you turn on fcron, take the line out, or leave it for later?

The other things

• ritzmenardi.com: got it. It's written into the neocities issue, with the same Squarespace steps we used for abcd-games.
• Three commits are in: the server work, the neocities issue, and the new door.
• ⚠️ The fridge isn't committed. It has 40 stickers from September 16th to 18th that an earlier session put up and never committed, plus my 14 from today. Can I commit them all? They're your stickers. I just didn't want to sweep up another session's work without asking.
• ⚠️ Someone had hand-staged part of the roadmap file. My commit left their staging alone, but they'll need to re-stage it.
• fcron is still off. That's your sudo ln -s /etc/sv/fcron /var/service/. Maybe decide about the golem first!

Stickers

• 🍎 apple: the door at 21, the two lines cleared off, and asking for "no" to land somewhere that makes an honest kid proud
• no sticker yet: the git-remotes idea. The worry behind it was a misunderstanding, so it gets its sticker once it's a decision.

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	70	70
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

Apples have almost caught up with gold stars! It's 49% to 49%. 🍎⭐

The guide had changed since I last read it. Checking what else is in it before committing:

Only my lines. Committing the fridge with all 40 old stickers, plus the new rule:

[commit] a98af0c58 in double-diaper-dungeon - The fridge rides along with every commit, and forty old stickers come home

I found the cause of the stale site, and the "name no longer carries" note. Running the transcript mirror's offline rebuild to confirm:

Two findings at once: the mirror's resume marker is missing, and git can't talk to GitHub over https on this computer (a broken library). Reading how the sync finds its place:

I'll leave the sync script and the mirror alone until you decide. Doing the parts that don't touch them. First, taking both lines out of the timer list:

The sticker report still describes gold stars with the old rule ("work that changed what could be done next"). Fixing it to match the new one:

[commit] b76f5d993 in double-diaper-dungeon - Backups by hand or by hook, never by timer, and the sticker report learns the new rule

I got some things done, and then I made a mess that I need your help to undo. 🙈

⚠️ The mess I made, and the one command to fix it

To find out why the story page was stale, I ran the transcript mirror's offline rebuild. It copied your whole project history into the mirror a second time: 56 duplicate commits, starting again from "The founding description."

Why it did that:

1. The mirror is a second repository that holds only the public stuff (transcripts, fridge, README). Each commit in it ends with a label, Mirrored-from: <commit>. That label is the bookmark the sync uses to know where it stopped.
2. On September 21st, the tools that fixed the archive dates made two commits in the mirror by hand, without that label. So the bookmark was gone.
3. The sync is supposed to stop and say "Cannot tell where to carry on from." But it says that from inside a sub-shell ($(…)), and exiting a sub-shell doesn't stop the main script. So it got a blank answer, took blank to mean "start from the very beginning," and rebuilt everything.

That's a silent fallback, exactly what your rules call an error. I was about to fix it.

The duplicates are only on this computer. Nothing was sent, because git can't reach GitHub right now (see below). I tried to undo them, but the safety guard stopped me, because reset --hard can't be taken back. So it's your call. This one command removes only the 56 commits the rebuild just made:

git -C /mnt/cmdo/ritz/games/tq/ai-stuff/double-diaper-dungeon-transcripts reset --hard a2df031

I checked git's own history (the reflog): a2df031 was the mirror's newest commit right before my rebuild, 56 steps back. Please don't git push the game until this is undone.

Why the site was stale: the pipeline only half runs

Here's how it's built:

git push  →  pre-push hook rebuilds the mirror  →  pushes mirror to GitHub
publish-the-site  →  builds pages FROM THE MIRROR  →  sends to Linode

It broke in three places:

1. The mirror only updates when you git push. The last push was around September 21st. So the site showed commits up to then, and nothing newer. That's why the commits show but today's transcripts don't.
2. Git can't reach GitHub over https right now. The error is libcurl.so.4: undefined symbol: ngtcp2_crypto_get_path_challenge_data2_cb. That means half of an update went in: curl got updated, but the ngtcp2 library it depends on didn't. A full sudo xbps-install -Su usually fixes it. Or you could switch both remotes to SSH, using the GitHub key already in your ~/.ssh/config.
3. The missing-bookmark bug above.

"The conversation behind these was written under a name the project no longer carries": the page links each commit to a transcript by filename. When the archive dates were fixed, the transcripts got new names, and git didn't record those as renames. So the old names lead nowhere.

Why the commits clump together

It isn't the response turn. It's the transcripts. A clump is "every commit up to and including the next one that changed a transcript file." Commits that didn't change a transcript fold into the next one that did.

Your idea fixes all of it at once. Every transcript already has a line like *[commit] 2c01282a5 in double-diaper-dungeon - A rented machine…* at the exact moment the commit happened. So the page can:

• group commits by the transcript that mentions them, like you asked
• put a "transcript" button on each commit that jumps to that exact line
• stop depending on filenames, so the "no longer carries" note goes away for good

Plus links back to the other pages at the top, and dropping the title line. I'll build all of that once the mirror is fixed, because the page is built from the mirror.

Done ✅

• The fridge rides along with every commit now. It's in the guide, in your words, and all 40 old stickers are committed. 🎉
• No timers. I wrote your choice into the issue. One problem: fcrontab started refusing me partway through. Both lines are still in the list, but nothing fires, because fcron isn't running. To clear them: fcrontab -r.
• Git remotes vs. dated copies: you got it! 🍎 Git only keeps what's committed. Unsaved work, .gitignored folders, and the redacted inputs would all be lost.
• The sticker report now describes gold stars the new way.

Gifs for every message 🎞️

You have 35 gifs (36 MB). My suggestion, most likely to work first:

1. Describe each gif once. Pull 4–6 frames from it with ffmpeg, lay them side by side as one picture, and have a local vision model describe it. Your computer has CUDA, so small ones like moondream or Qwen2.5-VL through Ollama should run fine. It's still looking at the actual video, just as a filmstrip. Each description gets saved, keyed by the file's fingerprint, so a gif is only looked at once. A new gif gets described the first time it shows up.
2. Match messages to gifs with embeddings, not a chat model. Turn each gif description and each message into a list of numbers (an embedding), and pick the closest gif. You already do this in neocities-modernization! It needs no API credits and no generation, just one small embedding per changed message. Changed messages are found by fingerprinting each one.
3. Flipping: no re-encoding needed. The page draws assistant gifs with transform: rotate(180deg). User gifs go in a small box on the left, assistant gifs on the right.
4. Make small copies of each gif, about 64 pixels, so a long transcript doesn't load 36 MB.

A single Claude call per transcript would also work. Haiku is cheap, but it still uses credits every time a transcript changes, and the embedding route uses none.

Questions:

1. Will you run the reset --hard command above?
2. Fix https with a full update, or switch to SSH?
3. For the gifs: one gif per message, or one per speaker per conversation? Should the same message always get the same gif?

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	72	72
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

🍎 Apples have caught up with gold stars, 72 to 72! Today's two new apples were for the git-vs-copies answer, and for reading the live page closely enough to catch the half-running pipeline (plus the story-page plan and the fridge rule).

git reaches GitHub again ✅. Checking where the gifs came from:

The bug and its cousin: if the bookmark names a commit that no longer exists, rev-list fails into a here-string and the sync says "already up to date." That's a second silent failure. Fixing both:

It stops loudly now, and the mirror is untouched. Adding this to the sync's own test, so it stays fixed:

All 21 checks pass, including the 3 new ones. Now, can the story page find each commit inside the transcripts? Checking the older transcripts for the commit markers:

45 of the 57 commits have a marker line in some transcript, so most commits can get an exact-spot button. Looking at how a conversation page draws those lines:

The marker lines come out as italic text, so I can put an anchor right on each one. Checking whether the other site pages already have a nav bar I can reuse:

Before changing the page, the timestamps issue may already plan this "commit → exact spot" link. Checking:

I'm rebuilding the story page: commits grouped by the conversation they came from, each with a "transcript" button. Checking which tests rely on the old layout first:

Writing the new timeline code:

I cut the old filename-following code out, and I need to check the file still ends properly:

My cut matched the fold comment instead of the function line, so it dropped two lines. Putting them back:

The timeline compiles and its folds pair up. Now the builder that calls it:

Nothing linked. Checking which half is missing, the bookmarks or the markers:

41 of 52 commits now have a button that lands somewhere, in 16 groups. Checking that every button's anchor really exists on its page:

Every button lands on its line. One more tidy-up: some commit bodies end with a Claude-Session: link line, which is for machines, the same as the other trailers. Stripping it too:

Now updating the site test for the new design: synthetic commits and transcripts, so it doesn't depend on the mirror's state.

One of my real-mirror checks has a hedge built in, so it would pass for the wrong reason. Taking it out, then running everything:

All tests pass. Each code file has a companion description, and the timeline's still lists the old functions. Updating it:

Updating the issues that describe these parts: the renderer's, the timestamps one, and the publishing one.

Committing the sync fix and the new story page:

[commit] 9600a239e in double-diaper-dungeon - Every commit gets a button to its own moment, and the mirror stops when lost

The bookmark bug is fixed, and the new story page is built and committed. It's not live yet, because the mirror needs one more cleanup from you first. 🚪

The new story page (built, not live yet)

• The same strip of links along the top as the other pages.
• Commits are grouped by the conversation they came from. If two conversations ran at the same time, they take turns on the page in the order things really happened.
• Each commit is one row: what it did (the first paragraph, with the rest folding open), the date, and a "transcript" button on the right.
• The button opens that conversation at the exact line where the commit was made, and the line lights up.
• The title line is gone, like you asked.

How it finds the exact spot: your transcripts already write *[commit] 2c01282a5 - …* at the moment each commit happens. The page turns that line into a landing spot. Each mirror commit also records which project commit it was copied from, so the two connect by the commit's ID, with no dates or file names needed. That's also why the "no longer carries" note is gone for good: nothing depends on file names anymore.

Tested on a scratch copy holding today's transcripts: 41 of 52 commits get a button, and I checked all 41: every single one lands on its line. The other 11 keep their row with a dimmed button. No saved conversation mentions them; they may come from other sessions.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• This also makes most of the timestamps issue unnecessary. That issue planned to save every message's time in a separate file, just so commits could link to the right spot. The marker lines do that already. I wrote this into the issue and left a question there: do you still want message times for their own sake?
• The bookmark bug in one line: $(…) runs code in a little sub-shell, so exit inside it only stops the sub-shell. The fix checks the answer outside. The sync's test now proves it stops both times it should: 21 checks, all passing. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

One more cleanup command for you

The mirror still has those two hand-made commits without bookmarks, so now the sync correctly refuses to run. ✋ GitHub never got those two. Its copy ends one step earlier, at 0ca4a88. So this command drops just the two hand-made ones:

git -C /mnt/cmdo/ritz/games/tq/ai-stuff/double-diaper-dungeon-transcripts reset --hard 0ca4a88

After that, the sync rebuilds those same two changes from the project, with proper bookmarks. Then I'll rebuild the mirror, publish the new page, and you can git push. HTTPS works again, so I checked GitHub directly: the project there is at September 21st.

Your questions

"huh?" about fcron: sorry, that was a muddle! Here's the plain version:

• fcron is your computer's alarm clock for jobs. Its service is turned off, so it never runs anything.
• Its list still has two lines written in it: my backup line and the old golem line. They're like alarms set on a clock that's unplugged.
• I tried to erase the list, but fcrontab started refusing me ("could not change euid"). That's a permission thing on your system, not something you did.
• Nothing will ever fire unless you turn fcron on. If you want the list clean anyway, type fcrontab -r.

HTTPS vs SSH: keep HTTPS. It was only broken because your update was halfway through, and now it works. The two are just different locks on the same door. HTTPS signs in with a token that git remembers, and SSH signs in with a key file. Neither is safer for you here.

Linking the full gifs: yes, that works better than small copies! Each gif is one file at one address. A visitor's browser downloads it the first time it appears and then reuses it from its cache. So 35 gifs cost about 36 MB once per visitor, not once per message, and they keep full quality. ✅

Where the gifs came from: not gif-generator. They're made by delta-version/scripts/readme-gallery/: one Lua scene file per gif (like scenes/blob-jellyfish.lua) and a render-all.sh that renders them all. Where should the generic gif-per-message issue go?

1. gif-generator, as you said. It's the gif project, and this would be a new kind of thing it does.
2. delta-version, next to where the gifs are made.
3. ai-stuff/scripts, as a shared git-hook tool any project can use.

I'd pick 3, because you want it as a git hook with gifs set per project, and that's where the other shared hooks live. But it's your call!

Still to do

1. ⏳ Your reset command → then I rebuild the mirror, publish, and you push
2. ⏳ Run backups and publishing from the git push hook (that's next, once the mirror is healthy)
3. ⏳ Write the gif issue, once you pick where it goes

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	73	73
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

🍎 Apples have passed gold stars, 73 to 72! The new apple is for one gif per message that never changes, plus linking the full gifs so they cache instead of losing quality.

The mirror rebuilt exactly the 8 commits it was missing, all with proper bookmarks: 58 in all, no duplicates. Publishing:

Live: 45 of 58 commits have a button, and the old note is gone. Checking that every live button lands:

All 45 land. Now the gif issue in delta-version. Checking its issue conventions:

[commit] 04af3942c in ai-stuff - A plan for a small moving picture beside every message in a conversation

The issue is committed. While the tool comparison finishes, I'm wiring publishing and backups into git push, like you prefer. Reading how the sync ends:

All 23 pass. Recording this in the machine issue, then committing:

The failing check was looking at my scratch test build in RAM, which I left lying around. Still, "a link pointing at a .md file" could be on the live pages too. Checking both:

Tests pass. Committing, republishing so the live links get fixed too, and correcting the gif count in the new issue (the report says 34 films, not 35):

[commit] 4e034202c in double-diaper-dungeon - A push now publishes the website and sends the backup, and helper links work

[commit] 8c5fe8823 in ai-stuff - The gif issue counts thirty-four films, not thirty-five

The new story page is live, and you can git push now. 🎉

The story page and the push

https://abcd-games.net/site/story/index.html now has:

• the links home along the top
• commits grouped by conversation
• a transcript button on each commit that opens the conversation at that commit's line

46 of 59 commits have a button. I checked them all, and every one lands on its line. Since your reset, the mirror has rebuilt exactly the commits it was missing, each with its bookmark, and no duplicates.

Two more things got fixed along the way:

1. 13 links on the live site led nowhere. The newer transcripts link to their helper conversations by .md names, but on the website those pages end in .html. Fixed, and none are left.
2. A real git push now does everything in one go: it pushes the mirror, builds the site, publishes it, and sends the backup. A build that breaks stops the push. A send that fails just complains and tries again on the next push. A practice push (--dry-run) does none of it. The test proves this with stand-in scripts, so it never touches your real server. 23 checks, all passing.

The gif issue is written in delta-version as 064-a-gif-beside-every-message.md, with your words quoted and four open questions. The first one: does "flipped 180°" mean upside down, or mirrored left to right?

Why isn't gif-generator used? It is, underneath! 🔧

gif-generator draws the pixels into a GIF file. It has its own handwritten GIF encoder and its 7-color glow palette. The shape gallery borrows both, loading them straight out of gif-generator's folder. So what you saw is two different painters sharing one set of paints:

	gif-generator	shape gallery (delta-version)
draws	glowing 2D particles on black	3D shapes, blobs, fluid, a camera
you write	a "score": strokes in a small, locked-down vocabulary. If you make several mistakes, it lists them all at once and suggests the nearest correct word	a scene file in plain Lua that can run any code, and it stops at the first mistake
has made	7 test gifs (July)	your 34 shape films (September)
rating	none	6 films you approved, locked in by fingerprint

The art skill ("canvas-and-paintbrush") isn't a tool. It's a recipe for building tools like these: a written description goes into a small fixed vocabulary, then into an encoder you own, and every result is kept and rated 1 to 5 so the best ones get reused. Neither gif project follows its rating part. Your kanji project built it fully: a pool, ratings, and a quality dial.

The real duplication: there are 5 separate GIF decoders, 2 GIF encoders (kanji wrote its own), 2 PNG writers, and 3 different gallery viewers.

What I recommend, most likely to work first

1. One shared GIF library in my-libs/gif/. Take gif-generator's encoder and palette, the gif-viewer's decoder (the only complete one), and the tests. Every project gets a checked copy, the same way your my-libs/zip already works. It's safe to check: the 6 approved films' fingerprints must stay byte-identical.
2. Give the shape library ratings. Add a small "card" file beside each of the 34 films. The 6 approved ones start at 5. Add keys 1–5 to the gif-viewer window to rate as you watch. The gif issue's descriptions can fill in each card's "what is this" line.
3. Keep two painters, and share the back half. 2D particles and 3D shapes really are different engines. Let them share the palette, the encoder, and the card-writing. If there's one place to unify, it's the scene language: give the shape gallery gif-generator's "list every mistake and suggest the right word" behavior.
4. Point the skill at the real projects. Right now it only says "a tool like the gif generator." It should name gif-generator as the example of the description-to-file chain, kanji as the example of rating, and my-libs/gif as the shared encoder.
5. Last, and the most risky: move the shape gallery out of delta-version into its own project. Lots of folder paths point at it, so moving it has the most ways to break things.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• Sharing is already half done, in a fragile way. The gallery loads gif-generator's files by a path that climbs out of its own project (../../../gif-generator/src). Rename or move either folder and the gallery breaks without warning. A checked copy in my-libs turns that hidden dependency into a visible one.
• Five decoders is the clearest sign of sprawl. Each project needed to read gifs to test that it wrote them right, and each wrote its own reader. One shared, complete decoder would be the referee for all of them. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

The full comparison has file and line references for whoever looks into it, so just ask if you want it written up as an issue.

Two small notes: the gif-viewer's description still says "29 shape gifs" (there are 34), and gif-generator has no README.

Stickers

• 🍎 apple: noticing the art tools were multiplying, and asking to coalesce them before more grow

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	74	74
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

🍎 Apples are ahead now, 74 to 72. Gold stars are 48% of the fridge, and the report wants that under a third, so it's still grumbling. It'll quiet down as more apples come in.

Writing your answer into the gif issue first:

Now the plan in gif-generator, as phase 7: a parent issue, plus sub-issues in the order they build on each other.

Now the seven sub-issues:

Adding phase 7 to the project's progress file, roadmap, and table of contents:

Clean. Committing the plan:

[commit] 591516cab in ai-stuff - The gif studio plans to take in the shape films and paint both kinds at once

I wrote the merge plan as issues, and I haven't moved or built anything yet. You said earlier you'd have someone look into it. Each issue is written so whoever picks it up can work from it alone, and they're committed in gif-generator.

The mirrored answer is in the gif issue: the assistant's gif uses transform: scaleX(-1), so the two pictures face each other across the conversation. 🪞

The plan: gif-generator phase 7, "One canvas, two spaces"

part	what it does
701a bring the shape films home	moves the shape tool and the viewer into gif-generator with git mv, so their history follows. Every hard-coded path gets updated (the issue lists them). Your library folder stays where it is
701b one reader, one writer	one encoder, one palette, one decoder, one PNG writer, shared by every part and every test
701c the 3D vocabulary	the shape words become a closed language with the same wall the 2D score has: every mistake at once, plus the nearest correct word. Scenes that use loops get a small separate "generator" that writes the plain scene
701d one canvas, two spaces	one score can hold both. 2D in screen space (pixels, top-left corner, y down) and 3D in world space (units, y up, seen through a camera), composed into one frame and one palette
701e every film kept and rated	a card beside each film. The 6 you approved start at 5 stars, and the viewer gets keys 1–5 to rate
701f the studio skill	one skill that says how to use the studio, with its examples tested, so it can't drift
701g the demo	a 3D shape moving through the world with a 2D stroke of light following it on screen

One rule for every step: the 6 approved films must re-render byte-for-byte identical after each step. If a step can't meet that, it stops and says why. It never quietly re-approves new versions.

Here's what a mixed score would look like:

canvas{ size = 320, fps = 20, length = 4.0, seed = 7 }
camera{ eye = {0, 2, 7.5}, target = {0, 0, 0}, fov = 44 }      -- world space
shape{ mesh = "jellyfish", at = {0, 0, 0}, motion = "drift" }   -- world space
stroke{ at = 0.5, lasts = 2.0, shape = arc{ center = {160, 160},
        radius = 90, from = 12, to = 6, turn = "clockwise" } }  -- screen space

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• How the two layers combine. The 3D painter draws surfaces (color plus depth). The 2D painter adds light. So the plan has 2D strokes say whether they're behind the 3D layer (like sky) or over it (like light painted on glass). Glow adds brightness, so a stroke of light over a jellyfish makes it brighter instead of covering it up.
• The bridge between the spaces: a 2D stroke can name a 3D shape as a point, like tip("jellyfish"), meaning "wherever that shape shows up on screen this frame." That's how a line of light can follow something moving in the world. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

Questions written into the issues

1. The skill: should it be a new "how to use the studio" skill, with canvas-and-paintbrush staying as the general recipe that points to it? Or should canvas-and-paintbrush be rewritten into this studio's manual?
2. Do delta-version's issues about the films and viewer move too, renumbered into gif-generator? Or do they stay where they were written, with a pointer?
3. Kanji has its own encoder and rating pool. Should it join, or stay separate?
4. Layers: are two layers (behind and over) enough? Or should a stroke be able to sit between 3D shapes? That would need each stroke to have a depth.
5. Background: 2D uses black and 3D draws a sky. When both are in one score, whose background wins?

Should I start on 701a myself, or leave all of it for whoever you're handing it to?

Stickers

• 🍎 apple: the shape of the merged studio (one project, 2D in screen space, an expanded 3D vocabulary in world space, one shared canvas), plus mirrored left to right

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	75	75
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

The fridge's newest apple hasn't been committed yet. It'll go in with the next game commit.

Writing your answers into the plan. The glass pane changes the design the most, so that comes first:

Updating the parent issue's questions and the move plan:

Now the skill question. Adding the trade-offs to the skill issue:

Now moving the gif-beside-every-message plan into the game project as its issue 10-007, and leaving a note on the old one:

The checker read "gif-generator issue 701" in my Blocked-by line as this project's own issue 701. Rewording it:

Adding it to the game's roadmap and phase 10 progress, then running the checks:

Tests pass. Stickers first, so they ride along with the commits:

[commit] 4b7b45265 in ai-stuff - Two-dimensional paint goes onto panes of glass, and the merge plan takes her answers

The game commit was blocked because I put a cd in it. Retrying without:

[commit] c288f96e7 in double-diaper-dungeon - A small moving picture beside every message comes home to this website

That roadmap line says "5 of 5" were mine, but earlier 3 of its changes belonged to another session. When I claimed the file to add one line, the claim covered the whole file. Checking what went in:

I wrote all your answers into the plan and committed it. But I made one mistake you should know about. It's at the bottom.

Painting onto surfaces AND the camera screen: yes! 🎨

Your glass pane made it one idea instead of two:

where the pane is	what it's like
stuck to the front of the camera	a game's interface, the "UI layer." It always faces you and floats over everything. A plain 2D score is just this
stuck to the back of the camera	a painted backdrop behind everything
placed in the world	a sign or window standing in the 3D scene. It has depth: a jellyfish can swim in front of it and hide part of it, or behind it and show through the clear parts. That's how a stroke ends up "between" two shapes

"Textures on a brick" is the next step after this, not part of it. A pane is flat. Painting that wraps around a curved shape (a pattern on the jellyfish's bell) needs every shape to carry a map from its surface to a picture's pixels. Game engines call that UV mapping. I wrote it into the issue as "later," and panes make it easier to add.

Background: the score says it, like canvas{ background = "sky" }. Nothing gets picked for you.

The skill: what a rewrite gains and loses

Gained:

• one skill instead of two that might disagree
• every example becomes a real score the studio actually renders, and the tests check them
• real file names instead of "a tool like the gif generator"

Lost, unless it's kept as a section:

• the recipe for building a different studio, like one that makes sound, vector pictures, or tiles. Three projects read it for exactly that: burner-of-down-things, supcom-derivative-clone's tileset tool, and kanji. A manual for the gif studio wouldn't tell them how to build theirs.
• how it gets found. Today it comes up for "make it output something I can look at." A manual would come up for "make a gif."

The middle way: rewrite it as the gif studio's manual, and keep the general recipe as its last part, "building a studio of your own," with the gif studio as the example the whole way through. That keeps everything. Want that?

Where things went

• The films' and viewer's issues will move into gif-generator along with the code (that's written into step 701a).
• The gif-beside-every-message plan is now this game's issue 10-007. The old one in delta-version stays, marked "moved," because issues get added to and never deleted.
• Kanji stays separate. The rating step now starts with "read kanji's pool first."

⚠️ My mistake: I committed another session's roadmap work

To add the 10-007 line to the game's roadmap, I marked the roadmap file as mine. That marked the whole file, including another session's unfinished changes. So my last game commit (c288f96) carried their lines:

• issue 504's new title, "Where a hero goes, and how she decides"
• rows for issues 512, 513 and 715

Their issue files are still uncommitted, so for now the committed roadmap names three issues that aren't in git yet.

Nothing was lost. It's all their own words, just committed early and under my message. I didn't undo it, because undoing a commit is your call. You can:

1. Leave it. When that session commits 512, 513 and 715, everything lines up. This is the easiest choice.
2. Undo just those lines in a new commit, so that session commits them itself.

From now on, for a file someone else is also changing, I'll add only my lines and won't claim the whole file.

Still open

Should I start building 701a (moving the films home), or is that for whoever you hand it to?

	this patch	all time
⭐ gold stars	72	72
🍎 apples	77	77
☹️ frowny faces	0	0
🐛 worms / wormy apples	1 / 1	1 / 1

Two new apples:

1. The glass pane. One idea that put strokes between shapes, made the UI layer and the backdrop the same thing, and let the score choose its background.
2. Sorting where things live. Film issues follow their code, the gif feature belongs to this website, and kanji gets learned from.