Meld

Play it at meld.insulatorgap.com.

Pinochle with your friends, in the browser, in real time. Type a name, deal a table, hand out a six-letter code, pick your seats (or offer to swap), and play four-hand partnership pinochle to 150. No account needed; guests can add an email later to keep history and friends. Short a player? The host can seat computer players that bid, pass, meld and play from the same information a human sees. New to the game? /practice walks you through a hand against three computers. Playing a trick a day with far-flung friends? Deal a table at a leisurely pace and the "This hand so far" recap keeps everyone caught up. Afterwards, step through every bid, pass, meld and trick of a finished game and share the replay link with anyone. How the computers think is written up in docs/COMPUTER_PLAYERS.md.

Built with Next.js on Vercel and Supabase (Postgres, Auth, Realtime). Both run on their free tiers.

Contributing: see CONTRIBUTING.md. Dev tools for reproducing any game state: docs/DEV_TOOLS.md.

Set up once

1. Supabase. Create a free project at supabase.com. In the SQL editor, paste and run supabase/migrations/0001_init.sql. Under Authentication → Providers turn on Email (magic link) and, optionally, Google. Under Authentication → URL configuration add https://<your-vercel-domain>/auth/callback and http://localhost:3000/auth/callback as redirect URLs. Full detail in supabase/README.md.

2. Vercel. Import this GitHub repo. Add these environment variables (Project → Settings → Environment Variables):

   Name	Where to find it
   NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL	Supabase → Project settings → API → Project URL
   NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY	Supabase → Project settings → API → anon public key
   SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY	Supabase → Project settings → API → service_role key (keep secret)
   CRON_SECRET	any long random string; Vercel sends it to the daily keep-alive cron

   Deploy. The daily cron in vercel.json pings the database so the free Supabase project never pauses.

Run locally

cp .env.example .env.local   # fill in the four values above
pnpm install
pnpm dev

/dev/game is a local-only preview of the game board driven by the rules engine with three automated seats.

Layout

Path	What lives there
src/engine/	Pure, tested pinochle rules: dealing, bidding, trump, passing, meld scoring, trick play, scoring.
src/server/	Server-side table, seat, trade, friend and game logic. Only the server ever sees full hands.
src/app/api/	JSON route handlers the client calls.
src/components/	The cards, the table, the scorepad, the lobby.
supabase/	Schema, row-level security, setup notes.
src/engine/ai/	Computer players. They only ever receive a PlayerView, never the full game state.
docs/ARCHITECTURE.md	How the pieces fit, and how a second card game slots in.
docs/COMPUTER_PLAYERS.md	How the computer players bid, pass and play, and how they are kept honest.

Rules (defaults, adjustable per table)

Four players, two partnerships, 48-card deck. Modern scoring is the default: minimum bid 25 in steps of 1, play to 150. Bidder names trump; partner passes four cards to the bidder, who passes four back. Meld: run 15, royal marriage 4, marriage 2, pinochle 4, double pinochle 30, aces around 10, kings 8, queens 6, jacks 4, dix 1. Counters are aces, tens and kings at 1 each, plus 1 for the last trick. A side must take a trick to keep its meld. Fail your bid and you go set for the bid amount. Classic ×10 scoring remains a table option, with minimum bid 250 and target 1,500. Old-style 11 / 10 / 4 / 3 / 2 counting requires classic scoring. Existing games keep their classic scale.

License

MIT. Copyright 2026 Andreas Wenzel.