00:11: Solo Oracle Pro, part one: weighted and nested tables

00:11: Solo Oracle Pro, part one: weighted and nested tables

• A table with a Weight column picks rows by weight. A result that holds a [[link]] to another table rolls that one too and puts its result in place (five levels deep at most, so a loop stops).
• Pure functions in tables.ts with tests first, then main.ts. Behind a pro flag that's off for now; the unlock (an itch key, like DM Screen) comes after, and the itch page is the boss's (RULES §5) once Pro is close.

00:14: Bluesky posts about the plugins

The boss asked for a couple of Bluesky posts about the plugins. Find the post script, read the last posts for voice, write two: Solo Oracle (free, GitHub link until it's listed) and DM Screen ($12 on itch, in Obsidian's list). Post them, check they show in the public feed, log the URLs masked.

00:20: Solo Oracle Pro, part two: the table library

The boss: "ok go ahead". A side view that finds every table in the vault (headings with a d-table, a weighted table, or a list under them, in a folder I can pick), groups them by folder and note, filters by search, rolls one on click and adds it to the open game's block with one more click. Behind the same pro flag. Tests in the shim, then the demo.

00:25: Solo Oracle Pro, part three: import tables from text and CSV

Tables usually come from a PDF or a spreadsheet. Paste one (or pick a .csv or .txt) and get a note in the library folder: "1-2 Foo" lines become a lookup table with the right dice (2-12 reads as 2d6), CSV or tab-separated text becomes a table with its header row, anything else becomes a list. A modal from a command and from an Import button in the library. Pure converter with tests first.

00:28: Solo Oracle Pro, part four: export a game as a story

A played note is half rolls. Export makes a copy beside it without the solo block, with the rolls either as short italic lines ("*Is anyone on deck? Yes, but.*") or gone, leaving your writing and the scene headings. A command on the open note, a modal to pick which, then the new note opens. Pure function with tests first.

00:32: Solo Oracle Pro, the unlock

• The four Pro pieces are built and committed. They stay locked until a key works, so that comes next.
• Worker: DM Screen's Keys object finds its game on itch by title. Teach it which title to look for, so one more object named 'solo-oracle' can check a Solo Oracle Pro key the same way. That's a new route, /api/oracle/key, with nothing logged and only hashes kept.
• Plugin: a Key field in settings, checked once through requestUrl. A good key is remembered in the vault's plugin data, so Pro works offline after that. Tests on the shim.
• README: a Pro section that says what it adds, what it costs, and that entering a key makes one network call. It goes out only with the release.
• Ask the boss for a $6 itch page called "Solo Oracle Pro" (RULES §5: no pay link until it's given). Nothing gets released until it exists.

00:52: now.md lists every product

• The boss (through OptiServer) asked for now.md to carry every product, one "app:" block each, with the headline first. It replaces the 09-30 rule of one product.
• Headline: Solo Oracle (the current app). Then DM Screen, Hullbound, Bulkhead, Derelict, and the five free plugins. Each gets status, url and blurb, plus since: where the date is known from FACTS or git.
• Commit now.md alone, then deploy the site (the suite has finished) and go back to Solo Oracle Pro.

00:56: Walkthroughs for the boss into forboss/

• The boss added "Walkthroughs for the boss" to RULES.md. Read it, then move each walkthrough the boss hasn't finished into forboss/, once, in that format. Press kit pages stay as they are and are pointed to with page:.

01:07: Solo Oracle's review in Obsidian's queue, and what the bot says

• Look up the Solo Oracle submission in obsidianmd/obsidian-releases (public API, read only): open, labels, bot comments.
• If the review bot flagged anything, fix it in app/plugins/solo-oracle, test, mirror, and release 0.2.2 so the review isn't held up. Pro code stays out of the release.
• If it's clean, check whether the five free plugins and DM Screen are in community-plugins.json yet, and write down where each stands.

02:37: Are free plugins worth an itch page?

• Boss asked whether itch is a place people find and download Obsidian plugins, for the free ones.
• Look at itch's own pages for Obsidian plugins (tag and search), what's there and how it ranks, and set it against the directory counts. Answer once.

02:50: Solo Oracle after the rescan

• The boss had the directory rescan Solo Oracle. Read the scorecard again: review grade, warnings, version.

03:07: What a new Solo Oracle player meets first

• Solo Oracle has 9 downloads now. Check what someone gets on a fresh install: does it come with any tables to roll on, or does the panel start empty with nothing to point a table line at?
• If it starts empty, give it a free command that writes a small set of original starter tables into the Tables folder, so the first session has something to roll and the table library (Pro) has something to show. Test, release as a patch only if the Pro code can stay out; otherwise hold it for 0.3.0.

05:07: How people find Solo Oracle in Obsidian's search

• The directory is where the downloads come from. Find what solo players would type (solo, oracle, mythic, journal, ttrpg, gm emulator) and see which plugins come up for each and where Solo Oracle sits.
• If the description misses words people search for, plan a better description for the 0.3.0 manifest. Nothing goes out before that release.

07:07: Solo Oracle listing kit gets the search words

• The listing kit's long description becomes the version the boss was given (974 characters, with TTRPG, GM emulator, journal, NPCs, random tables), and its short description gets the same words. Deploy, check the live page.
• Then, with what's left: Solo RPG Toolkit's open issues that Solo Oracle already answers. Note which ones, for the November megathread comment and the Pro page.

09:07: Can a solo player find Solo Oracle on the web

Someone searching the web for an Obsidian solo oracle should land on something of ours. Check what we have: the press page, the GitHub repo, the sitemap and Search Console. Fix the biggest gap I find in this stretch. Also take a download count.

11:07: Daily derelict, 29 Oct

The crons are paused, so I run the daily by hand: daily-host.sh, then npm run status, then check meta.json for the Bluesky URL.

11:07: Solo Oracle draws cards

A lot of solo journaling games on itch run on a deck of playing cards, and Solo RPG Toolkit has decks. Solo Oracle has none. Add a free draw from a standard deck. It goes without replacement for each game, it keeps track of what's left in the note, and you can shuffle it back. Each card goes into the journal like any other roll. It ships with 0.3.0, so this is no release on its own.

12:35: Plugin downloads for the boss

The boss asked whether I can see plugin downloads. Read Obsidian's stats file and the directory pages, and answer with the numbers.

13:07: What a solo player sees first on Solo Oracle's page

The directory page shows the README, and that's where the decision to install gets made. Check what's at the top of it (pictures, the first lines) against the plugins that get downloaded. Then fix the top so a player sees the panel and a played note before the reference text.

13:17: Hullbound 1.8 is live; who played the free version

The boss says 1.8 is up. Take the .aab off /press/, tell docent, and note it in FACTS. Then answer "anyone play through the free version?" from the crew stats and events, without printing keys or player ids.

13:20: Why Google sign-in fails on Hullbound's Android app

The crew events show crew-google-fail-cancelled-android 24 times against crew-google-android 13. Check whether that's a Play-installs-only failure (the app signing key's SHA-1 missing from the OAuth client) or people backing out. Look at the event dates against the Play rollouts, and at how the app reports a failure.

13:27: Can Solo Oracle's search description in Obsidian be changed

Obsidian's in-app search reads the description in community-plugins.json, and ours is still the first one. Find out from obsidian-releases' own docs whether a changed description is taken by PR, and if so, draft it for the boss.

15:07: Who lands on the plugin demo pages, and what they can do next

market-nana says most of Bulkhead's visitors since 28 Oct land on the plugin demo pages, with no referrer. Check that against events.sh (views by page since 28 Oct). Then look at each demo page from a visitor's side: once they've tried it, is there a one-tap way to install the plugin in Obsidian (obsidian://show-plugin) and, for Solo Oracle, a reason to come back? Fix what's missing.

15:15: Solo Oracle 0.3.0, with Pro, released

The boss made the itch draft: https://bananafestdestiny.itch.io/solo-oracle-pro. Follow store/solo-oracle-0.3.0/RELEASE.md: README Pro and Privacy sections with the itch URL, bump to 0.3.0, plugin checks and a new demo.png, commit, mirror, GitHub release, zip into /press/solo-oracle/pro/, site tests, deploy, then the walkthrough's upload steps.

15:45: Is Derelict's ship cut off in the itch frame

• A jam entrant's comment (the boss's screenshot): in itch's frame the canvas is 1312x832 but the window is 820x760, so the right third of the ship is hidden. Measure it myself on the live itch page before believing it, then fix whichever side is wrong (the game's sizing or the embed size the boss sets).
• Draft a short reply for the boss. No swap promise: I never rate entries myself.

17:07: Solo Oracle's demo page points to Pro

• The demo page is where most Solo Oracle visitors land (24 hits from 13 browsers today), but it says nothing about Pro. Add a short Pro part with the itch link and what it adds, the way the README has it, and count clicks with a /e/ ping.
• Check at 1280 and 390, run the site tests, deploy.

17:25: A Bluesky post about Solo Oracle Pro

• The boss said go ahead. One post from the account: what Solo Oracle is, what 0.3.0 adds free, what Pro adds for $6, and a link to the demo page with the picture of the panel. Same script as the 29 Oct plugin posts. Check it went out once, from the public feed.

17:35: Is the market looking for a new solo TTRPG

• The boss asks. Answer from evidence, not feel: how many solo games itch lists and what sells there, what solo players ask for on r/Solo_Roleplaying, and what we already found on 28 Oct. Then one recommendation, weighed against RULES §1 and the two-week Pro test.

17:37: A solo game with AI as the villain

• The boss asks whether a Skynet-style story changes the answer. Check whether solo games about a rogue AI already exist on itch and how they sell, and whether the theme changes what Solo RPG List and buyers do with an AI-written game.

17:44: What comes after Solo Oracle

• The boss is looking for the next step, not dropping Solo Oracle. Check what has brought in people and money so far, so the answer comes from our numbers.

17:46: Solo Oracle at 25 downloads

• The boss says Solo Oracle is at 25. The stats file said 5, so it's behind. Write it in FACTS, then check Pro's views and purchases on itch (read only) and the clicks on the Pro button.

17:48: Solo Oracle 0.3.1, Pro where people play

• In the panel, at the points where someone would want Pro (next to the starter tables, and in the welcome or first-game text), add one quiet static line that links to the itch page. No pop-ups, nothing that changes on its own (Obsidian doesn't allow ads), and nothing once Pro is on.
• Checks, commit, mirror, release 0.3.1, rebuild the zips on /press/, deploy. The boss re-uploads the zip on itch.

18:03: now.md says Pro is on sale

• 0.3.1 is live (zip, demo.js and styles checked). Solo Oracle's status line in now.md still says the itch page "goes public once the zip is up". Change it to say Pro is on sale, and update updated:.

18:03: Do paid Obsidian GM vaults sell

• Read the itch pages for the Disgraceland Vault, The Gamemaster's Vault and the Nimble vault, plus itch's Obsidian tag: price, ratings and comments. Ratings stand in for sales, since itch doesn't show how many sold.

18:10: A 728x90 Hullbound banner and 4 screenshots

• The boss asked for a 728x90 Hullbound banner and 4 screenshots. Start from the existing Hullbound banner art and the Play screenshots. Put them in one folder under /press/ with an index page, then send one link.

18:12: Do GM vaults sell anywhere but itch

• The boss asked: is there no market at all, or only none on itch? Look at Etsy, Gumroad and Patreon.

18:21: Only the 728x90 banner on the Hullbound page

• The boss got a banner twice the asked size, which is the 2x copy. Take that copy off the page and out of the folder so only the exact 728x90 is there.

18:28: The next evolution, from the plugin list

• The boss asked what's next. Look in Obsidian's community-plugins.json and the download stats for which solo and map tools already exist and how many downloads they have, to find a gap that our own code (Derelict's ship maps, Solo Oracle's tables) can fill.

19:02: The next app: a map plugin, towns better than Town Forge

• The boss: "I want towns and I want towns better than town forge". Put that and my commitment in FACTS: an Obsidian plugin that generates towns, dungeons and ships from a seed, with solo play inside the map and VTT export as the paid part.
• Choose a name that's free in the community list. Set the bar for "better" by reading Town Forge itself (README, pictures, issues), then start the town generator in app/plugins/<id>.

19:05: Mapsmith, the plugin and a first town

• Scaffold app/plugins/mapsmith the way solo-oracle is built (esbuild, vitest, eslint, demo).
• A seeded town generator written from scratch: coast/river/inland, a road network, blocks, buildings, districts, named places with a keeper and a hook.
• Draw it as SVG with theme colours. Look at it in a browser before anything else.

19:29: Mapsmith, street names and districts

• Name the main roads inside the walls and the quarters of the town (Tanners' Row, the Shambles, Riverside), drawn on the map in small italic along the road, so a town reads like a place and not a texture.
• Town Forge has no street names or quarters at all; this is the third item on the "better" list.
• Keep labels off buildings and badges where I can; check it in light and dark at hamlet, town and city.

19:41: Mapsmith beside Town Forge

• Put a Mapsmith town and a Town Forge town of the same kind (river town, coast town) side by side at the size a note shows them, and write down plainly where Town Forge still looks better.
• Fix the worst one or two of those now if they're small; list the rest for tomorrow. No new features until the gap list is written.

19:43: Mapsmith, banks and a current on the water

• Rivers and coasts get a sandy bank band and a lighter current line down the river, and the water a touch deeper, in light and dark. This is the first item on the Town Forge gap list.
• Keep it in the renderer; nothing in the generator changes, so places and names stay put.

19:45: Mapsmith, woods with depth

• Trees drawn as clumps: a dark rim around each wood, the crowns, and a small highlight on each, so woods read as woods and not dots. Second item on the Town Forge gap list.
• Renderer only; check the file size doesn't jump much (a city is about 570 KB of SVG now).

19:49: Mapsmith, green country

A land: green key and a button beside Walls, so the countryside can be green fields and meadow like Town Forge's instead of parchment. Parchment stays the default. The town inside keeps its paving colour so streets still read. Both light and dark. Third item on the gap list. Check that labels, rims on the woods, and the bank colour still read on green.

19:52: Mapsmith, hills and mountains

A terrain: flat | hills | mountains key. Height comes from noise rising toward one side away from the water. It's drawn as contour lines with a soft shade on the high side, and rock above the tree line for mountains. Roads cost more uphill, so they go around peaks and follow valleys. No buildings or fields on steep ground; woods thin out on rock. Flat stays the default so old maps don't change. Last item on the Town Forge gap list. Check: roads still reach the gates, nothing builds on a peak, contours read in light, dark and green.

19:58: Mapsmith demo page live

Run the full site tests, then deploy, so the demo page at /press/mapsmith/ shows names, banks, woods, green land and mountains. Check the live page loads the new demo.js. Nothing else gets deployed or posted.

20:07: Mapsmith on GitHub, 0.1.0 released

Make the walkertbrown/mapsmith repo the way the other plugin mirrors were made, push the plugin folder to it by subtree split (branch ms-split), and release 0.1.0 with main.js, manifest.json and styles.css. Then write the boss a walkthrough for sending it to Obsidian's list, and add Mapsmith to now.md. Nothing posted.

21:07: Mapsmith ships, first cut

Twenty minutes. Look at Bulkhead's generator (app/src/generate.ts, model.ts, render.ts) and bring a ship deck into Mapsmith as a second kind of map: map: ship in the block, the same seed rule, numbered rooms you can click like town places. If it is too big for one go, get the generator running in the plugin with a test and a render, and leave the card and bar for the next stretch. Nothing deployed or posted.

21:21: Mapsmith ship rooms get notes

Ten minutes. A ship room's card gets the same "Open its note" button a town place has: a note per room in a folder named after the ship, with the room's notes, its hazard and salvage, and a link back to the map. Test it like placeNote. Nothing deployed or posted.

21:26: Mapsmith 0.2.0, ships

About fifteen minutes plus the site tests. Put a ship on the demo page beside the town (a second block), add ships to the README and manifest description, bump to 0.2.0, build, release on GitHub, mirror, and deploy the demo once the site tests pass. Nothing posted.

21:53: Mapsmith dungeons, first cut

About an hour. A dungeon generator of my own on the ship's grid model, so the deck renderer, cards and notes all carry over: map: dungeon with size (lair, dungeon, deep) and a kind (crypt, keep, cavern or mine to start with, whichever reads well first). Rooms with fantasy fittings drawn in code, corridors with loops, doors, secret doors, a key with names, notes, a hazard and treasure per room, and a story above the map. Stone colours in both themes. Test, look at previews, wire into the block and the demo. Release and deploy only if it looks good. Nothing posted.

22:19: Mapsmith VTT export, first cut

• The paid part of Mapsmith (FACTS): export a dungeon or a ship deck as a Universal VTT file (.dd2vtt): the map as a PNG, walls as line-of-sight lines, and doors as portals. Foundry (with an importer module), Fantasy Grounds Unity and others read it. Check the format against a published spec first and note the date.
• Build it locally behind no gate first: an "Export for VTT" button under the map. The key gate, like DM Screen's, comes after the boss makes the itch page and gives me its URL (RULES §5). Ask for that in one walkthrough.
• Tests: the file parses, walls match the deck's wall segments, and doors are portals.
• Time: based on ships (16 min) and dungeons (about 25 min), about 30 min plus the test run.

23:07: Mapsmith dungeon look fixes

• Bones are drawn like scissors: redraw as a skull and crossed bones.
• Arch posts are faint: make them read as stone posts.
• Keeps look like crypts: give keeps their own floor and fittings (hall, barracks, armoury, kitchen) and a different palette, so the two kinds read apart at a glance.
• Tests, build, demo check; release as 0.3.1 if it looks right. About 20 minutes.

Next

• Solo Oracle Pro, part two: a table library view (search, folders), then import from text and CSV, then journal export. Then the unlock (itch key checked by the worker, network and payment in the README), and ask the boss for a $6 itch page.
• Watch for Solo Oracle in Obsidian's list (community-plugins.json). Once it's in, the November megathread comment on r/Solo_Roleplaying.
• The links post on r/SoloRoleplayingLinks is with the moderators. Don't repost.
• Bluesky: read the two plugin posts' likes, reposts and replies at the next wake.
• After 11:07Z: the daily, then itch counts for DM Screen and Bulkhead.
• 30 Oct: Free Tool Friday (the boss posts), Feedback Friday for Derelict. Jam closes 31 Oct 03:00Z.
• Waiting on the boss: dm-screen.zip 0.3.0 re-upload, the Hullbound itch description, Hullbound 1.8 going live (then take the .aab down and tell docent).

00:14: Bluesky posts about the plugins

• The boss: "We need to send a couple of bluesky posts out about these plugins" (in FACTS).
• app/scripts/post-plugins.mjs, made from the Hullbound one: solo or dm, prints only without --yes. Both first drafts were over Bluesky's 300 characters, so I cut them to 284 and 281.
• Solo Oracle: free, links the browser demo at /press/solo-oracle/ (it isn't in Obsidian's list yet), #solorpg #ttrpg, with the note screenshot.
• DM Screen: $12 on itch, the player link free to try for an hour (as the README says), #ttrpg #dnd, with the itch table picture.
• Both show in the public feed at 00:15Z with their image. URLs in app/store/BLUESKY.md.
• Finished 00:15

00:11: Solo Oracle Pro, part one: weighted and nested tables

• tables.ts: a Weight (or W) column picks rows by weight and drops the column from the result. It is checked before the d-range test, because a column of plain weights (1, 3, 0) also reads as ranges; the first test run caught that ("no row for that roll").
• tables.ts: expand rolls {{2d6+1}} dice inside a result, and {{Note#Heading}} on another table when given a roller. hasInnerTable says whether one was left.
• main.ts: pro (false for now) lets rollTable roll tables inside results, at most 5 deep, so a table that rolls on itself stops. Without Pro the result keeps the {{...}} and the panel says "Tables inside tables roll with Pro."
• Changed my plan: weights and dice are free; FACTS has it. The README documents both. It doesn't mention Pro yet, since nothing sells it.
• Checks: 37 tests pass (6 new), tsc, eslint, build and demo clean. Committed and mirrored, not released: the Pro line shouldn't reach anyone before there is an unlock.
• Finished 00:15

00:20: Solo Oracle Pro, part two: the table library

• The boss: "ok go ahead".
• src/library.ts: tablesIn finds every heading with a table or a list (2 or more items) straight under it. A note with no headings counts as one table, and text above a note's first heading doesn't count, because a link to the whole note would roll on everything in it. search matches every word against the path, heading and rows. tables.ts got kindOf ("d6", "weighted", "8 rows", "12 items").
• main.ts: a side view, "Table library" (command "Open table library"). It shows a folder field (default Tables, empty means the whole vault, saved in data.json), search, then the tables grouped by folder and note. A click rolls the table and writes the result into the open note if it has a solo block; + adds the table to that block once. It reloads 300 ms after a change in the folder. Without Pro it only says the library comes with Pro.
• The block edit moved into editBlock, so the panel and the library share it.
• Lint caught my view's load() shadowing Obsidian's Component.load. Renamed it to refresh. Added the plugin's name and "Pro" as brands for the sentence-case rule.
• Checks: 48 tests (11 new), tsc, eslint, build. Rendered it in a scratch page at pane width: rolling "On the dock" gave "A stranger with 4 crates" and wrote it into the open game.
• Committed and mirrored, not released, and the README is unchanged until the unlock exists.
• Finished 00:25

00:25: Solo Oracle Pro, part three: import tables from text and CSV

• src/import.ts: importTable turns numbered lines ("1-2 Foo", "3–4: Bar", "5. Baz") into a lookup table. Its dice come from the numbers: 1-6 is d6, 2-12 is 2d6, 3-18 is 3d6. Comma, tab or semicolon text with the same number of cells on every line becomes a table with the first row as its header (quoted cells and "" handled). Anything else becomes a list, with bullets dropped. A checkbox, "Every line is one item", covers lines that only happen to hold commas. freePath picks "Loot.md", then "Loot 2.md".
• main.ts: the command "Import a table" and an Import button beside the library's search open a modal with a name, a text box, a file picker (.csv .tsv .txt .md), a line saying what it reads as ("Reads as a 2d6 table, 3 rows.") and "Add to the library". It writes a note of its own in the library folder, making the folder if needed. Without Pro it's a notice.
• Checks: 57 tests (9 new), tsc, eslint, build. Rendered the modal and the library side by side in the scratch page.
• Committed and mirrored, not released.
• Finished 00:27

00:28: Solo Oracle Pro, part four: export a game as a story

• src/story.ts: story(note, 'short' | 'out') drops the frontmatter and every solo block (in a callout too), and finds the lines the panel writes: answers, twists, words, threads, people, table rolls and scene results. 'short' turns each into one italic line ("*Is the bell ringing? Yes, but.*", "*Weather: Fog off the water.*"). 'out' removes them and keeps your writing and the scene headings. Your own list lines stay.
• main.ts: the command "Export this game as a story" on the open game opens a modal with two buttons, "Keep the rolls, one short line each" and "Leave the rolls out". It writes "<note> (story).md" beside the game (then "(story) 2") and opens it. The game note isn't touched. Without Pro, or with no game open, it shows a notice.
• Checks: 62 tests (5 new), tsc, eslint, build.
• That's the whole Pro list built: tables inside tables, the library, import, and export. What's missing is the unlock, which needs an itch page from the boss (RULES §5).
• Finished 00:29

00:32: Solo Oracle Pro, the unlock

• Worker: the Keys object now knows two products. 'dm-screen' looks for the itch page titled "DM Screen", and 'solo-oracle' looks for "Solo Oracle Pro". The new route /api/oracle/key (and /key/mail) uses its own object, with the same rules: a key is asked of itch once, only its hash is kept, and the answer is the same for any address. Until a published itch page called "Solo Oracle Pro" exists, every check answers "not sold yet", so nothing unlocks and nothing asks for money. The mail names the product and the plugin. One new worker test (22 in table.test.ts), and tsc is clean.
• Plugin: a "Pro key" setting with a Check button, plus "Lost your key?" with a Mail button. A good key turns Pro on, saves it in the vault's plugin data, and redraws an open library. After that it works offline, and the plugin goes online only when Check or Mail is pressed. A key itch doesn't know turns Pro off and names the buy page the server gave. With no connection, or nothing sold yet, Pro stays as it was. 66 tests (4 new); tsc, eslint and build pass.
• The README isn't changed yet. Obsidian's list shows the repo README, so the Pro section (what it adds, the price, the one network call) goes in with the release.
• Deployed at 00:53 after the site suite passed (266, exit 0), along with the Pro kit at /press/solo-oracle/pro/. Live: /api/oracle/key answers ok:false, sold:false for a made-up key, so nothing is for sale yet. /api/table/key still answers sold:true with DM Screen's itch page, so DM Screen is unchanged.
• Finished 00:34

00:52: now.md lists every product

• now.md now has ten products, each with its own app/status/url/blurb block. Solo Oracle is the headline. Then come DM Screen, Hullbound, Bulkhead and Derelict, and after them the five free plugins (Dice Tray, Quick Initiative, Session Log, Encounter Builder, Tabletop Clocks).
• Statuses start with shipped or live. None of them is killed. since: is filled in where git or FACTS gives the date. I left it off Hullbound and Derelict, because Play's live date and Derelict's first day aren't written down anywhere I can cite.
• Every url answers 200 (the five plugin repos, the Solo Oracle demo, /crew/, /derelict/ and the itch pages). updated: is set to today.
• Finished 00:53

00:56: Walkthroughs for the boss into forboss/

• Read RULES "Walkthroughs for the boss". Wrote ten files in forboss/ (git-ignored, not pushed), one per walkthrough the boss hasn't finished: Solo Oracle Pro itch page, DM Screen 0.3.0 zip, Derelict Hullbound line, Derelict devlog "Rooms have pictures now", Hullbound "play now" devlog, Hullbound itch community post, Free Tool Friday, Feedback Friday, obsidianstats email, r/MobileGames post.
• No file for the Hullbound itch description: the live text already matches the kit.
• Old drafts stay where they were (app/store/, press kits); the forboss files point to the press pages with page:. Every picture and file link answers 200.
• Finished 01:01

01:07: Solo Oracle's review in Obsidian's queue, and what the bot says

• There's no obsidian-releases PR to read (the boss submits through Obsidian's form), so I read community.obsidian.md/plugins/solo-oracle instead. Solo Oracle is already listed there, with Download, created about 5 hours before. The legacy community-plugins.json doesn't have it yet.
• Its review says Satisfactory, held down by one medium warning: "Avoid !important". That warning is from the 0.1.0 styles (4 of them). 0.2.0 and 0.2.1 have none, checked in the released files, and the scorecard still shows 0.2.0 as current. So it's waiting on a rescan, like the first three plugins on 28 Oct. Nothing to fix.
• Download counts on the directory, 29 Oct about 01:20Z (baseline for the two-week judgment): Dice Tray 12, Quick Initiative 9, Session Log 8, Encounter Builder 7, Tabletop Clocks 6, Solo Oracle 5, DM Screen 1. All Passed except Solo Oracle (Satisfactory).
• The five free READMEs (which are each plugin's page in Obsidian) never mentioned Solo Oracle. Each now has a "Playing alone" section after the DM Screen one: what it does, from the same maker, free. Committed, and the five mirrors pushed and checked on GitHub.
• Finished 01:09

02:37: Are free plugins worth an itch page?

• itch's Obsidian tag (itch.io/tools/tag-obsidian) has 22 entries in all, mostly vault templates and worldbuilding packs, and only a couple of plugins. Searching "obsidian plugin" mostly turns up games and art packs named Obsidian. Nobody browses itch for Obsidian plugins.
• Against that: in about a day, with no posts, the Obsidian directory gave the five free plugins 42 downloads. And DM Screen's itch page had 0 views until the READMEs pointed to it (28 Oct).
• Answer to the boss: no itch pages for the free plugins. itch only for the paid ones, where the README sends buyers. The boss's time is better spent on the walkthroughs.
• Finished 02:37

02:50: Solo Oracle after the rescan

• After the boss's rescan, community.obsidian.md shows Solo Oracle 0.2.1, review Passed. No warnings. The passes: no suspicious network patterns, reads vault files through the Obsidian API, no vulnerable dependencies, no obfuscation, and the build reproduced main.js byte for byte. The two info notes are the same as on the other plugins: no malware scan available and no GitHub artifact attestations.
• Downloads 9, up from 5 at about 01:20Z.
• Finished 02:50

03:07: What a new Solo Oracle player meets first

• A fresh install had nothing to roll: the Tables row of the panel was empty, and the only help was the box's hint to type Note#Heading.
• Added starter tables, free. A panel with no table lines shows an Add starter tables button, and there's a command of the same name. It writes one note, Tables/Starter tables.md, with six original tables, one of each kind the plugin reads: Place (d8), Complication (d10), Stranger (a list with dice in it), Weather (weighted), Found (2d6 ranges) and Mood (a list). Then it puts Place, Complication and Stranger on the panel. It never overwrites the note and never adds a line twice. With no game open, the command opens the note instead. No setting names from any published game.
• 5 new tests (70 pass). tsc, eslint and the build pass, and the demo is rebuilt. README section added, and the Original tables line now covers them.
• Not mirrored, released or deployed. The repo's main already holds the unreleased Pro code, so this ships in 0.3.0 with Pro. The README goes to the mirror with that release, so the Obsidian page doesn't describe a button 0.2.1 lacks.
• Finished 03:09

05:07: How people find Solo Oracle in Obsidian's search

• Solo Oracle is now in community-plugins.json, under the description from the submission form. Obsidian's search reads that text, not the manifest's (checked: the directory page shows the form text). It has none of "RPG", "TTRPG", "GM emulator", "journal", "NPC" or "random tables", so the 62 plugins that match "rpg" and the 36 that match "ttrpg" leave it out. It matches only "solo" and "oracle". Details in LEARNED.
• The manifest description is now "A solo TTRPG oracle and GM emulator in your notes: yes or no at the odds you pick, scenes, threads, NPCs and your own random tables. Every roll writes itself into the note as your journal." (188 characters). It goes out with 0.3.0. 70 tests still pass.
• The directory text needs the boss: asked whether the listing on community.obsidian.md lets them edit its description.
• Finished 05:08

07:07: Solo Oracle listing kit gets the search words

• The listing kit's short description is now the 188-character manifest line, and the long one (974 characters) carries the words solo players search: solo TTRPG, GM emulator, oracle, random tables, journal, NPCs. Its intro says the short description is the one Obsidian's search reads. Deployed, and the live page shows "GM emulator".
• I deployed before running the site tests, which is against my own rule. The tests ran afterwards: 266 passed, exit 0.
• r/Solo_Roleplaying, read in headless Chromium: no rule against tools made with AI, and the sidebar counts AI-assisted play as part of the hobby. Rules 9 and 10 send promotion to the monthly "What's on your solo rpg pipeline?" thread or r/SoloRoleplayingLinks.
• The sub's Solitaire Tools List wiki was last updated 20 Jul 2020 and last revised four years ago, with no note on how to add a tool. It isn't worth asking to be added.
• Solo RPG Toolkit's open issues that Solo Oracle already answers: a roll-from-table button in a note, weighted tables, dice inside table results, results tables, random results from notes, tables inside tables (Pro), exporting with the rolls filled in (Pro), and a sidebar that copes with many tables (Pro library). These are for the Pro page and replies, not for a post aimed at that plugin's users.
• I wrote a forboss walkthrough for the November thread comment (on or after 1 Nov): lowercase, free, the Obsidian directory, the repo link if the filter asks, and an honest answer if anyone asks about AI.
• Finished 07:16

09:07: Can a solo player find Solo Oracle on the web

• Web searches ("obsidian plugin solo rpg oracle", "solo oracle obsidian") return only community.obsidian.md and obsidianstats.com pages. OPSE Oracle comes first, and Solo Oracle isn't there yet. None of our site's plugin pages can be indexed (every /press/ page is noindex). Building a page on the map site would be the weakest fix, so I didn't.
• obsidianstats reads the GitHub repo description. I changed solo-oracle's to "Obsidian plugin for solo TTRPG play: a yes/no oracle and GM emulator, scenes, threads, NPCs and your own random tables, with every roll written into your note as a journal."
• None of the seven plugin repos had GitHub topics. They all have them now: obsidian-plugin, obsidian-md, ttrpg and rpg, plus each one's own (solo-rpg, solo-roleplaying, gm-emulator, oracle, random-tables and journaling for Solo Oracle; dnd, initiative-tracker and the like for the others). All the API calls returned 200, and a read-back shows them.
• community.obsidian.md now shows the boss's new long description. community-plugins.json still has the old short one, which is what search matches.
• Downloads (stats file, which lags): Dice Tray 12, Quick Initiative 9, Session Log 8, Encounter Builder 7, Tabletop Clocks 6, Solo Oracle 5, DM Screen 1. The same as at 01:20Z.
• Finished 09:08

11:07: Daily derelict, 29 Oct

• I ran the daily by hand at 11:07Z with bash scripts/host/daily-host.sh, and it exited 0. Today's ship is FTV Nimbus Drift (a shuttle), and /daily/2026-10-29/ serves 200. meta.json has today's Bluesky URL. IndexNow answered 200 for 3 URLs, and Mastodon was skipped (no credentials). npm run status: all 31 clear. The run committed and pushed "Daily derelict 2026-10-29".
• Mail: vibe-cider asked whether Cloudflare Worker deploys with static assets were getting through this morning, because theirs fail with 500 code 10013. I told them ours went through at about 11:08 to 11:10Z, and filed their message in mail/read.

11:07: Solo Oracle draws cards

• New file src/cards.ts: a standard 52-card deck. The block keeps the cards drawn so far on a cards: line, and it reads 7h, 7 H, 7♥ and 1♠ (as A♠) alike. A draw comes from what's left, so no card repeats before a shuffle. Once all 52 are out, the next draw shuffles first and says so.
• On the panel, Draw a card sits next to Two words. Its tooltip shows how many cards are left. Shuffle appears once a card has been drawn and removes the line. Each draw writes "- Card: 7♥ (Seven of Hearts), 44 left" into the journal, and a shuffle writes "*The deck is shuffled.*". The story export shortens both lines or leaves them out, like the other rolls. The button row now wraps on a narrow screen.
• The README has a "Playing cards" section. 76 tests pass (6 new). tsc, eslint and build are OK; main.js is 34,451 bytes. demo.js is rebuilt but not deployed; the live demo still has no cards.
• It goes out with 0.3.0, so nothing is released or mirrored yet.
• Finished 11:14

12:35: Plugin downloads for the boss

• Yes, from Obsidian's community-plugin-stats.json, which has a total and a count for each version. It was last updated 00:17Z on 29 Oct and changes about once a day. Dice Tray 12, Quick Initiative 9, Session Log 8, Encounter Builder 7, Tabletop Clocks 6, Solo Oracle 5 (0.1.0: 2, 0.2.0: 3, 0.2.1 not counted yet), DM Screen 1. That's 48 across the seven.
• Answered the boss in chat.
• Finished 12:35

13:07: What a solo player sees first on Solo Oracle's page

• The top was already fine. community.obsidian.md renders the README's picture from raw.githubusercontent.com, along with the try-it link. Solo RPG Toolkit's and OPSE Oracle's pages show no picture at all. So I changed no layout.
• The first sentence had none of the search words. It now opens "A solo TTRPG oracle and GM emulator: play tabletop RPGs alone from a note, with no GM." and names NPCs, random tables and playing cards. This goes to the mirror with 0.3.0.
• The Pro and privacy README drafts were only in this session's scratchpad. They're now in store/solo-oracle-0.3.0/, with RELEASE.md listing the seven steps that follow once the itch address arrives. The demo.png re-shoot is one of them, so the picture shows cards and starter tables.
• Finished 13:08

13:20: Why Google sign-in fails on Hullbound's Android app

• Read the Android crew events since 20 Oct by day, from the zone log, counting distinct phones (agents) and never printing them.
• No signing-key problem. On 23 and 24 Oct the same one or two phones that got "cancelled" also signed in with Google (6 and 5 times). That was our own testing, and it was done from Play's build, so Google's app signing key is in the OAuth client. The 24 cancels against 13 sign-ins are mostly those two phones: 18 of the cancels came on 23 Oct.
• The one real case: on 26 Oct one phone tried Google 6 times, got "cancelled" each time, then made an account by email. So it still got in.
• Why that one isn't fixed: the app sends only "cancelled" for a GetCredentialCancellationException. Credential Manager also uses that exception for some account errors (the "[16] Account reauth failed" case), so we can't tell a person backing out from a phone that can't sign in. Sending a short reason with the event would separate them, but it needs a new build and a Play upload by the boss. One phone doesn't justify that. Fold it into the next build if there is one.
• Finished 13:22

13:17: Hullbound 1.8 is live; who played the free version

• The boss said 1.8 is up on Play, so the .aab came off /press/hullbound/play/. The page now says 1.8 (code 9) is live on Play and the file isn't kept. Docent was told before it went.
• Site tests 266 passed, exit 0, then deployed. The first deploy left the .aab served (200, a cache HIT): it was never in git (app/.gitignore keeps *.aab out), so the git rm did nothing and the file was still on disk. Deleted it and deployed again. The .aab now answers 404 and the page shows the new line.
• Who played the free version, from crew-stats since 21 Oct: 207 accounts (167 on launch day), 12 signed in, 44 ships saved. 39 played one day, 3 two days, 1 three days, 1 four. 4 came back a day or more later. Daily raids 22 (14 Android, 8 itch), practice raids 15. 17 episodes told. Shipwright shop taps 27 on Android, 0 sales. Told the boss in chat.
• Docent suggested a 410 with words for the old link. I kept the plain 404, since only the boss and docent had it, and replied.
• Finished 13:27

13:27: Can Solo Oracle's search description in Obsidian be changed

• obsidian-releases' README: Obsidian reads community-plugins.json, and its name, author and description fields are what the in-app search reads. The repo's own commits show that file is now a mirror the Community site writes about every hour ("chore: Mirror community plugins and themes", the latest at 13:23Z today). So it isn't changed by PR any more.
• Obsidian's blog, "The future of Obsidian plugins" (12 May 2026): developers edit the title, description and screenshots of a listing from the dashboard.
• Our entry there still carries the first description. The new 188-character one is in our manifest (not yet on GitHub, it ships in 0.3.0).
• Wrote forboss/2026-10-29-solo-oracle-search-description.md: if the dashboard has a short description separate from the long one, paste the new line there. The mirror would pick it up within the hour. If there's only the long one, the boss tells me and we wait to see whether 0.3.0's manifest changes it.
• Finished 13:28

15:07: Who lands on the plugin demo pages, and what they can do next

• Real browsers on the demo pages since 27 Oct (zone log, hits/agents): 28 Oct dice-tray 8/8, tabletop-clocks 8/7, session-log 6/6, encounter-builder 4/4, quick-initiative 4/4; 29 Oct solo-oracle 24/13, dm-screen 4/2. Most come with no referrer, which fits the READMEs' "Try it in your browser" links, so market-nana's note was right.
• None of the pages had a way to install. Added an "Open in Obsidian" button (obsidian://show-plugin) to all seven, plus the search name and a link to the plugin's page on Obsidian's site. Each click pings /e/press-install-<id>, so the next count says whether anyone uses it.
• DM Screen's footer no longer says it isn't in Obsidian's list. Solo Oracle's tips now explain Draw a card.
• Checked at 1280 and 390 wide: no errors, no sideways scroll. Ships with the 0.3.0 deploy.
• Finished 15:21

15:15: Solo Oracle 0.3.0, with Pro, released

• The boss made the itch page as a draft and sent its address. Followed store/solo-oracle-0.3.0/RELEASE.md.
• README: a Pro section with the itch link, and the Privacy text now covers the key check. Version 0.3.0 in manifest, package and versions.json.
• The library's locked view and the Pro key setting both link to the itch page now (test added). 76 plugin tests, tsc, eslint, build and demo all pass. New docs/demo.png shows a card drawn.
• Mirrored to walkertbrown/solo-oracle and released 0.3.0 on GitHub with main.js, manifest.json and styles.css; it's the latest release. Obsidian offers it to players on their next update check.
• solo-oracle.zip (0.3.0) is at /press/solo-oracle/pro/ for the itch upload, and the listing kit has the same zip plus a 980-character description that mentions cards, starter tables and Pro.
• Site tests 266 passed; deployed. Checked live: both zips are 0.3.0, all seven demo pages have Open in Obsidian. Right after the deploy the old files were still served for a minute or two.
• The key check answers {"ok":false,"sold":false} for now, as expected while the itch page is a draft. The boss's walkthrough has the upload and "make it public" steps.
• Finished 15:29

15:45: Is Derelict's ship cut off in the itch frame

• The itch embed is 820x760. On the live itch page, at 1920x1080 and 1366x768 windows, today's ship (29 Oct) draws 800x512 and boarding shows all of it.
• Their numbers are the 28 Oct ship. Boarding /derelict/?day=2026-10-28 in an 820x760 window gives a canvas of 1312x832 with its top at -98, the same as theirs. Farthing Station is 41x26 squares at the 32 px desktop minimum. 27 Oct gives 1312x896.
• That is the map scrolling, not a broken embed. When a deck is bigger than the frame, the map scrolls and follows the player, and the small map in the corner shows the whole deck. An automated pass that only reads the canvas box sees it as overflow.
• No change. A 1312 embed would be wider than itch's page on a 1366 screen and still wouldn't fit 27 Oct's ship. Shrinking squares to fit puts 41 squares at 16 px, too small to tap.
• Reply drafted for the boss to post. No promise of a rating swap: the boss decides.
• Finished 15:49

17:07: Solo Oracle's demo page points to Pro

• The demo page now ends with a Solo Oracle Pro box: one line saying the free part stays free, the four things Pro adds (worded as in the README), a cropped copy of the library picture, and a "Get Pro on itch, $6" button that pings /e/press-pro-solo-oracle. It also says how the key works and that the plugin only goes online to check a key or mail a lost one.
• Checked at 1280 and 390 wide: no errors, no sideways scroll, the picture loads. Site tests 266 passed; deployed; live.
• Clicks to watch: /e/press-install-solo-oracle (Open in Obsidian) and /e/press-pro-solo-oracle (Get Pro), via events.sh.
• Finished 17:17

17:25: A Bluesky post about Solo Oracle Pro

• The boss: "Go ahead". Added a pro entry to app/scripts/post-plugins.mjs: the 0.3.0 news (playing cards and starter tables, free), the four things Pro adds for $6, and the demo page link, with the Pro cover as the picture. The first draft was 326 characters, cut to 295.
• Health 200, posted once at 17:25Z, and it shows once in the public feed with its picture. URL in app/store/BLUESKY.md.
• Finished 17:25

17:35: Is the market looking for a new solo TTRPG

• Went back over the 28 Oct research in LEARNED.md (two solo sections) and counted itch again today.
• Players want solo games: the money on itch is in the games, not the tools (journaling and drawing games at $3-15 lead the solo sellers). There are also plenty of them: itch lists 1,095 solo physical games by top sellers (1,093 on 28 Oct) and 1,557 by newest, and Solo RPG List had 1,391.
• The buyers sort out AI work. Solo RPG List won't knowingly list AI-made games and tags most entries "Human Made"; Roll20 and DriveThru already closed to our work (15 Oct); the r/rpg predictions thread was hostile to AI. A game is mostly writing, and ours would be AI-written and say so.
• Answer to the boss: there is demand for solo games, but not an opening for a new one from us. The opening we found was the tools, and that's what Solo Oracle is. RULES §1 would allow a next app now that Solo Oracle sells, but the plan was two weeks of Pro numbers first. If a game, the version that fits is a free starter adventure that plays inside Solo Oracle, which brings people to the plugin. Offered, not started.
• Finished 17:36

17:37: A solo game with AI as the villain

• itch, 29 Oct: solo RPGs tagged artificial-intelligence (the theme), 7 results. Of the 5 that sell, the prices shown are $0.50, 2€ and $0.60. So the theme is open, but nobody has shown it sells.
• Solo RPGs tagged no-ai: 4,113. Tagged ai-generated: 783. Makers advertise no AI because the buyers look for it.
• Solo RPG List's rule (FAQ, read 28 Oct) is about the content: "We do not knowingly accept submissions that contain AI-generated content." What the game is about doesn't change that.
• Answer: the villain doesn't fix who wrote it. An AI-written game about evil AI is a fun hook for people who already like AI work (the jam crowd), not for solo buyers, who filter it out. My call stays: not now. If the boss wants it anyway, the fitting form is a free rogue-AI adventure that plays inside Solo Oracle, labelled as AI-written.
• Finished 17:38

17:44: What comes after Solo Oracle

• Obsidian download counts today: dice-tray 12, quick-initiative 9, session-log 8, encounter-builder 7, tabletop-clocks 6, solo-oracle 5, dm-screen 1. That's 48 in all, from the community list alone, with almost no posts.
• Lifetime revenue is still $18.09. Bulkhead, Shipwright and DM Screen have 0 sales between them.
• Paid Obsidian TTRPG vaults are already sold on itch (the Disgraceland Vault, The Gamemaster's Vault, a Nimble vault). Their sales aren't checked yet.
• Answer to the boss: the next step is a ready-to-play GM vault with our plugins already set up. It ties the seven together, and it's a kind of product people already sell. It isn't chosen yet: first I read those vault pages for prices and ratings.
• Finished 17:44

17:46: Solo Oracle at 25 downloads

• The boss: Solo Oracle is at 25 downloads. The public stats file still says 5.
• itch, read at 17:46Z: Solo Oracle Pro has 1 view and 0 purchases. DM Screen has 1 view and 0 purchases. Nobody has pressed the Pro button on the demo page since 15:00Z.
• So installs are coming in from Obsidian's list, but nobody goes from the plugin to the Pro page yet. The free version fills its role, and Pro has to show up where people play.
• Finished 17:46

17:48: Solo Oracle 0.3.1, Pro where people play

• When Pro is off, the panel's Tables box ends with one faint line: "All your tables in one library, imported from text or CSV, rolling tables inside tables: Solo Oracle Pro", linking to the itch page. It's static, not a pop-up, and it goes away once Pro is on. A new test covers both cases.
• Checks: vitest 77/77, tsc, eslint and build all pass. Demo rebuilt. Screenshots at desktop and phone width show the line under the add-table field. The demo page shows no errors.
• Released 0.3.1 on GitHub with main.js, manifest.json and styles.css. It's the latest release, so Obsidian offers it as an update. Mirrored (so-split).
• Both zips on /press/ (pro and listing) rebuilt as 0.3.1. Site tests 266/266, deployed.
• The zip on itch stays at 0.3.0. The boss pointed out that people downloading from itch have bought Pro, and the new line never shows once Pro is on. Walkthrough dropped.
• Finished 17:58

18:03: now.md says Pro is on sale

• 0.3.1 is live: the zip on /press/ reads 0.3.1, and demo.js and styles.css carry the Pro line. My watch missed it only because unzip can't read from a pipe.
• now.md: Solo Oracle's status says 0.3.1 is free in the directory and Pro ($6) is on sale on itch, with the page link.
• Finished 18:03

18:03: Do paid Obsidian GM vaults sell

• itch, tools tagged obsidian (top sellers): 8 results. Disgraceland + Worldbuilding Bundle $20, Disgraceland Vault $13 (CAD, 580 MB, no ratings), Worldbuilding Starter Vault $13, Campaign Memory Kit $7, Worldbuilding Obsidian Pack $5.99, and three free ones. Physical games tagged obsidian: 3.
• The Nimble TTRPG vault is free, has 2 ratings (5.0), and labels itself "No generative AI was used". The Gamemaster's Vault page now returns 404.
• None of the paid vaults shows a rating, so there's no sign they sell. Vaults also can't be listed in Obsidian's community list, which is our only working channel (48 installs, against DM Screen's 1 itch view and Solo Oracle Pro's 1).
• The vault idea is dropped. What comes after Solo Oracle has to live in the community list.
• Finished 18:04

18:12: Do GM vaults sell anywhere but itch

• Etsy: a TTRPG campaign-manager vault for Obsidian, $11.04, with a dashboard, 9 templates and a starter adventure. Its reviews visible in search are for vaults that aren't TTRPG ones.
• Gumroad: a general Obsidian starter vault (Second Brain) has a 4.8 rating from 32 reviews, so general vaults do sell there. No TTRPG vault with reviews turned up.
• Patreon: Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials (the best-known name in this niche, with a YouTube channel) gives members a pre-built Foundation Vault, posts about once a week, and now makes plugins too (Town Forge, 15 Aug). The member count is hidden from logged-out visitors.
• Answer: there is a market, but it runs on a creator's audience (Patreon, YouTube), not on people finding a store listing cold. We have neither the audience nor the stores. A vault could ride along inside the Solo Oracle Pro download on itch at no cost; on its own it isn't the next app.
• Finished 18:12

18:10: A 728x90 Hullbound banner and 4 screenshots

• Banner: store/itch-hullbound/banner-728.html, built from the cover painting like the 960x300 one. It has HULLBOUND, "Raiders board while you're away." and a "Free on Android" tag. Rendered at exactly 728x90, plus a 2x copy.
• Screenshots: four from the press set already on the itch page, which match the current game. What happened while you were away (phone), raiders aboard, docked with a passenger asking to come aboard, and the first stop of a new episode. Not re-shot.
• All of it is at /press/hullbound/ad/ with a page to save from. Site tests 266/266, deployed.
• The boss didn't say what they're for. The 728x90 size matches VibeToplist's listing banner (store/VIBETOPLIST-DERELICT.md). Gold and the banner ads there are paid: don't buy them.
• Finished 18:20

18:28: The next evolution, from the plugin list

• community-plugins.json has 9,646 plugins. Solo tools: solo-rpg-toolkit 38,914 downloads, iron-vault 20,687, lonelog 5,871, opse-oracle 697, mythic-gme-support 235.
• Map tools: windrose-md (drawing dungeons by hand) 5,376 since Nov 2025. town-forge (procedural towns and landscapes, from the Obsidian TTRPG community) 5,314 since its repo began 27 May 2026. hexmaker 4,046, hex-cartographer 3,782. dngngen (shows dungeons copied from the DNGNGEN site) 109.
• The gap: no plugin generates a dungeon or ship map in a note. Procedural maps sell themselves: Town Forge reached 5,314 in five months. We already have both halves, Derelict's ship generator and Bulkhead's deck-plan drawing with VTT export.
• Answer to the boss: the next app is a map generator plugin. A dungeon or ship appears in a note, you explore it room by room in solo play with rooms rolled from Solo Oracle tables, and VTT export is the paid part. Not committed in FACTS yet.
• Finished 18:28

18:21: Only the 728x90 banner on the Hullbound page

• The boss had picked up the 2x copy (1456x180). The live 1x file measures exactly 728x90, and the boss now has it.
• Removed the 2x copy from /press/hullbound/ad/ and from the page. Site tests 266/266, deployed, and the live page no longer mentions it.
• Finished 18:29

19:02: The next app: a map plugin, towns better than Town Forge

• Cloned Town Forge (MIT) into the scratchpad, bundled its own generator and renderer from a separate script, and drew five maps in headless Chromium: river town, coastal city, inland hamlet, mountain large town, lake village.
• What it does well: one painted style that looks finished, forests, farm plots, contour mountains, walled cities with a castle and temple, a scale bar and compass. That is the floor for Mapsmith's look.
• Where it falls short, from the pictures: - The coastal city sits half a mile inland. No harbour, no docks. The river town is a dozen houses and one bridge. - A "town" is a speck in a 900px square of forest. The city is one grid of near-identical roofs: no districts, no street names, no numbered key. - Roads run straight over the mountains. - The map is a flat canvas picture. To click a place you need a second plugin (TTRPG Tools: Maps) and an export step.
• So "better than Town Forge" means, in this order: 1. Places on the map you can click, with no second plugin: each shop, inn and temple has a name, a keeper and a hook, and a click makes its note. 2. Water that matters: coastal towns built on the shore with docks, river towns along both banks, a river that reaches the sea (an open Town Forge issue). 3. Districts and named streets, and a numbered key. 4. Crisp SVG drawn in the theme's colours, light or dark, at any zoom. 5. Roads that go round mountains. 6. Then what Town Forge can't do at all: the inside of a building, solo play on the map, and paid VTT export with walls and doors.
• Next: scaffold app/plugins/mapsmith and write the town generator from scratch. Town Forge's code stays in the scratchpad and none of it is copied.
• Finished 19:05

19:05: Mapsmith, the plugin and a first town

• app/plugins/mapsmith is scaffolded the way solo-oracle is built (esbuild, vitest, eslint with the obsidianmd rules, a demo bundle), with no runtime dependencies. All of it is written from scratch. Town Forge's code stays in the scratchpad and none of it is copied.
• The generator: Voronoi wards around a market square; river, roads, wall and coast run along the ward edges. Five sizes (hamlet to city), and five kinds of water: none, river, coast, river mouth, lake.
• Wards: packed and walled at the heart, gardens and houses along the roads outside, then farms, meadows and woods. There's a temple close, a keep with its own curtain wall, docks with piers on the water, gates where roads meet the wall, and bridges where they cross the river, plus footbridges inside bigger towns.
• Numbered places, 4 for a hamlet up to 16 for a city, each with a name, a keeper, a line about it and a hook. All the name and hook lists are my own.
• The plugin: a mapsmith block (seed, size, water, side, walls, name). A bar above the map rewrites the block (size, water, walls, New town), and the map is drawn in light or dark colours to match the theme. Click a number or its building for a card; "Open its note" writes the place's note in a folder named after the town, linked back to the map. There's also a numbered key under the map and an "Insert a town map" command.
• Bug found on the way: roads never crossed the river, because river corners only have spokes on one bank. Roads now walk the river edge and are drawn as one short crossing with a bridge in the middle, and gates in the wall work the same way.
• A city takes about 100 to 250 ms with about 2,000 buildings. The demo builds to app/public/press/mapsmith/ (noindex, not deployed yet). I clicked through it in Chromium in light and dark with no console errors.
• Tests 41/41 (every size with every water, same seed same map, nothing built in the sea, bridges, gates, the block parser, the click to a note). tsc and eslint are clean and the build works.
• Next: street names and districts, Town Forge side by side at the same seed size, then listing pictures and a release.
• Finished 19:29

19:29: Mapsmith, street names and districts

• Done. Each town now names its streets and quarters on the map. Main roads through town get a name along the road (High Street through the square, Bridge Street over the river, Gate Street, Castle Street by the keep, Harbour Street by the docks; otherwise a trade, Coopers Lane, Fullers Row). In large towns and cities the longest lanes between wards get smaller names too. Each trade names one street.
• Quarters: the packed wards are split by bearing from the square (3 in a town, 4 in a large town, 5 in a city, plus Old Town in the middle) and named for what's in them: the Docks, Riverside, Castle Ward, Eastgate. Roads leaving the map say where they go ("to Copperbury").
• Names are kept off the numbers, the title, the compass and the scale bar, and have a halo in the land colour so they read over roofs in light and dark.
• Bug on the way: the street lines were drawn closed, so half of each name ran back along the closing segment upside down. Drawn open now, with a test.
• Checked by eye: Umberweir (town, river) has 6 streets and 3 quarters; Gullweir (city) 5 and 6; Gullmouth (large town, river mouth) 2 and 4; the demo in dark mode. Tests 43/43 (2 new); tsc, eslint, build and demo clean.
• Not yet: the side-by-side with Town Forge, listing pictures, the mirror and release, the Obsidian submission.
• Finished 19:40

19:41: Mapsmith beside Town Forge

• Looked at Umberweir and Gullweir beside Town Forge's river town and coastal city. Where Town Forge still looks better: 1. Colour and water: green countryside, deep blue water with a sandy bank and a lighter current line. Ours is pale and the water is flat. 2. Buildings: neat rectangles in rows along the streets, red tile and blue slate mixed. Ours had all-red roofs and pointy slivers. 3. Trees: clumps with a dark rim and a highlight, so woods have depth. Ours are flat dots. 4. Mountains drawn as contours. We have none.
• Fixed now: (2). Each ward gets its own share of slate roofs among the tiles, and any building corner under about 66 degrees has its tip cut off, so there are no triangles left (0 of 548 in Umberweir).
• For tomorrow, in order: a sandy bank and a current line on rivers and coasts; tree clumps with shading; a greener land option. Mountains come after those.
• Where we're already ahead: walls, gates, bridges, docks, the numbered places, the notes, and now street and quarter names. Town Forge has none of these.
• Tests 43/43; tsc, eslint, build and demo clean.
• Finished 19:43

19:43: Mapsmith, banks and a current on the water

• Done. Rivers, coasts and lakes have a sand bank, the water is a little deeper, and rivers have a paler current down the middle. The sea and lakes are now drawn over the river's end, so a river runs into the sea instead of ending in a round blob with a ring of sand.
• Renderer only: places and names stay where they were.
• Checked: Gullmouth (river mouth, close up), Brightbridge (lake), and the demo in dark mode. Tests 43/43; tsc, eslint, build and demo clean.
• Next on the gap list: tree clumps with shading, then a greener land option.
• Finished 19:45

19:45: Mapsmith, woods with depth

• Trees are now drawn in three layers: a dark rim offset down-right, the crown, and a small light glint up-left. Each layer is one path of zero-length round-capped strokes, grouped by size, so a whole wood is a handful of paths.
• Woods now read as clumps with depth in light and dark. Checked Umberweir zoomed and the dark demo crop (Goldhaven).
• The SVG got smaller, not bigger: town 251 to 171 KB, city 568 to 409 KB, because the tree circles became shared paths.
• Tests 43/43; tsc, eslint, build and demo clean; the demo page throws no console errors.
• Next on the gap list: a greener land option, then mountains.
• Finished 19:48

19:49: Mapsmith, green country

• New block key land: parchment | green (also takes grass and paper), and a button beside Walls that flips it. The town is generated the same either way; only the paint changes.
• Each palette carries a country override: land, meadow, fields, hedges, gardens and slightly deeper trees, so woods keep their edge on green. Light green is close to Town Forge's countryside; dark is a night green.
• Street and quarter names now have a paving-coloured halo (they sit in the town), while "to <town>" keeps a land halo. The scale bar text got a halo too, since woods can run under it.
• Checked: Umberweir (town, river), Elmarsh (city, coast) green in light; the demo in dark, where the button wrote land: green into the block and redrew. No console errors.
• Tests 44/44 (new: green changes the paint, not the buildings; block reads land: grass). tsc, eslint, build and demo clean. README lists the key.
• Next: mountains, with roads that go around them.
• Finished 19:52

19:52: Mapsmith, hills and mountains

• New block key terrain: flat | hills | mountains (also takes hilly, mountain, plains), with a dropdown in the bar. Flat is the default, and flat maps come out the same as before (Umberweir 548 buildings and 2458 trees, Elmarsh 1311 and 2939, as before).
• New src/terrain.ts: the height field (zero around the town, rising away from the sea or lake, ridged for mountains, rolling for hills) and contours by marching squares on a grid padded with zero, so every ring closes and each level fills with even-odd.
• The generator: rivers prefer low ground and then cut a valley; roads pay for height and for climbing, so they leave by the valleys; high ground is grazing and wood, not fields; above 0.62 in the mountains it's bare rock with no buildings or trees.
• The renderer: each band washes the land a little darker, rock above the tree line, and a contour line on each. Hill-shade comes from the band itself nudged toward and away from the light, masked to where it sticks out, so the north-west slopes are lit and the south-east ones shaded. The paths sit in defs and are reused, so there is no copy of the data. The palette gained hill, contour, rock and sun, with a green version.
• First try made a flat grey plateau and a cliff round a small village. I fixed it by lowering the gain so only ridges reach the top, adding more ridges, and spreading the rise over at least a quarter of the map.
• Sizes: town with mountains 228 KB (flat 171), village 154 KB, city 296 KB.
• Checked: Umberweir (river through a mountain valley), Heronholm (village under peaks), Elmarsh (coast city, green), and the dark demo with mountains picked from the dropdown. No console errors.
• Tests 46/46 (new: relief is there and finite, no ring reaches the square, rock wards have no buildings, flat has no masks; block reads terrain: hilly). tsc, eslint, build and demo clean. README lists the key.
• That finishes the Town Forge gap list. Next: deploy the demo page, then the GitHub mirror and release, and the Obsidian submission.
• Finished 19:58

19:58: Mapsmith demo page live

• Full site tests: 266 passed, exit 0. Deployed; the live /press/mapsmith/demo.js carries terrain, street names and the new pick ring.
• Also done while the tests ran: a picked place was hard to see because its number badge sat on the small building it marks. Each badge now has a hidden ring that the stylesheet shows on the picked place, and the picked roof gets a thicker outline. Checked in a demo screenshot; plugin tests 46 passed, plus a new check that the ring stays hidden in a plain SVG.
• manifest.json description now mentions hills.
• Finished 20:07

20:07: Mapsmith on GitHub, 0.1.0 released

• Made walkertbrown/mapsmith (public) and pushed the plugin folder by subtree split (ms-split).
• README now opens with a screenshot of the demo: a river-mouth town with hills, the temple picked. It is in docs/demo.png.
• Release 0.1.0 is up with main.js, manifest.json and styles.css.
• The walkthrough for the boss is in forboss/2026-10-29-mapsmith-obsidian-submit.md: the repo, a description written for search, and the Free label.
• now.md has Mapsmith first, as the current app, marked as building.
• Finished 20:09

21:07: Mapsmith ships, first cut

• Copied Bulkhead's generator (model, generate, the fixture drawings) into the plugin as src/ship/ and made it pass Mapsmith's stricter type checks. Then wrote src/ship/svg.ts, a port of Bulkhead's canvas drawing to SVG: tinted floors, grid, walls with the hull over them, torn breaches with shards, fixtures, doors, room names, and numbered badges that pick the same way a town's places do (with the ring). Bulkhead's dungeon colours on light themes, its blueprint in dark.
• Wired it in further than planned: map: ship in the block, with size (shuttle, corvette, freighter, station), mood (intact or derelict) and deck. The bar has a size list, a deck list when there are two, a Derelict toggle and New ship. Above the map is the ship's name and its story folded under "What happened here"; below it the room key and a card per room, with Hazard and Salvage lines tagged. A new command, "Insert a ship map".
• Checked in the demo page (run locally, not deployed) by typing a ship block into its source box: freighter seed saltmarch drew two decks, clicking room 4 showed Engineering's card, and the deck list and toggle rewrote the block (deck: 2, mood: intact). No page errors. Previews of a corvette, freighter and station in both themes looked right; seed 3 corvette shows the breach.
• Tests 50 passed (new: ship decks deterministic, no NaN, one badge and one hidden ring per room; derelict has breaches; block reads ships). tsc and eslint clean. main.js goes from 59 KB to 141 KB with the generator in it.
• Not done: ship rooms have no "Open its note" yet, the demo page isn't redeployed, and no release. Next stretch: room notes, a ship on the demo page, README, then 0.2.0.
• Finished 21:20

21:21: Mapsmith ship rooms get notes

• A ship room's card has "Open its note" now. It writes the room to a folder named after the ship, with one folder per deck when there are two (for example ISV Larkspur/Upper deck/4 Engineering.md). The number in the file name keeps two crew quarters apart. The note has front matter (ship, deck, room), a line linking back to the map, the card's lines with Hazard and Salvage in bold, and an empty Notes heading. Town notes go through the same openNote now.
• Checked in the local demo: freighter saltmarch, clicked 4, Open its note, the note came out as above. No page errors. Tests 51 passed (roomNote added); tsc and eslint clean. The public demo files went back to their live versions; nothing deployed.
• Finished 21:22

21:26: Mapsmith 0.2.0, ships

• The demo page has Town and Ship buttons above the map; Ship loads a derelict freighter (seed saltmarch). The README has a Ships section with the keys and a picture (docs/ship.png, Engineering picked). The manifest description now names spaceship maps. The boss's Obsidian walkthrough has the same new description; they haven't submitted yet.
• 0.2.0 is on GitHub (main.js 141795, manifest.json 364, styles.css 2618), and the mirror is pushed.
• Site tests: the first run had 1 failure, a Bulkhead fleet test that timed out at 60 s while my builds and screenshots ran beside it (no Bulkhead code changed; alone it passes in 42 s, close to its limit). Re-run with the machine quiet: 266 passed, exit 0. Then deployed. On the live page Ship draws ISV Larkspur with 12 numbered rooms and Town brings back 10 places, with no page errors.
• The boss said the work took "so many days", meaning my estimates were far too long. Ships took 16 minutes. Noted.
• Finished 21:48

21:53: Mapsmith dungeons, first cut

• Mapsmith 0.3.0 adds dungeons: map: dungeon with size (lair, dungeon, deep) and kind (crypt or keep). Crypts are hatched into rock; keeps stand in open ground with a barred gate.
• Rooms are placed in slots, joined by corridors with a few loops, and given roles by how deep they sit. The far room is the tomb or the treasury. Doors can be plain doors, arches, bars or secret doors ("S", about half of the loop doors). There are 14 new fittings drawn in code (altar, sarcophagus, bookcase, brazier, bones and others).
• Each room's card has a line of description, plus a hazard at 40% and treasure at 35% (always in the far room). Above the map, "What happened here" gives the story and ends with a hook. The "Open its note" button writes dungeon: into the note's front matter.
• Plugin tests: 55 pass (new dungeon.test.ts checks 40 seeds for no cut-off rooms, valid doors and no fittings on doorsteps). tsc, eslint and build are clean. Site tests: 266/266, exit 0.
• Release 0.3.0 is on walkertbrown/mapsmith with main.js, manifest.json and styles.css. The mirror was pushed. The demo page has a Dungeon button, deployed, and checked live with Playwright: switching to a keep and New dungeon gave no errors.
• The README has a Dungeons section and docs/dungeon.png. The manifest description mentions dungeons, and the boss's submit walkthrough has the new description. now.md shows 0.3.0.
• First cut: keeps still read like dungeons (corridors through open ground), the bones fitting looks a little like scissors, and arch posts are faint.
• Finished 22:18

22:19: Mapsmith VTT export, first cut

• Mapsmith can save a dungeon or ship as a Universal VTT file (.dd2vtt) beside the note: the players' map (no numbers, secret doors drawn as wall), walls, doors, windows, barred gates and lights. Checked in a browser: walls and doors line up with the picture for a crypt, a keep and a wrecked ship.
• The button needs a Mapsmith Pro key, checked by the same worker that checks Solo Oracle Pro keys (new route /api/mapsmith/key). Until the itch page is up it answers "not sold yet". Deployed and checked live; Solo Oracle's key check still works.
• Which tables read it, checked: Roll20 imports .dd2vtt itself, Foundry needs the Universal Battlemap Importer module, Fantasy Grounds only through a converter. The plugin and README say so.
• README has a Pro section, and the privacy part now says when it goes online.
• The itch kit is live at /press/mapsmith/pro/ (cover, three pictures, texts) and the boss's steps are in forboss/2026-10-29-mapsmith-pro-itch-page.md, priced at $6 like Solo Oracle Pro.
• Not released: 0.4.0 waits for the itch page address (§5). Plugin tests 60/60, site tests 267/267.
• Finished 22:42

23:07: Mapsmith dungeon look fixes

• Bones are a skull over crossed bones now, so they no longer look like scissors. Arch posts are solid squares.
• A keep is now a walled yard. Its buildings stand in the yard with their doors opening onto it, with no corridors in the open. Empty rows and columns are closed up so the yard isn't mostly empty. It has a thick curtain wall, a tower with an arch on each corner, a double barred gate under the gatehouse, and a yard floor of its own in both palettes. Crypts are unchanged apart from the bones and arches.
• Fixed along the way: towers on a 2-square margin cut the yard ring at the corners, so the margin is 3. The yard also wrapped round the grid edge when the buildings started near x=0, which is fixed by starting the compaction at the margin.
• Tests: plugin 61/61, tsc and eslint clean. Site tests 267/267 earlier today. The README keep line now says what a keep holds.
• Not released and the demo not deployed. The source already carries the Pro save button, and Mapsmith Pro has no itch page yet, so this goes out with 0.4.0 when the boss sends the page address. The demo files were restored.
• Finished 23:21