The Department

A six-month multiplayer correspondence game set in October 1977, north-central North Dakota. Players are new hires at Royce Industries, a private R&D company whose secret unit is the Department of Special Research and Development. They play by email: one round a day, fourteen rounds an episode, twelve episodes a season. All correspondence routes through the engine, which is both mail server and referee.

Stack: Next.js 16 on Vercel · Supabase (Postgres, auth, RLS, jobs) · Resend (outbound and inbound mail) · Cobble Network inference (Qwen 27B-class agents).

Read first

• docs/00-plan-audit.md — the audit of the design brainstorm and the decisions it forces.
• docs/source/world-bible-02-04-royce.md — Nathan's World Bibles 02–04 (the setting).
• docs/source/chatgpt-brainstorm.md — the earlier design conversation (mechanics; its federal-agency setting is superseded).
• canon/ — what is true in the world. canon/secret/ is engine-only.
• agents/README.md — the Qwen agent team that helps write story and rules.

Layout

agents/            agent team: roles.ts, run.ts, tasks/*.md, out/ (gitignored)
canon/             public canon · canon/secret/ engine-only canon
docs/              audit, source material
supabase/          migrations/0001_init.sql — the schema
src/lib/cobble.ts  the one model client (model chain, retry_after, JSON, ledger)
src/lib/email/     resend.ts (outbound, Message-IDs) · inbound.ts (Svix verify, grammar, address parsing)
src/lib/engine/    phases.ts — fixed resolution order
src/lib/supabase/  browser, server (RLS) and admin (service role) clients
src/app/           landing page + api/enlist, api/email/inbound, api/cron/tick
src/app/admin/     the showrunner console (login + (console)/ pages); data layer in src/lib/admin/
src/proxy.ts       keeps the Supabase session fresh on /admin; redirects signed-out visits
vercel.json        daily cron → /api/cron/tick

Run

cp .env.example .env.local   # fill COBBLE_API_KEY at minimum
pnpm dev                     # http://localhost:3000
pnpm agents nightjar-hidden-history
pnpm typecheck && pnpm lint

Showrunner console

/admin — Overview, Season Schedule (today, tomorrow, and a timeline of every day with each vote cast), Seasons & Episodes, Casting Call, Players (subscription, activity and a model-written brief), Engine Health (model chain with live probe, job queue, cron heartbeats). Sign-in is a Supabase magic link, sent only to addresses on the admins allowlist:

pnpm admin:add [email protected]     # allowlist an address
pnpm seed:sandbox                  # fake season to look around in; --drop removes it

Review lists everything marked PROPOSED in canon/ and docs/*-draft.md, plus the questions those docs ask; approve, reject, request a revision or answer. Episode Plans shows the season arc and, where a beat sheet exists, a round-by-round timeline. Both read a copy of canon that pnpm canon:sync pushes to Supabase (production builds sync automatically). To apply decisions: pnpm canon:decisions writes docs/review-decisions.md, edit canon accordingly, commit; applied items drop off.

In Supabase Auth → URL Configuration, the deployed site's /auth/confirm must be an allowed redirect URL. The built-in mailer sends only a few links an hour; set custom SMTP before staff other than the project owner sign in.

Joining the game

/subscribe → Stripe Checkout ($2.99/month) → /apply/<token>, the Employment Application (name, bio, Identity Matrix, specialization, ranked departments, interview, skills and knowledge bought with points; content in src/lib/game/creation.ts and docs/character-creation-draft.md). Filing queues approve_application for two hours later: it balances departments across the cohort, creates the character under the department head, hands out an Episode 1 goal, mails the employment file and queues first_memo for six hours on (never 10 PM–8 AM local), which the supervisor sends as a memo with the Personal Goal. Delays are APPROVAL_DELAY_MINUTES and FIRST_MEMO_DELAY_MINUTES. Stripe needs STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, STRIPE_PRICE_ID and a webhook at /api/stripe/webhook with STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET.

All in-game mail uses one mailbox (EMAIL_FROM). The in-game From/To are in the letter; a reply routes by thread, a new message by TO: <name> on its first line; the player's seal rides in the reply address's plus-part.

Principles the code enforces

1. Original correspondence is immutable. Model interpretations are separate rows with confidence and provenance.
2. Consequential acts (orders, votes, transfers, treaty acceptance) come from the deterministic grammar or a confirmed web action. A model may propose; it never decides.
3. Truth, knowledge, belief and statement are four tables, not one.
4. The daily tick enqueues phases; a worker drains them idempotently. Nothing consequential waits on a model, and the game runs if Cobble is down.
5. Every effect is an append-only event with an idempotency key.

Deployment

• Site: https://weird.delivery (Vercel project weird-delivery, team Strange Farm Media Labs, auto-deploys from main).
• Mail: Resend domain weird.delivery, sending and receiving verified; sender The Department <[email protected]>; inbound webhook → /api/email/inbound.
• Database: Supabase edyhveglvnnunfbiebdr.
• Crons (vercel.json): daily tick, per-minute worker. Both need CRON_SECRET.

Status

2026-10-11: canon drafted (public + secret), agent team run on four tasks, landing page live at weird.delivery, mail domain verified. The service and engine are called Weird.Delivery; The Department is its first game.