🕯️ The Ritual

"The pages are empty. History begins with you."

The Ritual is a massively multiplayer collaborative writing experiment. It is a real-time application where users from around the world vote on the next word of a never-ending story.

Built with Next.js, Tailwind CSS, and SpacetimeDB, it combines a "Dark Academia" aesthetic with high-performance real-time state synchronization.

✨ Features

📖 The Book (The History)

• Infinite Chronicle: A persistent, scrolling view of the story so far.
• Deep Lore (Metadata): Hover over any accepted word to reveal its "stratigraphy"—the exact date it was chosen and the vote distribution of the candidates it defeated.
• Smart Positioning: Tooltips use intelligent edge-detection to ensure data is always visible, never clipped.

⚔️ The Arena (The Present)

• Visualized Democracy: A dynamic "Word Cloud" where candidate words grow in size based on their vote share.
• Real-time Updates: Watch votes come in live as the timer counts down.
• Bandwagoning: An autocomplete system suggests currently trending words, allowing users to consolidate votes easily.

🌍 The Assembly (The Users)

• Geolocation Tags: Votes are stamped with the user's country flag (detected via IP or browser locale), adding a layer of global context to the collaboration.
• Ritualistic UI: A custom design system built on Stone, Amber, and Parchment tones, utilizing lucide-react icons and serif typography.

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Frontend: Next.js 14 (App Router), React, TypeScript.
• Styling: Tailwind CSS (Custom color palette).
• Backend & DB: SpacetimeDB (Rust-based real-time database).
• Utilities: country-flag-icons for geolocation visuals.

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

1. Node.js (v18+)
2. SpacetimeDB CLI (installed and running)

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/the-ritual.git
cd the-ritual

2. Install dependencies:

npm install
# or
yarn install

3. Start the SpacetimeDB Backend: Ensure your SpacetimeDB instance is running and the module is published.

spacetime start
spacetime publish -c # Publish your rust module

4. Run the Frontend:

npm run dev

5. Join the Ritual: Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

📂 Project Structure

.
├── src/
│   ├── app/                # Next.js App Router
│   ├── components/
│   │   ├── RitualView.tsx  # Main game logic and UI
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── module_bindings/    # Generated SpacetimeDB TypeScript bindings
│   └── ...
├── public/                 # Static assets (favicons, etc.)
└── ...

🎨 Design Philosophy

The UI is designed to feel like an ancient interface or a digital stone tablet.

• Primary Colors: stone-950 (Background), stone-200 (Text).
• Accent: amber-500 to amber-700 (representing fire/gold/importance).
• Interactions: Hover states glow; successful actions feel weighty.

🤝 Contributing

The Ritual is open to acolytes. If you wish to improve the UI or optimize the backend logic:

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📜 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.