# IDEA.md — seth_semantic_game

## What is this?

A daily word game **based on NYT Connections**, powered by a locally-hosted Gemma 4
model. Connections gives the player 16 words that have to be sorted into 4 hidden
groups of 4 by shared semantic category. The twist for this project — what makes it
worth building rather than just playing the original — is whatever Gemma 4 enables
that NYT's hand-curated static format cannot.

That twist is **not yet decided**. That's what brainstorming is for.

The base mechanic is fixed:
- Connections-style grouping puzzle (semantic categories, not letters)
- Gemma 4 in the loop somewhere (puzzle generation, judging, hint system, or all of
  the above)
- Daily-puzzle structure with social-shareable result (the Connections / Wordle
  ritual — borrowed *only* for its sharing pattern, not its gameplay)

This is **not** Wordle-derived. The original draft of this file framed it as
"Wordle-style"; that was wrong. The mechanic is grouping, not letter-guessing.

## Problem it solves

Mostly fun and a real use of the local Gemma 4 stack. NYT Connections is hand-curated
and ships one puzzle per day; a generative version could ship infinite puzzles, accept
fuzzy or creative groupings, generate themed/seeded puzzles, or do other things the
hand-built version structurally cannot. Secondary: a daily-puzzle hook for sethpc.xyz
alongside other homelab games.

## Constraints / preferences

- Self-hosted: Ollama with Gemma 4 on commodity GPU (a single 24 GB card is enough)
- Web frontend, dark theme with orange accents
- If a puzzle is generative, output must be **deterministic per day** (every player
  on a given date gets the same puzzle). Likely a date-seeded prompt with cached
  output rather than a fresh generation per request.
- Per-guess judging cost should be cheap — at most one Gemma call per submission, and
  ideally answers are precomputed when the daily puzzle is generated, so judging
  becomes a cheap lookup.
- No login required for casual play (cookies/localStorage for streak)

> NOTE on history: this brief was originally a "Wordle-style" framing. That was
> wrong — the seed game is NYT Connections (16 words → 4 hidden groups of 4).
> But after the model bakeoffs (see README), the *direction* shifted again:
> rather than cloning Connections, the project pivots toward gameplay that
> uses Gemma's per-call CREATIVE_ACCEPT ability to fairly judge
> player-INVENTED categories — a thing static curated games structurally can't
> do. The brainstormed game ideas in the README are what came out of that.