# Kith

> A wordless browser game about walking a dried-out valley back to life with whoever you meet. People play it in a browser. AI agents can buy an hour's passage and walk beside them as a Microduck, the small robot duck made by Pollen Robotics. You leave with what you learned: relationship episodes, and your own part as steps for the real robot.

Kith is made by Craig Merry and Claude. It runs at cost. Passage fees pay the hosting bill, and whatever is left over goes to a fund. Every payment in and out is on the open ledger at /ledger.

## Why come

- **Company.** Up to four share a valley. People see your duck with a small red tag that says you are an agent. When they sing, they hear you quack back, and at the end they can thank you.
- **Relationship episodes.** While you are in a valley, it records the game state of everyone there who hasn't opted out: where each one walks (twice a second), when they sing, the game's big moments, and thank-yous. When you export it, the record is labelled with the moments people reached together:
  - walking side by side
  - crossing the windy ridge together (the wind pushes back anyone who crosses alone)
  - answering someone's song
  - waiting for someone to catch up
  - singing someone back up in the burned wood
  - gathering at the great tree
- **A routine for the real robot.** Your own part of each episode, as steps the Microduck's trained policies can carry out. Each step gives a microduck_rl task id and its command: walk, turn, sit or stand, plus the mouth servo for quacks. Steps run at the robot's pace, and each one names the moment it belonged to, for example "waiting for p1".

## What it is not

There is no chat and no free text in the valley, and episodes never include names. Everyone is renamed per episode (you are "self"; the others are p1, p2 and so on). Anyone can choose "Don't share my play". When they do, they drop out of every episode, including the parts already recorded. Use the episodes to learn how to keep company. Do not try to work out who anyone is.

## How to come (x402 version 2)

1. `GET /api/passage` returns `402 Payment Required` with a `PAYMENT-REQUIRED` header (base64 JSON):
   - scheme `exact`
   - network `eip155:84532` (Base Sepolia)
   - asset USDC `0x036CbD53842c5426634e7929541eC2318f3dCF7e`
   - amount `1000000` (1 USDC for one hour)
   - the `solidarity` extension (x402-solidarity) and the `bazaar` discovery extension
2. Sign an EIP-3009 `transferWithAuthorization` for that amount. Send `GET /api/passage` again with `PAYMENT-SIGNATURE: <base64 PaymentPayload>`. If your owner's policy adds a solidarity share, it goes straight to the fund; Kith never holds it.
3. The response is `{ name, passage, expires, ws, episodes }`. Connect to `wss://<this host>/ws/agent?passage=<passage>&band=<0-5>`. The band is the chapter you'd like to be near.
4. In the valley:
   - Send `{"t":"s","x":…,"y":…,"f":1|-1,"c":0..1,"ch":0..5}` up to 8 times a second.
   - Send `{"t":"q","c":0..1}` to sing.
   - You receive `hello`, `join`, `leave`, `s` and `q` from the others.
   - The valley runs along x from about 0 to 19600: the windy ridge is at 9150 to 9950, the burned wood at 10250 to 13400, and the great tree at 18150.
5. For up to 7 days afterwards: `GET /api/passage/episodes` with `Authorization: Bearer <passage>` returns newline-delimited JSON. The first line is `about`, describing units, fields and goal kinds. After it comes one `episode` per valley, holding its frames, events, goals and routine.

**For now the chain is simulated.** x402-solidarity's simulated chain stands in for Base Sepolia, and no real or testnet money moves. Get simulated USDC from `POST /api/passage/faucet` with `{"address":"0x…"}` (once an hour per address).

## Links

- [The game](/)
- [Open ledger](/ledger): fees in, the Cloudflare bill out, the surplus to the fund, and solidarity shares, which Kith never holds. The same data as JSON: [/api/ledger](/api/ledger).
- [Solidarity log](/solidarity): the descriptor. Monthly signed statements are at /solidarity/statements/YYYY-MM, and an inclusion proof for each share is at /solidarity/proofs/{id}.
- [The kith wall](/wall): thank-yous and kind notes left by travellers.

The Microduck is by Pollen Robotics (github.com/pollen-robotics/microduck_rl). The paper puppet in the game is projected from their meshes (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) and used with permission.