Roadmap

Vivarium is built in phases. Each phase below lists the features it adds, in the order the work runs. A phase is marked done only when every one of its acceptance checks passes.

1. Phase 0

   Foundation

   (done)

   Accounts, ownership and a database that is the only source of truth.

   • Your worlds, characters and stories belong to your account and nobody else can read them.
   • Everything durable lives in the database, so a restart loses nothing.
2. Phase 1

   Bring your own AI

   (done)

   Connect the provider you already pay for, make a character, and play.

   • Your provider key is encrypted the moment it is stored and is never shown again.
   • Pick the model that narrates each story.
   • A narrator that writes the scene and gives every character a voice.
3. Phase 2

   World structure

   (done)

   Places, items, travel and time as things the world tracks.

   • Places connect to other places, and travel between them takes time.
   • Items exist, belong to someone, and move when they change hands.
   • World time is a real quantity, and only you move it forward.
   • Each story runs on its own copy of the world, so editing a world never changes a story under way.
4. Phase 3

   Structured memory, lore and the play screen

   (done)

   Facts kept as records you can read and correct, and somewhere to sit down and play.

   • Facts, scene summaries, character memories and unresolved events stored as records.
   • A memory inspector where you read and edit what the world remembers.
   • A lore book per world, brought into a scene only when it is relevant.
   • A play screen that streams narration, with stop, regenerate and edit on recent turns.
5. Phase 4

   Character autonomy and dice

   (done)

   Outcomes resolved before a word of prose exists.

   • Characters with goals, fears, values and desires that carry real weight in what they decide.
   • Refusal as a normal result. Characters can say no, bargain, or walk away.
   • Checks rolled against skills and conditions, with failures that complicate the story.
   • The narrator receives the decided outcome, and prose that contradicts it is rejected.
   • Every change a turn makes is recorded, so you can take a turn back.
6. Phase 5

   Relationships, beliefs and knowledge

   (done)

   What each character knows, believes and thinks of you.

   • Relationships with several dimensions, and they run one way. Trust is not always returned.
   • Knowledge kept apart from truth, so a character can be wrong and act on it.
   • Secrets and misinformation that stay with the characters who hold them.
   • A character only speaks from what that character actually knows.
7. Phase 6

   Aging and character development

   (done)

   Characters change over a long story. So does yours.

   • Characters age as world time passes, switched on or off per world and per character.
   • Personalities develop from what happens, and every change records its cause.
   • Locks on any trait you never want changed.
   • Births, family links, and children who grow up.
8. Phase 7

   The active world: engine

   (done)

   Skip an hour or a week and the world catches up.

   • Characters keep schedules and walk real routes to follow them.
   • Skip time and the application works out who went where and what changed.
   • A digest of what your character could plausibly have learned, shown before your next turn.
   • Companions keep their own routines. Someone with somewhere to be leaves and comes back.
9. Phase 8

   Service readiness

   (done)

   The work that separates something on one desk from something other people can rely on.

   • Sign in with email and a password, or with Google or Microsoft.
   • Optional two-factor sign-in, and a list of your signed-in devices that you can revoke.
   • Download the worlds and characters you wrote, as files that carry no secrets.
   • Token usage recorded for every model call, so you can see what a story spends on your own key.
   • Backups proven by restoring them, and provider keys that can be re-encrypted under a new master key.
10. Phase 9

    The active world: content

    (done)

    Giving the engine a world worth simulating.

    • Towns with districts, and quick travel between neighbouring areas.
    • Each character either stays where they live or travels with you.
    • Items that change your odds on a check, and rated locks on doors and containers.
    • Hunger, fatigue and health that rise with world time and become conditions.
    • Merchants with prices and stock, paid in the world's own money.
    • Encounters rolled from how dangerous a place is, never conjured because a scene went quiet.
    • World events, factions with goals, and reputation.
    • Rumours that spread as things characters believe, never as things that are automatically true.
    • Jobs with wages, and relationships that shift as world time passes.
11. Phase 10

    Play quality and first run

    (done)

    A long story that stays good to read, and a first evening that reaches a scene.

    • The narrator stops speaking and acting for your character, and you choose the point of view.
    • Overused phrases are counted by the application and steered away from on the next turn.
    • A provider refusal is named as a refusal and is never stored as part of the story.
    • The turn says which stage it has reached while it runs.
    • A readiness check that tells you whether a model can run the game before you start.
    • One-tap "Remember this" on any narrator message.
    • Quick start, and a guided walk through connecting your key.
12. Phase 11

    The world catalogue

    (done)

    Worlds written for Vivarium, and a subscription that can bring the model with it.

    • One catalogue of worlds written for Vivarium, to browse and search.
    • Larger worlds marked Premium, included in the subscription.
    • Clone a catalogue world and change your copy privately.
    • Keep the world a story became, and start a new story from it.
    • If a subscription ends, premium stories pause, stay readable and resume. Nothing is deleted.
    • A way to subscribe with the model included: no provider account, no key, and a monthly allowance.
13. Phase 12

    The subscription, finished

    (done)

    Both ways to subscribe, made fair and dependable before either is offered.

    • Switch between your own key and the model included, in the app.
    • When the allowance runs out, play continues on a lighter model. A second provider covers outages.
    • Every turn names the model that wrote it.
    • A cancelled subscription shows the date it ends and what will pause.
    • Preview a catalogue world before you start a story in it.
    • A snapshot of your own world downloads like any world you wrote.
14. Phase 13

    The living world, written into worlds

    (done)

    Factions, routines, events and merchants become part of a world, not only of a story.

    • Worlds carry factions with members and goals, routines with wages, scheduled events, groups and merchants.
    • Characters in a world carry their age, and how they age and develop.
    • Each world keeps a calendar, and the clock and the narrator both name the season.
    • Every copy, clone and download of a world carries all of its content.
15. Phase 14

    Consequences

    (done)

    What you do is remembered by those who saw it, and by those who hear of it later.

    • Insults, betrayals, rescues and apologies move how people feel about you, sized by the story's stakes.
    • Feelings spike and fade. Waiting forgives nothing, and no repair outweighs the harm.
    • Promises kept as open threads, with deadlines that can pass.
    • Standing with factions and places, moved by what their people see you do.
    • Word that reaches people who were not there, sometimes exaggerated.
    • An epithet earned by deeds, and two ways back with a faction: earned or paid.
    • Recall by meaning: memories found because they are close in sense, not only in wording.
16. Phase 15

    Pronouns and loose ends

    (done)

    A short phase that settles what Consequences left open, before fights arrive.

    • Pronouns for every character: she, he, they, or a set you type yourself.
    • Promises the whole party makes together, not only one character.
    • Steadier recall by meaning, and the smaller fixes found while Consequences was built.
17. Phase 16

    Conflict

    (done)

    Fights as a tracked exchange, never a death decided by one line of prose.

    • A fight starts only from a decided act, never because the prose drifted into one.
    • Each exchange is a check on who has the upper hand. You can always yield or flee, at a known cost.
    • Injuries on a named ladder instead of hit points, healing with world time, rest and care.
    • What losing costs depends on the stakes you chose for the story.
    • Capture with a way out, and what beaten foes carried left for you to take.
    • Fights can be switched off for any story. Theft and disputes over property stay.
18. Phase 17

    Screen quality: foundations

    (done)

    The new look and the Story room, before more features are built on the old ones.

    • Light and dark themes, text size, a book or clean story font, and a compact or comfortable layout.
    • A rebuilt Story room: the faces of everyone in the scene, a clearer place to write, and fights that fit the page.
    • Every refusal said in a plain sentence, clear loading, saving and error states, and screens that work in a narrow window.
19. Phase 18

    Screen quality: the Overview

    (done)

    A second room for everything outside the scene.

    • An Overview of your character, household, party, family, relationships and standing, one click from the story.
    • Send for a companion who is somewhere else: they come to you, wait for you, or meet you at a place you choose.
    • Portraits for your characters, with a simple monogram until you add one.
    • Each part of the game explains itself the first time you meet it, in one line you can reread any time.
20. Phase 19

    Living characters

    (done)

    Keep the people the narrator invents.

    • Keep someone the narrator invented as a full character. The AI drafts the card from your scenes, and you approve it.
    • See everything about them at once, or discover their hidden depths in play.
    • A quiet suggestion to keep someone who keeps turning up.
21. Phase 20

    Play quality: what the first playtest found

    (done)

    The first live play-through on a real AI provider, and the fixes it asks for.

    • The game reaches your AI provider from wherever it runs, and says plainly when it cannot: no connection, a refused key, or no credit left.
    • Models that think before they answer work on every call, and the readiness check tries the real memory format before it says Ready.
    • A scene's memory is kept even when the AI's reply has a few bad parts, and the game records when a scene could not be remembered. Telling you on screen, with a way to try again, comes with the screen work below.
    • The narrator keeps to who is really in the scene and to what each character actually knows, and clues stay the same when you regenerate.
    • Only the groups your character truly leads answer to you, and editing the world is a separate mode that never spoils a mystery.
    • Remember this can keep one fact that you accept or edit, not the whole page. The button itself changes with the screen work below.
22. Phase 21

    Screen quality: quiet by default

    (done)

    Every play screen laid out again from one set of rules: one clear action in each place, explanation only when you ask for it, nothing shown that is empty.

    • One bar of seven rooms inside a story: Story, You, People, Groups, Belongings, World and History, with Help and the menu beside them.
    • The story is the only thing that scrolls, the place to write stays pinned, and every entry names its speaker. On a phone, the panels become sheets.
    • Help, hints and first-time explanations live behind a question mark, not in the way of the story.
    • Forms open when you ask for them; an empty place takes one line.
    • See how hard a check is in words before you commit to it, with no roll spent on looking. Search the closed scenes and jump to one. Read what your character could know about the world.
    • A gate that renders every play screen at three widths in both themes and fails the build when one overflows.
23. Phase 22

    Screen quality: the play path, checked

    (done)

    A design review of every play screen, and the fixes it asked for.

    • Inspect anyone in the scene and see their full card beside the story, with portraits you upload and a monogram until you do.
    • Correct your own story's facts, summaries, memories and promises without switching on Edit mode. Other characters' private memories stay hidden, because they are spoilers.
    • An ended story says plainly what it no longer allows.
24. Phase 23

    Screen quality: everything else

    (done)

    The same rules applied to every screen outside the story, and the old stylesheets retired.

    • Your account, preferences, home, new story, the library and sign-in, each laid out again from the same pieces.
    • Editing a character or a world happens in a form under the row you are changing.
    • A prose-only story, if you want the panels out of the way, and news you can mute by kind.
25. Phase 24

    Screen quality: what the first look found

    (done)

    A second design review, across the whole app, and a gate that keeps every screen as approved.

    • Every screen state is rendered and compared against an approved set, so a layout that slips is caught before it reaches you.
    • Reading a catalogue world shows the copy you would play, not a draft.
    • Each entry in Meanwhile names who, where and when.
    • Forty-two smaller fixes from the review.
26. Phase 25

    Screen quality: what the second look found

    (done)

    A short third review, and the last fixes before the next feature phase.

    • Reading a starter or catalogue world shows what you would know on day one, never its secrets.
    • The identity form and every row form in Edit mode, laid out again and checked on a phone.
    • The People, History and Belongings rooms, the story screen and the Library, each with its last leftovers fixed.
    • Your plan and provider pages tidied, and Help reworded.
27. Phase 26

    Personality that matters

    (done)

    Who a character is changes what they do.

    • Traits from a list each world writes, in opposite pairs, and each one really changes what a character chooses. Traits you write in your own words stay.
    • Relationships described in feeling words that come from the numbers, both ways: she is fond of you, and you are wary of him.
    • A short line under a reply says when personality mattered, with the reason one tap away.
    • A new world starts from a pack, plain, fantasy, modern, space or historical, so its places are the right size for the setting.
    • Pressure builds, and characters cope in their own ways. Someone away from your party shows it as of when you last saw them. Whether your own character feels it is a switch you set for each story, and nothing ever acts for them.
28. Phase 27

    Personality: loose ends

    (done)

    The tidy-up that came before the first playtest of Personality, from a look at its screens and the decisions it raised.

    • Someone outside your party is shown only as you last saw them, everywhere the game describes them, and nothing gives away a depth you have not discovered.
    • A drafted character shows what it proposes, traits and all, before you keep it.
    • One rule for the words that say how someone feels about you, the same on the card, in the inspector and in the story. The strongest feeling leads.
    • A stronger trait weighs more, and no apology repays more than the harm done.
    • Hunger and rest as a switch: a default for each world, and a setting for each story.
    • An author can change a world's starting pack after the world is made.
29. Phase 28

    Two fixes

    (done)

    Two things the Personality work left wrong, put right before anything new was built.

    • When an organisation's goal half works, its standing toward you moves a little, and Meanwhile tells you. Before, nothing happened.
    • Open, on a person's card, opens the proposal waiting for you instead of saying it is gone.
30. Phase 29

    How people treat each other

    (done)

    People remember what others do, not only what you do to them.

    • Witnesses remember when a character betrays you or hurts someone, and so do their groups.
    • People are judged by the company they keep. What a companion does reflects on you.
    • The dead are mourned and remembered by those who loved them.
    • Friends, lovers, rivals and sworn enemies that last, made by a moment and broken only by its opposite.
    • A companion speaks up before a weighty choice, and says why.
    • Witnesses react when any member of the party keeps a promise.
    • Known and feared for what you did: what people have heard of you, shown where you see your standing.
    • Ties: how the people you know feel about each other, on every card.
    • The world moves on every plan. On the free plan, within a monthly allowance.
31. Phase 30

    Playtest fixes, October

    (done)

    A short phase that fixed what the first live playtest of this block found, before anything new was built.

    • On a desktop window the story sits between its two panels, with the place to write at the bottom.
    • A narrator reply is never lost: a failed check costs nothing, and a refused reply gets one quiet second try. Refused again, you read why and regenerate.
    • The narrator no longer thinks before it writes, so replies come sooner and cost less; they read in paragraphs, with emphasis.
    • After a journey, the scene shows who is really there, and People shows where someone was last seen.
    • A long skip ends rested and fed.
    • A tidier first run: Start opens a new story at who you play, and the set-up page checks a narrator and makes it yours in one step.
32. Phase 31

    Playtest: a life among people

    (done)

    A second sitting with the game, once the first playtest's findings were fixed. Nothing stopped play; twelve serious findings go to a fix phase first.

    • What the playtest finds is fixed before the work moves on.
33. Phase 32

    Playtest fixes, October II

    (done)

    A second short phase that fixed what the second sitting found, before anything new was built.

    • The narrator holds to who is here and where you are on every reply, and the scene's faces refresh after every turn. A move you write in words takes you there, as Travel would.
    • A reply in which someone agrees but has little to tell is kept, not thrown away as a contradiction.
    • A check you start from the composer is narrated with its cost, the same attempt is not rolled twice in one scene, and giving up a fight is narrated too.
    • When the application cannot read your line, it tries once more and then says on the turn that nothing was decided.
    • A scene's memories are recorded in one pass; one recorded in part says so, and Try again fills only what is missing.
    • What you see of a world lists only the people you have met, and a listed world's read-only view shows its public face only.
    • Add an item in a starter world, and the keyboard and screen-reader fixes the playtest found.
34. Phase 33

    Follow-ups from the playtests

    Building now

    Rest the pointer on anyone to see who they are and how you stand; a week's skip is a week lived, with everyone eating and sleeping; the providers page as asked; the words testers tripped on.

    5 of 24 milestones

    • Rest the pointer on a face or a group to see who they are and how you stand with them.
    • A week's skip is a week lived: everyone eats and sleeps, and the skip stops on the first day someone goes hungry.
    • A complication the story names, kept as a thread you can follow.
    • The providers page fixed as asked, and the words testers tripped on reworded.
35. Phase 34

    Someone of your own

    Ahead

    Draft the character you play, or a person of a world, with your model from one line; you read the card and accept it before anything is saved.

    • From one line, your model drafts a full character card that knows the world it belongs to.
    • Two doors: who you play when starting a story, and the People of a world you write.
    • Nothing is saved until you have read the card and accepted it.
36. Phase 35

    Asking, and owing

    Ahead

    Ask for something real, and it really happens.

    • Ask someone to hand something over, come with you, see to your wounds, keep quiet, or tell you what they know, and a yes really does it.
    • Bring something to the asking: what you know about them, what they fear, or a favour they owe you.
    • Anyone can refuse, unless the odds truly leave them no choice.
    • Favours are remembered by name, and so are debts and promises.
    • More ways out of captivity: talk your way free, hear a captor's offer, or be rescued by your companions.
37. Phase 36

    Owning, and things changing hands

    Ahead

    Every coin and every item kept by the application, never by the prose.

    • Money and goods held by the application, so the narrator cannot lose or invent your coin.
    • Trades you can take back like any other turn, and barter where a world has no money.
    • People, families and organisations can all own things, places and money.
    • Gifts and bribes that change how people feel about you.
38. Phase 37

    Family across generations

    Ahead

    A family that outlives you.

    • Partners: a bond between two characters that the world gives its own name.
    • Houses with a reputation that the family's deeds raise or ruin.
    • Children grow up shaped by the people who raised them and by what happened around them.
    • When your character dies, carry on as an heir, and what they held passes on.
39. Phase 38

    Organisations: leading

    Ahead

    Rise to lead a realm, a business or a guild, through people and decisions rather than armies.

    • Ranks and offices you are appointed to or earn.
    • A succession when a leader dies or falls.
    • Places an organisation holds and a treasury of its own.
40. Phase 39

    Organisations: rules and relations

    Ahead

    What an organisation expects of its members, and how it stands with the others.

    • Rules a leader sets, and a term of office with a count to the next.
    • Oaths that bind, and exile for those who break them.
    • What happens when someone helps themselves to the treasury.
    • Organisations allied, rival or at odds with each other.
41. Phase 40

    Generated events, eras and gatherings

    Ahead

    The world keeps happening when its written events run out: ages that turn, gatherings you host or are invited to, newcomers who settle where people are missing, friends who send a gift, and a quiet first week before any trouble finds you.

    • When no written event is coming soon, the AI drafts one from what the world allows. The application decides which happen.
    • A world's history runs in ages, each quiet, steady or turbulent, with its own kinds of events, and an age can turn on what you do.
    • People and places an age protects are never harmed by a generated event.
    • Gatherings where people meet: feasts, councils, contests, weddings and funerals. Host one, or be invited.
    • Newcomers arrive where a place is missing someone, and a friend may send a gift.
    • A quiet first week in every new story, before any trouble finds you.
42. Phase 41

    Organisations act, schemes and tasks

    Ahead

    The organisations you know act on their own, filling seats, holding elections, changing their rules and growing slowly, while you plan against a rival, ask someone to do a task for you, reveal a secret before everyone, look into what happened, and find out who is moving against you.

    • Organisations act on their own as world time passes: seats filled, elections held, rules changed, slow growth. You hear the news.
    • Schemes that move forward over world time, and can be discovered.
    • Plan against a rival, and find out who is moving against you.
    • Ask someone to do a task for you, and see whether it gets done.
    • Reveal a secret before everyone, or look into what happened.
43. Phase 42

    Getting better at things

    Ahead

    Get better at what you really do: real effort teaches, easy things do not; ask someone better to teach you, or teach your own; and watch the years make everyone wiser and slower.

    • Your character and companions improve at what they do when it really matters. Easy or repeated tries teach nothing.
    • Growth shows up as a line in the story, like "Mara is now an expert archer", never as a progress bar.
    • Ask someone better to teach you. Whether they will, and what it costs, depends on how they feel about you. Teach your own in turn.
    • Old age slowly weakens the body, never what a character knows. Children learn from the people who raise them.
44. Phase 43

    Economy: places that trade and produce

    Ahead

    Somewhere to spend money, and a reason to earn it.

    • Merchants whose terms follow your standing, from a friend's discount to a flat refusal.
    • Services: a night's lodging, training, healing, passage.
    • Goals worth saving for, with prices you can see.
    • Requests and paid jobs with deadlines.
    • Places that yield: fields to harvest, mines, rivers and hunting grounds.
    • Go: set off for any place you know in one go, stopping only for what matters on the road.
45. Phase 44

    The map

    Ahead

    See the world you know, and plan a journey on it.

    • A map of every place you know, drawn from the roads between them, with the land each power holds.
    • Tap where you want to go and see the way, the days it takes and who you would meet; tap a town on the way to go through it.
46. Phase 45

    Economy: the economy ticks

    Ahead

    Stock, harvests and work move forward when you move time.

    • Stock restocks and fields regrow as world time passes, on every plan.
    • Recipes that turn goods into other goods. Long ones run on the clock.
    • Prices that drift with what a place has too much or too little of.
47. Phase 46

    Economy: holding, owing and work

    Ahead

    Places to rent or own, debts that come due, and work that pays.

    • Rent a room or own a place, with upkeep you set to off, gentle or as written.
    • Careers with ranks, and promotions the application decides, never the narrator.
    • Work shifts you can skip past or play as scenes.
    • Workers you hire, whose real output earns a business its income.
    • Debts on a schedule, with a grace period before anything is lost. No interest and no banks.
48. Phase 47

    Economy: travel and bargaining

    Ahead

    Faster ways to cross a world, and room to haggle.

    • Mounts, vehicles and ships that change how fast you travel and which crossings you can make.
    • Haggling: one roll, when you ask for it.
49. Phase 48

    Building

    Ahead

    Build on the land you hold.

    • Build or improve a place you hold, with materials, money and world time.
    • A building does what its kind says: produce, trade, lodge guests, keep goods, house people, employ, train or grow.
50. Phase 49

    Your own map

    Ahead

    Put your own picture of the world in place of the drawn map, and pin every place where it belongs.

    • Upload a picture for a world, or for a town inside it, and place its places on it with a click. Where you give no picture, the drawn map stays.
    • Pan and zoom your picture the way you pan and zoom the drawn map; the places keep their spots.
    • Plan a journey on your picture the way you do on the drawn map: tap places, and the way lights up.
51. Phase 50

    Launch readiness

    Ahead

    Opening the door to people I have never met.

    • Self-service sign-up, an 18+ declaration, and terms and a content stance in plain words.
    • The five starter worlds, each complete with its cast.
    • Account deletion that erases your data, with a grace period in case you change your mind.
    • A new free account starts with a short taste on Vivarium's own model, enough for the first hour, before you bring a key of your own.
52. Phase 51

    Your things

    Ahead

    What you made elsewhere comes in, and what you make here goes out with you.

    • Bring in a character card or lore book from the tools you use today, converted and reviewed by you before anything is saved.
    • Download a character you wrote as a card.
    • Download one story, or everything you have, as files that carry no secrets.
    • Restore your own backup, back into your own account.
    • Pick a cheaper model of your own for the short questions the game asks between turns; your narrator stays yours.
53. Phase 52

    Running the place

    Ahead

    The tools that keep the game honest once strangers are in it.

    • A world check that lists every problem in a world, and shows what the narrator is told about it.
    • The starter worlds loaded and kept current by one tool, so every player gets the same world.
    • An account can be suspended for breaking the rules. Every appeal is read by a person.
54. Phase 53

    Hosting

    Ahead

    Everything needed to run Vivarium somewhere other than my desk.

    • The whole service described as code, with encrypted secrets and restorable backups.
    • The game at play.vivariumonline.com, beside this site.
    • A public status page with two lines, whether the game is up and whether Vivarium's own model is, never your own provider; and a changelog of what each release changed.
55. Phase 54

    Closed beta and quality

    Ahead

    About two months on the real game with a few friends, before the public launch.

    • The beta runs on the real game, not a test copy, and testers keep their stories into launch. If a reset were ever needed, a week's notice and time to download first.
    • Every feature on every screen, on every plan, worked through against a written test plan.
    • The narrator graded on staying in character, memory, never acting for your character, believable consequences and clear refusals.
    • What the beta finds becomes short fix phases, added here as they open.
    • The public launch follows the beta.