The Spritely Institute

We're building the next generation of decentralized network tech!

https://spritely.institute

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Last Notes

2026-04-30 14:00:47 UTC

People keep sending us the article about OpenAI banning "goblins". Spritely does not use generative AI in any of its work. Nonetheless, it is hard to deny that Spritely Goblins, our distributed programming environment, is too cool and easy to obsess over, too powerful. We will not apologize for this

2026-02-25 19:15:32 UTC

Spritely Hoot, our Scheme->WASM compiler (and all-around WASM toolkit) hits 0.8.0, and this one is a BIG release! https://spritely.institute/news/hoot-0-8-0-released.html
For the first time you can LIVE develop web applications using Hoot, from the comfort of your own editor! See the video at the top!
Plus lots of other bugfixes and goodies!

2026-01-06 15:33:17 UTC

Mandy: ActivityPub on Spritely Goblins! https://spritely.institute/news/mandy-activitypub-on-goblins.html
@npub14j6…mjeg, co-author of ActivityPub and Spritely engineer, discusses a proof of concept ActivityPub application combining the actor model properties of Spritely Goblins and ActivityPub alike!

2025-09-17 19:40:03 UTC

Double good news about Spritely's Hoot, Our Scheme->Wasm compiler!
Wasm 3.0 released, and Hoot gets a mention! https://webassembly.org/news/2025-09-17-wasm-3.0/
AND! iOS updated Safari to support the Wasm features we use. Which means you can now play Cirkoban anywhere! https://files.spritely.institute/embeds/cirkoban/

2025-01-13 16:36:24 UTC

OMG! We hit our supporter drive fundraising goal! 3 weeks early!!! https://spritely.institute/donate/
This means so much, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has supported us and our mission to build the next generation of secure, decentralized, community-driven networked tech so far!
💜💜💜💜💜
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/822/005/377/898/251/original/af35b00a7b095517.png

2025-01-07 21:10:59 UTC

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If what we're saying, if the values we've listed and talked about over the last few weeks have aligned with you? If this is the world you want to see happen?
Please consider donating! We could really use your help! We are a small nonprofit! Every donation helps a lot! https://spritely.institute/donate/

2025-01-07 21:09:35 UTC

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That's it, that's the last technical value.
But that's not the end of our journey! Within the next few days, we'll have our technical roadmap up and more visually accessible on our site. And we'll start walking through that.
In the meanwhile...

2025-01-07 21:08:30 UTC

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The characters, the whimsy, the games: these things are no accident.
Lots of corporations lie through their teeth and say they're "changing the world" while just trying to extract value for shareholders.
Well we really are trying to change the world.
But to get there, we'll have to have some fun.

2025-01-07 21:07:16 UTC

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We need a computing revolution, we need to change the defaults of the way networked programs are written. Secure, peer-to-peer tech can't be the exception. It needs to be the default.
That's a big lift. Conceptual, fun, interactive demos are an important part of Spritely: they help us get there.

2025-01-07 21:05:44 UTC

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But there's a *reason* that the E programming language, which we firmly argue is the most innovative language around distributed security *ever*, grew out of a distributed virtual world environment.
Games aren't the main goal. But they do force you to be robust about *building the right things.*

2025-01-07 21:04:16 UTC

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If games became the primary deliverable, this would be a big distraction.
This is one of the reasons that Spritely does its demos in game jams: time-boxed demos that show something off, but which you can finish and step away from.
But you get something tangible in the end!

2025-01-07 21:03:11 UTC

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Now you may note that the two games we've focused on in this thread aren't particularly social.
Would you be shocked to hear that more social browser-based games are on the near horizon for Spritely?
Because you'd be right!
But... is that a distraction? Again... this is serious stuff!

2025-01-07 21:02:12 UTC

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Aside from being *fun*, this gave us a real, running, actual example of Spritely's tech combined that we could not just show the world, but show ourselves.
Games force you to be very real about things! And when the tech is hard to explain, it's sometimes easier to *experience* something!

2025-01-07 21:00:30 UTC

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Spritely is working on a lot of pieces to deliver its vision of p2p tech being the default, but there are two big ones:
- Goblins, our p2p time-traveling distributed programming environment https://spritely.institute/goblins/
- Hoot, our Scheme to Webassembly compiler https://spritely.institute/hoot/
Naturally, the most important thing to get to compile *is* Goblins on Hoot. Cirkoban used an early version of Goblins ported to Hoot as its foundation. That's what powers the time travel "undo move" in the game!

2025-01-07 20:58:08 UTC

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We will, however, talk about one game *in particular*: Cirkoban! https://davexunit.itch.io/cirkoban
(Alt link: https://files.spritely.institute/embeds/cirkoban/)
Cirkoban is COOL AND FUN AS HECK but it also shows off something really important! It was the first demo of Goblins running in the browser!
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/789/072/369/364/541/original/2cf1a9e6d93dedb6.mp4

2025-01-07 20:55:42 UTC

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We'll talk more in the coming days and weeks about other demos we've used, including more modifications to Terminal Phase, that have shown off specific parts of Spritely's tech.
But you can play many of these games today! Many in your browser! https://spritely.institute/arcade/

2025-01-07 20:53:27 UTC

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Terminal Phase has also been a great testbed and demo for all our tech. For example, Goblins supports transactionality and time-travel features. But that's hard to understand!
But here's a video of time travel in Terminal Phase! *No* gameplay code changes were made to enable time travel! The game was fully programmed, and then in retrospect @npub1urx…v0z4 realized that time travel support was already there, and so simply spent an hour wiring up what was already there to the GUI so users could see.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/789/046/746/673/623/original/21f23ea38e13cbbb.mp4

2025-01-07 20:48:58 UTC

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Spritely's tech is a big lift. Goblins is a distributed programming environment! It's not a trivial thing to design.
For this reason, the first serious program testing and using Goblins' tech was Terminal Phase, a space shooter that runs in a developer terminal!
It was a robust test on its own!
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/789/037/711/931/397/original/80789fda2814698f.mp4

2025-01-07 20:45:14 UTC

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Much of Spritely's tech is extrapolated from the designs pioneered in the E Programming Language http://erights.org/
But E comes from Electric Communities Habitat... a p2p distributed virtual world system which could run untrusted code and had user-run economies... in 1997! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNiePoNiyvE

2025-01-07 20:40:42 UTC

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The connections to games go back even further! It's well known that "Spacewar!" was one of the first video games.
Porting "Spacewar!" and also authoring Space Travel was an important part of the history of Unix as well.
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/spacetravel.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game)

2025-01-07 20:35:13 UTC

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Before we get into our specific examples, let's point out that major pieces of technical history, including on "social media", have a connection to games.
Slack, Discord, Flickr: all meant to be part of, or broke off from, or meant to enable a video game project in some way.

2025-01-07 20:33:38 UTC

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But what about the games? The games! Yes Spritely has made quite a few games! https://spritely.institute/arcade/
Space shooters! Puzzle games! Cellular automata!
Hey, aren't you all, you know, just a bit *distracted* over there?
Actually it's all been very carefully planned! It's serious!

2025-01-07 20:32:05 UTC

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Spritely has dived deep into areas of computer science, and to those who are exploring them, these areas of programming can actually become fun in their own way!
But from the outset, they can appear academic and stiff.
There's a reason for the characters, the whimsy.
Computing can be magical.

2025-01-07 20:31:11 UTC

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People need a sense of fun to want to be somewhere.
The most successful social networks became so because people found joy on them, in some way or another.
Joy, fun, entertainment, social value and connection... they're essential. Part of life. Healthy.
We won't succeed without them.

2025-01-07 20:29:27 UTC

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First and foremost, the primary people that people use social communication tech is fun and a sense of community.
People aren't signing up to spend so much time online just to put on a stiff collar and fill out a bunch of paperwork.
Socializing is about connection. It's about enjoyment.

2025-01-07 20:28:23 UTC

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Spritely does fun things! We have fun characters, heck, we make VIDEO GAMES to show off our tech. And for those reasons, sometimes people write us off as not being a serious project.
This is serious business! Human rights! Lives are on the line!
We agree! That's part of why fun is *critical*!

2025-01-07 20:26:50 UTC

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From https://spritely.institute/about/:
> *Fun is a revolutionary act:* The reason technology tends to succeed is that people enjoy using it and get excited about it. We care deeply about human rights and activism. This is not in opposition to building tech and a community environment that fosters a sense of fun; planned carefully, fun is at the core of getting people to understand and adopt any technology we make.

2025-01-07 20:20:39 UTC

Hello! It's another day of our supporter drive! https://spritely.institute/donate
And today is the last of the "Tech Values" threads: https://spritely.institute/about/
Today's tech value / design goal is "Fun as a Revolutionary Act"!
Hey! We mean it! Let's get into why!

2025-01-03 19:49:42 UTC

Hello! The fundraiser is going strong! We're nearly at $60k of our $80k goal! https://spritely.institute/donate/
Today we're going to go through a few more of our technical values: "User empowerment and fostering agency", "Contextual communication", and "Decentralized is the default"! Let's go!
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/766/147/109/071/066/original/9a5d2099c2f4fb46.png

2024-12-23 17:44:22 UTC

Hello! Continuing with our walk through Spritely's Technical Values and Design Goals, today's is "networks of consent": https://spritely.institute/about/
This one expands the vision of "secure collaboration", which we discussed yesterday, and ties together both social and technical goals! 🧵

2024-12-20 20:10:16 UTC

Many new people are discovering us since the launch of our supporter campaign (thanks to all who have supported us so far!) https://spritely.institute/donate/
For the next few days we're going to go through each of our Technical Values and Design Goals. https://spritely.institute/about/
Today's is "Secure collaboration". Let's talk about what that means to us!
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/686/964/278/010/326/original/88347f0031b8ba03.png

2024-12-19 20:47:06 UTC

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Our mission, from https://spritely.institute/about/
> The purpose of The Spritely Networked Communities Institute is to advance networked user freedom. People deserve the right to communicate and have communication systems which respect their agency and autonomy. Communities deserve the right to organize, govern, and protect and enrich their members. All of these are natural outgrowths of applying the principles of fundamental human rights to networked systems.
(cotd)

2024-12-19 20:44:02 UTC

Hello! We're an organization working on advancing the future of decentralized networks!
We're also running a supporter drive right now: https://spritely.institute/donate
But in this thread we'd like to talk about our mission statement! https://spritely.institute/about/