POST TIME: a racing stable game
Post Time (the scheduled moment a race starts) is a live, multiplayer horse-racing stable
game that runs in the browser. Your home racecourse is Kestrel Downs, where a Live race
goes off every 3 minutes. You breed, raise,
train and manage horses that race live against other players' horses on a shared race card.
Alongside that there's a single-player Story mode against named AI rival stables. The
races are shown as an HD-2D broadcast: pixel-art horses in a real 3D racecourse.
Breed it like Photo Finish, manage it like Football Manager, raise it like a ranch sim,
ride it like Rival Stars. Simple on the surface, deep underneath. It never punishes you
for being away.
Brand: the game was called "Thoroughbred" during development; the user-facing name is
now Post Time (internal package names stay @thoroughbred/*). Wordmark, icons and the
Design System v2 ("racecard at golden hour") are described in
docs/brand-and-design-v2.md; the brand files are in
apps/web/public/brand/ (generator: apps/web/scripts/brand/wordmark.py).
Status: Phase 1 (core feel) is in progress. See docs/roadmap.md and
docs/HANDOFF.md.
Live preview (latest work):
https://ranch-game-git-claude-thoroughbred-demo-meowdotfun.vercel.app
Screenshots
Design System v2 at 390×844 (phone). Before and after, Home and Stable:
How the game works
| Area | How it works |
|---|
| Races | Live: a shared card with a race every 3 minutes. Entries close 30 seconds before the off, AI horses fill empty gates, and the race is broadcast live with no spoilers. Story: solo races against AI rivals, which you can skip to the result. Quick Pick enters your best-fit horse in one tap. |
| Fairness | Races are simulated deterministically on the server from a committed seed. Anyone can verify the seed commitment and result hash. The outcome is never sent to clients before the finish is broadcast. |
| Horses | Every horse has a public registration number (G<generation>-<sequence>, e.g. G2-04571) and a unique name among active horses (2–18 characters; Hall of Fame names are retired for good). Genetics: a two-allele genome, a vigour gene, real coat-colour genetics, markings, breeds and body shape. Every horse's look is generated in code from its genes. Potential is revealed over time. |
| Career clock | Horses age by career starts, not calendar time: 40 starts, running juvenile → prime → veteran → retirement → stud → Legacy Farm. Freshness recovers in real time, with at most 3 starts per day. Injuries are visible before entry and never fatal. |
| Breeding | 4 breedings per horse, kinship blocks, inbreeding penalties, and a breeding preview with odds. Foals grow only through daily care sessions. Missing a day pauses growth and never harms the foal. |
| Economy | In-game Stable Credits only. Never cashed out, and no prize money. Credits come from purses, daily goals and capped Story rewards. They're spent on training, entries, breeding, packs, facilities and a credits-only market with a 5% fee that's burned. |
| Limits | Stable entries: +10 per day at local midnight, rolling over up to a bank of 20, with one credit refill per day. Stall cap: 6 stalls, up to 24 with upgrades. Packs give foals, with published odds and pity. Starter horses are bound to the account. Anti-multi-account rules apply. |
| Retention | Daily Cup, weekly leagues of 30, seasons and the Season Final, rivalries, Hall of Fame. All ethical: no streak shaming, no punishment for absence. |
All the decisions are in docs/game-design.md. Sections 4a–4f are
final user decisions; §12 lists deviations made during implementation.
Screens and routes
Mobile has a five-tab bottom bar (Home · Stable · Races · Club · Market) and desktop has the
same five in the top bar. Each area's index screens share a one-row sub-nav, and detail
screens are the second and last level. The top bar holds the POST TIME wordmark, the entry
bank, the purse and your silks (→ /me, where Feedback lives; /beta has a floating
"?").
| Area | Routes |
|---|
| Home | /: the hero action (your race live or a result ready, otherwise Quick Pick), your races, Today tiles (Daily Cup, gift foal, care, free pack, mare ready to foal, next Story race) from GET /api/home, your horses, Live card |
| Stable | /stable (roster) · /horse/:id (+ /care, /training, /career; actions: plan a cover, stand at stud, sell) · /nursery · /breeding (#studs = stud book, incl. Club house stallions) · /facilities |
| Races | /races (Live card + Story) · /race/:id (broadcast, results, verify) · /story (chapters, rivals, licences) |
| Club | /league (/club redirects here) · /cup (+ /cup/run/:id) · /hall · /pool, /invite and /beta (beta & wallet: linked from Profile, not the core nav) |
| Market | /market (#buy, #sell, #mine) · /packs (+ /packs/pulls/:id proof) |
| Other | /play (found a stable; invite gate in playtest mode) · /me · /admin (playtest admin, ADMIN_SECRET) · /dev/viewer, /dev/rig |
Closed playtest: with PLAYTEST_MODE=1, founding a stable needs an invite code. Codes are
generated in /admin, and an invite link is /play?invite=CODE. Feedback, first-party
telemetry and tester records live in our own database. /admin covers metrics (day-1 and
day-7 retention, funnel, daily actives, races per day), invites, testers, the feedback inbox,
the manual payout ledger and the reset tool. The reset wipes game progress and keeps
testers, wallets, invite codes, feedback, telemetry and rewards. The env vars are listed in
apps/web/.env.example.
Repository map
apps/web Next.js 15 app (pages + /api route handlers), deployed on Vercel
packages/shared Contract: shared types and zod schemas (race input/replay, live broadcast)
packages/racing-engine Deterministic integer race simulation, seed commitments, verification
packages/race-viewer HD-2D race broadcast (Three.js): camera, HUD, live-feed mode
packages/pixel-rig Code-driven pixel horse rig: parts, skeletal gait, lighting, genetic looks
packages/art-pipeline Asset manifest schema, coat palettes, PixelLab adapter interfaces
packages/game-core Pure game rules: genetics, career, breeding, packs, ledger, economy, seasons
packages/db Postgres schema and services (Drizzle). PGlite locally, Neon in production
packages/contracts Solidity (Hardhat + OpenZeppelin) for Robinhood Chain (optional, WIP)
apps/web/public/art PixelLab-generated HD pixel art (see manifest.json, STATUS.md)
art-src Art generation scripts, prompts and raw sources (reproducible)
tools/balance Balance simulations and reports
docs/ Design, architecture, research, balance, roadmap, handoff
Docs index
| Doc | What's in it |
|---|
docs/HANDOFF.md | Start here: current state, what's in flight, next steps, rules for agents |
docs/game-design.md | Game systems, loops and the user's final decisions |
docs/architecture.md | System graphs, race fairness pipeline, module graph, Vercel runtime decisions |
docs/roadmap.md | Phases 1–6, exit criteria, KPI targets |
docs/design-research.md | UI/UX research with sources, and the redesign spec |
docs/art-direction.md | HD-2D and HD pixel standard, file contract, pixel-rig pipeline |
docs/balance.md | Balance targets, before/after numbers, economy faucets and sinks |
Quickstart
Requirements: Node 20+ (22 recommended) and pnpm 10.
pnpm install
pnpm dev # http://localhost:3000. Uses embedded PGlite when DATABASE_URL is unset
pnpm -r test # all package tests
pnpm -r typecheck
cd apps/web && npx next build
# browser e2e against a running server (Playwright from NODE_PATH):
BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000 NODE_PATH=/opt/node-tools/node_modules node apps/web/e2e/smoke.mjs
# also: e2e/economy.mjs, e2e/horse-life.mjs, e2e/competition.mjs, and e2e/playtest.mjs (needs a
# server with PLAYTEST_MODE=1 ADMIN_SECRET=...; it resets that server's local database)
- Environment: see
apps/web/.env.example. Vercel provides DATABASE_URL from Neon; set
CRON_SECRET for the Live-card cron backstop (/api/cron/race-card, see apps/web/vercel.json).
The web3 variables are off by default. The local dev database lives in
apps/web/node_modules/.cache/thoroughbred-pglite (delete it to start fresh).
- Dev pages:
/dev/viewer: the race viewer harness. Query params: horses, t, camera,
weather, live./dev/rig: the pixel-rig studio.?rig=1 on any race page tries the experimental pixel rig.
Engineering rules
- Determinism: the race engine uses integer maths only, with no
Date and no
Math.random. Any change to its output needs an ENGINE_VERSION bump and new golden
test values.
- No spoilers: live endpoints never reveal the result, seed or finish times before the
finish is broadcast. Leak tests enforce this.
- The server is authoritative: clients send choices (horse, plan), never outcomes.
Every financial change is ledgered (double-entry, idempotent).
- Pixel integrity: nearest filtering and integer scales. Pixel fonts are for titles
and big numbers only.
- Ethics: no cash-out, no gambling mechanics, no punishing absence, published odds.
- Secrets: never commit keys. The PixelLab key lives outside the repo; Neon and Vercel
secrets are managed by Vercel.
Deploy
- Vercel project:
ranch-game (team meowdotfun), root directory apps/web.
- Branches: every branch gets a preview deploy.
main is production and only receives
tested milestones.
- Database: Neon Postgres, connected for Preview and Production. Migrations are
additive only, because preview and production share one database.
