TheLadder/README.md

# The Ladder

A turn-based career simulation game that runs entirely in the browser. You
start at the bottom of an organisation and play turns — a day at a time —
making choices that move your money, your skills and your standing with the
people around you. There is no win state and no game over: a bad run means
worse options, not an ending, and you can stop whenever you like and read the
retrospective.

The engine knows nothing about offices, mailrooms or bosses. A **setting is a
content pack** — characters, events, choices, stat names and tuning, all data.
Two ship: **Corporate Ladder**, a modern office and a mailroom, and **The
Frontier**, a freight yard at the end of a stage line. They share every line of
engine code and no content at all.

## Status

Engine, interface and two content packs, all built and tested, and played in a
real browser.

| Piece | State |
| --- | --- |
| Path-addressed state, conditions, effects | done |
| Seeded RNG, save/resume | done |
| Event selection, option gating | done |
| Turn loop, per-turn upkeep | done |
| Content validator + reachability tests | done |
| Corporate Ladder pack — 31 events, two tiers | done |
| Turn screen, retrospective, feedback widget | done |
| Local-storage save, file export/import | done |
| Single-file build | done |
| Calendar, scheduled wages and rent | done |
| Promotion from the mailroom to Dispatch | done |
| Repetition analytics (`npm run analyze`) | done |
| Version and build shown on screen | done |
| Keyboard play (Enter / Tab) | done |
| Second content pack — The Frontier, 29 events, two tiers | done |
| Setting picker, one save slot per pack | done |
| Pack conformance suite (every pack, every check) | done |
| Played in a real browser | Corporate Ladder yes, first playtest 2026-09-09; **The Frontier not yet** |

The first playtest confirmed the interface, saves and the exported log all work
in a real browser. Its findings — an unexplained daily drain, no sense of the
week, and an economy nobody could get ahead in — are what the calendar and the
retuned economy are for.

Note that the development machine has no browser that can render a page, so the
UI tests drive the real modules against a minimal fake DOM. That covers wiring,
not layout: **styling and dark mode are only ever verified by a human opening
it.**

## Playing it

```sh
npm run serve     # then open http://localhost:8080
```

The game plays from the keyboard: Enter takes the focused option, Enter again
moves to the next day, and Tab / Shift+Tab pick a different option. The top of
every screen names the game, the pack, your current title, and the build —
`0.3.0 · dev` when running from source, and the commit it came from when built.

A server is needed during development because browsers refuse ES module imports
over `file://`. If port 8080 is taken, run `python3 -m http.server <port>`
instead.

To hand the game to someone else:

```sh
npm run build     # writes dist/theladder.html
```

That is one self-contained file with the stylesheet and every module inlined.
It plays by double-clicking it — no server, no network, nothing installed.

```sh
npm test          # 149 tests: engine, both packs, UI wiring, and the build
```

Tests are in three layers. `test/conformance.test.js` runs over **every pack in
the registry** and asserts only what is true of a pack because it is a pack —
validity, no dead content, the declared economic baseline, variety, replay from
seed, a way out of every event. `test/content.test.js` and
`test/frontier.test.js` hold each pack to its own tuning. The engine suite runs
against a fixture pack, so tuning a setting can never break it.

To see what a playtest actually did — turns against distinct situations, how
often each recurred, which locked gates players kept meeting, and anything they
typed into the feedback box:

```sh
npm run analyze                 # the newest export in logs/
npm run analyze -- <file>       # a specific one
```

Drop exports into `logs/`. They are gitignored — a log is a record of what a
real person did, including anything they typed into the feedback box.

There are no runtime dependencies and no build step for development. Node is
used only to run the tests, the single-file build, and the log analyser.

## Where things stand

The MVP is complete and has survived three playtests, and a second setting now
exists to prove the engine/content split holds. Adding it required **no engine
change** — and three interface changes, two of which were latent defects a
second pack made visible (a single global save slot, and the one place the UI
still named a setting). See DECISIONS.md #34.

Open questions, in the order they are likely to matter:

- **The Frontier has never been played by a human.** Its economy is asserted by
  the conformance suite and exercised by six archetypes, and that is exactly the
  evidence that was not enough the last two times. It needs a session before its
  numbers are believed.

- **Standing costs money to keep, and the Frontier's version is unplayed.**
  Each setting has a `lifestyle` tier bought on the second rung and charged for
  every cycle after, a standing penalty for lagging behind what the job expects,
  and a charge levied by standing itself that no purchase ever ends. Corporate
  Ladder's has had one 96-turn session: both purchases were found and taken, and
  the standing pressure worked, but the run arrived at the top with nothing left
  to spend on — which is where the never-stopping charge came from. The Frontier
  carries the same system at its own scale and has never been in front of anyone.
  See DECISIONS #36.
- **Dispatch is eleven events against the mailroom's nineteen.** It passes the
  variety guard, but it has had far less play than the mailroom. Waits on more
  playtesting.
- **A third tier in either pack.** Two rungs is what both settings have. The
  split is now proven across settings; it is not proven across a long ladder.
  Waits until the Frontier has been played.

Settled, and not open: Corporate Ladder's negotiation gate stays as it is, and
the feedback widget stays as it is (DECISIONS #35). Money mattering late is
built rather than open (DECISIONS #36).

## Layout

```
src/engine/     the game engine — imports nothing from content/, or from src/ui/
  paths.js        dotted-path get/set over state
  conditions.js   generic predicates: { path, op, value }, all/any/not
  effects.js      generic mutations: add/set/push/remove, with clamping
  state.js        pack -> schema and initial state
  select.js       which event fires this turn, which options are available
  game.js         the turn loop
  rng.js          seeded, serializable RNG
  validate.js     load-time content checking
src/ui/         screens, formatting and the app controller
  app.js          the only module that knows there is more than one pack
  screens/        the turn screen, the retrospective, the setting picker
  format.js       state paths and conditions rendered as English
src/io/         local-storage save (one slot per pack), export/import, feedback log
content/
  index.js        the pack registry — the only list of settings
  corporateladder/  a modern office and a mailroom
  frontier/         a freight yard at the end of a stage line
tools/build.js  flattens everything into one self-contained HTML file
test/           engine tests against a fixture pack; conformance, per-pack, UI
docs/           DECISIONS.md — why things are the way they are
Planning/       the original design documents
```

**The rule that keeps this honest: nothing in `src/engine/` may import from
`content/`.** The engine names no stat, no character and no setting of its own.

## How content works

A pack declares what state exists and what it starts at, the relationship stats
every character carries, the characters, and the events. Everything else falls
out of that.

```js
export default {
  id: 'corporateladder',
  startingStage: 'mailroom',

  state: {
    'money': { initial: 1200, min: -5000, max: 1000000 },
    'skills.negotiation': { initial: 1, min: 0, max: 100 },
    'flags.took_loan': { initial: false },
  },

  // Expanded per character into relationships.<id>.<stat>, so adding a
  // character adds its relationship state automatically.
  relationshipStats: {
    likes_you: { initial: 50, min: 0, max: 100 },
    fears_you: { initial: 50, min: 0, max: 100 },
    wants_to_help_you: { initial: 50, min: 0, max: 100 },
  },

  characters: [
    { id: 'boss', name: '...', role_type: 'boss', description: '...' },
  ],

  events: [
    {
      id: 'mail_run',
      stage: 'mailroom',
      weight: 100,                 // relative likelihood among eligible events
      description: 'A cart of mail and two hours to move it.',
      options: [
        {
          id: 'hustle',
          label: 'Get it done fast.',
          requires: [{ path: 'skills.negotiation', op: '>=', value: 3 }],
          effects: [
            { path: 'money', op: 'add', value: 40 },
            { path: 'relationships.boss.likes_you', op: 'add', value: 3 },
          ],
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
};
```

An event may also carry `once: true`, a `cooldown` in turns, and `requires`
conditions of its own. There is no separate notion of a random event: every
turn draws from the whole eligible pool by weight.

Conditions may read engine bookkeeping (`turn`, `stage`, `seen.<eventId>`,
`lastSeen.<eventId>`) as well as pack state. Effects may not write it.

A pack also declares `upkeep` — a list of `{ label, requires?, effects }`
applied at the end of a turn, after the choice. Adding `every` and `offset`
makes an entry periodic rather than daily: Corporate Ladder pays wages on
alternate Fridays (`{ every: 14, offset: 4 }`), charges rent every Monday, and
adds a loan service charge that steps up as the debt grows.

A pack may also declare a `calendar`:

```js
calendar: {
  cycleLength: 7,
  cycleName: 'Week',
  unitNames: ['Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday', 'Sunday'],
},
```

The engine derives `calendar.index`, `calendar.cycle` and `calendar.name` from
the turn number before each event is drawn, so content can require a Friday and
the interface can title the turn. Declare no calendar and there is no week.

Run `validatePack(pack)` when loading in development — it catches undeclared
paths, unknown characters, unusable ids, unreachable events and stages with no
fallback event, all of which otherwise fail silently mid-playthrough.