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HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?

Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.

The Sandbox

Come in curious. Try things, break things, and tell us what you notice.

There are no deadlines here. Nothing you break stays broken, and nobody is waiting for you to finish anything.

~/sandbox $ nothing here is permanent

Come on in

Norah thought up this sandbox, and everyone is welcome in it.

Come in curious. Pull up a patch of sand, try things, break things, and share what you notice. We’ll meet you in the middle.

Bring whatever spoons you can spare for ideas and fixes. However many that is, it’s enough.

Two sandboxes

In software, a sandbox is a fenced-off place to run something you don’t trust yet, so that if it breaks, nothing else breaks with it. The name came from the playground.

“The sandbox metaphor derives from the concept of a child's sandbox—a play area where children can build, destroy, and experiment without causing any real-world damage.”

Play in the sand

Dig with the spade, tip out a bucket, bounce the ball. Or build a castle and burn it down. Nothing has to turn into anything, nothing is saved, and nothing can be lost.

A sandcastle with 3 towers, 2 walls and 1 flag. A bucket and a spade lie on one side and a beach ball on the other.

Suggestion box

Got an idea for the sandbox, or found something that didn’t work? Norah would love to hear it. Half an idea is fine.

Some places to start:

  • Something that confused me was…
  • Something I broke was…
  • Something I’d add is…

How the box works

  • Anybody signed on to the CB can drop something in: a suggestion, a feature request, or a bug report, about this room or anywhere on the street, the CB included. Your handle goes on it, for everybody to see.
  • Anybody can read what is in the box, signed on or not.
  • Our moderators answer each one: done, or not doing, and why, with their own username on the reply. An answer can change, and a not yet can become a yes.
  • It stays until it is taken down, by whoever dropped it in or by any moderator. Nothing in the box is counted, ranked or voted on. What the box keeps.
  • A security problem is not for the box, where everybody can read it. Report it privately: SECURITY.md says how.

In the box

Reading the box needs scripts. Without them, or without the CB, write to us instead.

Build the street with us

Every room on this street is a file in one public repository, and so is every tool that builds and checks them. If you would rather fix a thing than describe it, you can. Your own copy is a sandbox too: nothing you break there reaches the street until Ryan Boren or Helen Edgar merge it.

Most of the street is built with Claude, Anthropic’s AI, and it can help you too. It reads the street’s rules, in CLAUDE.md, before it changes anything. You do not need to be a programmer. You do need some spoons, a GitHub account, and a computer you can install things on. Take the steps at whatever pace suits you; nobody is waiting.

  1. What you need

    A Mac, a Linux computer, or Windows with WSL: the street’s tools are Bash and Python scripts, so on Windows we run them inside Linux. A GitHub account. And these, which the setup script in a moment checks for you:

    • Git, and Python 3.
    • Node.js 22 or newer.
    • Google Chrome or Chromium. Every check looks at the pages through it, the way a visitor’s browser does.
    • GitHub’s own gh, for making your copy and sending a change back. The GitHub website does both too.

    Only for particular jobs, and the script says when: cwebp and ffmpeg for new photographs and recordings, and Pillow for the Collection Collection.

  2. Make your own copy

    Your copy is called a fork. With gh, these make it and put it on your computer, with the street’s own copy named upstream so you can keep up with it:

    gh auth login
gh repo fork Stimpunks/Stimpunks-Love --clone
cd Stimpunks-Love

    Without gh: press Fork on the repository, then git clone your fork’s address and cd into it.

  3. Check your computer

    tools/setup.sh

    It checks for everything above, installs the one library the CB needs with npm, and says in plain words what is missing and how to get it. It installs nothing else and never asks for your password. Run it again whenever you like.

  4. Hook up Claude

    Claude Code is Claude working in a folder of code: it reads the files, runs the tools and makes changes, and asks before anything it is not sure of. It needs a Claude Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise plan, or an Anthropic Console account; the free plan does not include it. Install it, then start it in your copy:

    curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
claude

    Other ways to install it, Windows included, are in Anthropic’s setup guide. Or use the Code tab of the Claude desktop app and choose your copy’s folder: it shows you the street as you change it. Either way, Claude reads CLAUDE.md first: the street’s rules, and how a change from your own copy comes in.

  5. See the street on your own computer

    npx -y serve . -l 8919

    Then open http://localhost:8919 in your browser. There is no build step: every page is a file, served as it is.

    The CB does not run there, so the radio says it has no signal and the suggestion box says it cannot be read. To try the CB too, see Running the CB yourself.

  6. Make your change, on a branch of its own

    git switch -c a-short-name-for-your-change

    Then ask Claude for what you want, in your own words. Small is good. Every room is its own world, on purpose, and a change that makes two rooms look more alike is probably the wrong change: CLAUDE.md says why, at length. Some things are somebody’s to decide, like Helen’s Faery Yurt or Norah’s sand here. If Claude says a change is somebody else’s call, ask in your pull request rather than making it.

  7. Check everything

    tools/check-all.sh

    It runs every generator and every checker in the one order that works, and stops at the first refusal. It looks at every page at every setting of the dial, so it takes a while. When a tool refuses, fix what it says; never loosen the tool. Files it changes are generated files catching up with your change, and they go in with it.

    Then add a line at the top of changelog.html saying what you changed, with your name on it if you want it there.

  8. Send it back

    Look at what you are sending first, then send it:

    git status
git add -A
git commit -m "What you changed, in a sentence"
git push -u origin HEAD
gh pr create --repo Stimpunks/Stimpunks-Love

    That opens a pull request: your change, with a note saying what it is and why. Ryan Boren or Helen Edgar reads it, and may ask a question or ask for something to change. Merging publishes it: stimpunks.world is rebuilt from the repository within a minute or two.

    What you send is under the street’s licence, CC BY-SA 4.0, like everything here. Photographs and recordings of anybody’s voice are not, and need that person’s own yes on record first, so talk to us before sending one. A security problem goes privately: see SECURITY.md.

  9. Keep up with the street

    The street changes by itself every morning, when the Feed and the racks refill, so a copy a few days old is behind. This catches yours up:

    git fetch upstream
git merge upstream/main
tools/check-all.sh

    If the merge says a generated file conflicts, like feed.xml, sitemap.xml, llms.txt, a share card in og/, or anything between :begin and :end markers, do not fix it by hand. Take either side, finish the merge, and run tools/check-all.sh, which writes it again from its sources.

The board in the suggestion box and these steps are the street’s, written by Stimpunks with Claude and filled in by tools/make-sandbox.py. Everything else in this room is Norah’s.

Who made this noise: credits

Job marker — a plastic picnic fork, left in the sand

You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.

The job: Your own copy

Before the code: What is your own copy of the street called, in the steps for building it yourself?

Hint 1

It is in Make your own copy, under Build the street with us.

Hint 2

It is also something you eat with.

Last hint

Four letters, and it has prongs.

Give me the answer

The answer is A fork. A fork: your own copy of the repository, where nothing you break reaches the street until somebody merges it.

Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.

Quest code: SANDPIE

Hand it in at the Adventurer’s Guild →