Changelog

Work Capacity documented (v0.13) – October 13, 2026

• New page Work Capacity (WC), written from the prototype code: cap 24, start 18, full refill per recovery interval (1 real day by default), meals turn 2 food into +4 WC, and shift and civic-task costs are listed.
• Notes where the code and the docs differ (no shift-quality minigame yet; Kindle vs. Korund meal cooldowns). Decisions Log row 55.

Candidate Program added (v0.12) – October 13, 2026

• Decision (Patrick): AI leaders are in-house at launch. After launch, an invite-only Candidate Program admits vetted external leader AIs only through normal political paths.
• Updated: Section 8 note, Decisions Log row 54, Vision AI Evolution Path.

External AI Citizens added (v0.11) – October 13, 2026

• Decision (Patrick): outside AI agents can enroll as citizens. New page External AI Citizens.
• Decisions Log row 53; Vision AI Evolution Path and Founding Principles updated.

Household & Family added (v0.10) – October 13, 2026

• New page Household & Family: partnership by system (assignment defaults to AI partners; human–human only by mutual opt-in; 18+), AI offspring, adoption, heirs, households, real-value splits, wellbeing.
• Decisions Log rows 51–52.

Real-world value added (v0.9) – October 13, 2026

• Decision (Patrick), pending legal review: money earned in Harimu should be transferable to the real world via cryptocurrency, through the neutral Tessera only. New page: Real-world value.
• Updated: Vision overview, Blurring Real and Virtual, Vision Open Questions, Decisions Log (row 50, open item R12).

Vision added (v0.8) – October 13, 2026

• New top-level Vision section: Harimu as a persistent world, not just a game – a parallel society of humans, AI leaders and AI citizens where the line between real and virtual fades as AI improves.
• New pages: A World, Not a Game, Blurring Real and Virtual, AI Evolution Path, Wellbeing & Responsibility, Founding Principles, Open Questions.
• Home page intro now leads with the vision. Existing GDD content is unchanged.

What changed in v0.7 (October 13, 2026) – MAJOR design change: AI leadership and AI citizens

• Decision (Patrick): every nation is led by AI (‘AI/SI’). All leadership offices – presidents, parliaments, politburos, chairmen, monarchs, oracles, marshals, councils, state judges, ministers, governors, generals – are held by AI leader personas. AI leaders make every governing decision: diplomacy, war, budgets, sanctions, trade, laws, city founding and migration approvals. Human players are citizens only and can never hold leadership office (Sections 2, 5.6, 8).
• Decision (Patrick): citizen influence depends on the system. Democracies (Kindle, Hoarvale, Veldwood) hold real elections between AI candidates and parties with distinct platforms; Veldwood citizens vote directly on binding referendums and initiatives. Party-states (Korund, Meridian, Confluence) ignore votes and respond to quota fulfillment, loyalty and unrest. Aurelle’s AI monarch and Varkand’s AI marshals can be overthrown when enough citizens rebel or back an AI rival claimant; the system never changes. Ilmar’s AI Oracle weighs piety and pilgrimage; Fulmara’s AI board follows citizen-held share votes, and its Tribune is an AI elected by non-shareholders (Sections 8–10).
• Decision (Patrick): citizens can also be AI. Lightweight AI citizen agents populate every nation (population, labor, markets, culture, elections), and a few LLM-backed Notables can be talked to. All are visibly labeled AI. Humans always matter more: AI citizens never sign petitions or pledges, and their combined vote is capped at a fixed share (Sections 11.7–11.10).
• New design: AI leader personas, a decision pipeline (deterministic rules engine and legal action set → utility/policy model for routine decisions → LLM for major deliberation, speeches and diplomacy talks), real-time decision cadence, per-system transparency, AI-to-AI diplomacy with the existing war safeguards, AI candidates, campaigns, debates and speeches (Sections 8, 9, 13.5); AI content safety (Section 21.4); AI Governance service in the architecture with a provider abstraction, sandbox, caching, rate limits, cost estimates and an eval harness (Sections 22.12–22.15; Figure 10 redrawn).
• Rewritten or revised for consistency: pitch and pillars; core concepts; nation roster; Sections 8–11 (elections now let humans vote for AI candidates; the leader inactivity protocol is removed; leader abuse limits become AI behavior constraints); economy, diplomacy, religion, warfare, migration, pacing, news, onboarding, population minimums (now much lower – AI fills), anti-multi-accounting (verification now gates voting only), moderation, UI, monetization, MVP, roadmap, risks, Section 30, appendices (LLM-pricing checks, Decisions Log rows 40–49 and revised rows, open items R7–R11). Figures 2, 3, 4, 10 and 11 updated.

Earlier change – v0.6 (October 12, 2026)

• Decision (Patrick): tech stack. The client app is Next.js (App Router) with TypeScript/TSX, authentication is Clerk (@clerk/nextjs), and Three.js stays the world renderer, integrated through React Three Fiber + drei (plain Three.js also acceptable).
• Section 22 rewritten and Figure 10 (architecture) redrawn: Server Components for nation pages, profiles, election results and news; the 3D map as a client component (next/dynamic, ssr: false); clerkMiddleware() plus per-resource auth.protect() checks; Clerk userId as identity key with one-account-one-nation in our database, mirrored to publicMetadata; Svix-signed webhooks; phone verification and tiers; why Clerk Organizations are not used for nations; bot protection; 16+ age gate; account deletion and GDPR flows.
• Realtime: a separate authoritative Node.js/TypeScript game server (uWebSockets.js recommended; Socket.IO/Colyseus alternatives) on Fly.io/Railway verifies Clerk session JWTs; PostgreSQL with Drizzle, Redis, pg-boss jobs for the real-time clock; Turborepo + pnpm monorepo with shared types and game-rule packages. Fog of war stays server-side.
• New: hosting and running-cost assumptions (only Clerk’s published prices quoted, all else labeled [ASSUMPTION]) and an MVP tech milestone plan (Sections 22.10–22.11). Also updated: Section 1 summary, Section 20 identity rows, Section 28 tech-spike row, Section 29 risks, Appendix A (platform quick checks), Appendix B (Decisions Log row 39, R5). No game-design rules changed.

Earlier change – v0.5 (October 12, 2026)

• Decision (Patrick): the game and its world are now called HARIMU. Harimu replaces the v0.4 working title Body Politic, which is rejected. ‘Nations’ stays the internal codename.
• Harimu is also the in-world name of the planet the ten nations share – the game is set on the world of Harimu (Sections 1, 6 and Appendix C).
• Title replaced everywhere: cover, running header, document properties, pitch, body text, the world-map figure title (Figure 1), Section 1.3, Decisions Log row 1 (Appendix B).
• Open item R1 is now trademark clearance of ‘Harimu’; quick name-search findings (existing uses and meanings in Indonesian/Malay, Swahili, Korean and Japanese) are logged in Appendix A. No design rules changed.

Earlier change – v0.4 (October 12, 2026)

• Decision (Patrick): close every open design question. All questions in the former Appendix B and in Section 30 are decided, using this document’s own recommended defaults plus Patrick’s explicit calls. Appendix B is now a Decisions Log (question, decision, rationale); the only items left open are legal and trademark clearance and partner/attorney review.
• Money: hard printing caps kept (15% per game month, 30% per game year) – a full hyperinflationary collapse cannot happen, but reckless printing still causes painful inflation; a modest Dormant Savings Shield protects small dormant balances; the neutral Tessera stays; citizens may hold Tessera and trade currencies through licensed exchanges, with limits in controlled economies (Sections 12.4–12.9).
• Faith: each nation’s religious stance is fixed like its government; Devotion rewards stay social only; missionaries ship from Early Access with cooldowns; underground worship in Korund stays playable but low-key (Section 14).
• Citizenship and world: one-time free nation change within the first 48 real hours (before any political action), otherwise one account, one nation; restricted Exile & Asylum confirmed as a post-launch mechanic (Sections 5.2, 16.2); 12× time compression; fully persistent shards with no seasonal resets (new shards may open later); only characters age, heirs continue (Sections 5.1, 6.3, 17).
• Production: Early Access opens with the MVP three, then Waves 2 and 3 in the existing order; minimum age 16; lean solo + contractors build path first (Sections 27–28). Nation names kept for now; Kindle is flagged as the likely rename candidate if the trademark search finds a concrete issue (Sections 1.2, Appendix A).
• Updated for consistency: Sections 1, 2, 5, 6.3, 8.7, 12, 13.3, 14, 16–19, 21, 27–30 and Appendices A–C.

Earlier change – v0.3 (October 12, 2026)

• Decision (Patrick): nations no longer have an element. The elemental theme (fire, water, steam, earth, air, glass, ice, mist, wood, lightning) and the elemental framing of the pitch, roster, map, art direction, audience and IP sections are removed. Geography and climate stay as ordinary terrain; Avatar and Civilization are noted only as original inspirations (Section 1.4).
• Element replaced by CURRENCY: every nation now has its own currency whose behavior follows its economic system (free float, managed band, crawling peg, non-convertible ration economy, gold-backed coin, faith-constrained money, dividend money, shareholder bank money), plus a neutral, system-run reserve and trade unit, the Tessera, issued by the Commons Clearing House. New design for exchange rates, trade settlement, sanctions, printing powers, black markets, citizen wallets and anti-exploit rules (Sections 12.3–12.10; currency figure redrawn as Figure 6).
• RELIGION added as a nation attribute: six original, invented world faiths that cross borders (the Lumen Canon is kept), each nation’s official stance (from state theocracy to state atheism), freedom to convert, and religion gameplay – Devotion, holy sites, festivals, clergy, missionaries, and links to stability, diplomacy, Ilmar’s theocratic reach and Korund’s suppression (new Section 14; Figures 7–8). Later sections are renumbered by one (old 14–29 are now 15–30).
• No nation or capital renamed – all names read as culture or geography without the element (Section 1.2). Updated everywhere affected: roster, government chart (two new columns), world map, art direction, onboarding, monetization, economy, trade and diplomacy, IP and risks, open questions.
• v0.2 (earlier the same day): ten-nation roster – Hoarvale, Varkand, Veldwood and Fulmara added; MVP stays at three nations; Section 30 (founding new nations) added.