Secret Hitler Companion

A table companion for the board game Secret Hitler: it seats the players, tracks every government, and shows live odds of whether each President's claim could be true. Built for a group playing in person, with a phone or laptop on the table.

▶ Open the live app · works on phone and laptop

Features

• Live probability: the odds of each hand the President could have drawn, updated as the round is revealed.
• Lie and role modeling: flags claims that can't all be true and estimates each player's chance of being a Fascist.
• One-tap recording: tap the Chancellor, tap the claimed hand; the enacted policy, powers, term limits, veto and chaos are handled for you.
• Presidential powers (investigation, peek, special election, execution) recorded against whoever used them.
• Statistics and replays: per-player stats across games, and any finished game can be replayed turn by turn.
• Optional accounts and groups to sync games across devices and share a group's stats; it works fully offline without one.
• "In the night" narration, online play, and built-in Rules and Game theory handbooks.

Built with

Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no build step, hosted on GitHub Pages; optional Firebase (Auth + Firestore, free plan) for accounts and sync.

Full feature list

• Randomization — shuffles seating and picks the first President.
• Bird's-eye table — players seated around a rectangular table (top/bottom only on phones, all four sides on a laptop, never on a corner). Each President's hands, the retrospective odds of each, and any power outcomes are listed by their seat.
• Boards & piles — Fascist (6) and Liberal (5) tracks with the power markers for your player count, plus live draw/discard pile composition.
• Probability — a retrospective hypergeometric model: each government's odds update as more of the round is revealed, with the draw odds for each option shown on the buttons.
• Lie modeling — a per-round "liberal modifier" to explore what the numbers look like if Presidents lied about their discards. It is bounded to physically possible values and auto-adjusts if a recorded claim would otherwise be impossible.
• Reshuffle handling — automatically detects the round boundary (draw pile < 3), reveals the inferred bottom cards, and starts a fresh, independent probability round.
• Presidential powers — Investigation, Policy Peek, Execution and Special Election pause play with a prompt and are recorded against the President who used them.
• Rules it enforces — term limits (including the 5-players-alive exception and the chaos reset), veto after 5 Fascist policies, no investigating the same player twice, and correct presidential rotation through (even nested) Special Elections.
• Undo & resume — full-state undo of any action, and the in-progress game is saved locally so a refresh, a closed tab or a redeploy picks up exactly where you left off.
• Statistics — in-depth per-player and cross-game stats, plus a review of every finished game you can replay turn by turn (◀ ▶) or delete.
• Lie & role modeling (optional, in ⚙ Settings) — a per-claim honesty read in History and, in a finished game's review, the model's estimate of each player's chance of being Fascist/Hitler from play alone; a separate opt-in shows live fascist odds on the table.
• "In the night" narration — a start-of-game 🌙 button reads the fascist-reveal aloud (the right 5–6 vs 7+ script is chosen automatically). Use a built-in voice or record/upload your own.
• Accounts & groups (optional) — sign in to sync your games across devices and share a group's stats; the app works fully offline and signed-out. A shared night voice syncs to your group too.
• Play online — host or join a live game from the main menu.
• Rules & Game theory handbooks — a searchable rules reference and a strategy guide with community notes.

How to use

0. The app opens on a main menu — pick Start game (or Statistics). Optional: sign in from the profile corner to sync across devices, and tap the group box to switch groups.
1. Add 5–10 players and press Randomize seating & start. Before the first presidency, the 🌙 button can play the "in the night" fascist reveal.
2. Each round: the President is fixed (gold P). Tap a player to set the Chancellor (blue C), then tap the hand the President claims they drew — that submits the government. The enacted policy is inferred, so you're never asked for it.
   • Use ⚔ Conflict if the Chancellor enacted a Fascist despite a claimed Liberal.
   • Use ⊘ Veto (from 5 Fascist policies) if the government was vetoed.
   • Use Failed presidency for a rejected election; three in a row triggers Chaos.
3. Adjust a round's modifier if you suspect lies — every probability in that round updates.
4. The game ends automatically on 5 Liberal / 6 Fascist policies or an executed Hitler; press ⚑ Chancellor was Hitler to declare that win yourself. Then record Hitler and the Fascists to save the game to your statistics.

The ← arrow at the top-left is always the way back (labelled undo during play).

Documentation

• SECRET_HITLER_RULES.md — the rules the app encodes.
• PROBABILITY_MODEL.md — the math behind the probability display.
• PROGRESS.md — current status, decisions, and roadmap.
• CHAT.md — session-by-session log of changes.

Tech

Plain static site — HTML + CSS + vanilla JavaScript, no build step, no bundler. Deployed via GitHub Pages. Data lives in your browser (localStorage, plus IndexedDB for custom night-voice audio); signing in adds optional Firebase sync (auth + Firestore, loaded from a CDN so there's still no build step). The app works fully offline and without an account.

Local development

Serve the folder over HTTP (needed for localStorage):

# any static server works, e.g.
python -m http.server 8000
# then open http://localhost:8000