From playtesting findings:
* Pools nearly doubled (115/104 → 228/201) with calm/neutral everyday words
(claps, dance, drench, beach…), not just strictly-upbeat ones — more variety,
~7-month runway. The post-solve "why" prompt reworded to fit neutral words.
* Word Search now stores one theme + word list per day; the grid is built per
request for three SIZE tiers — Small (8×8, 6 words), Medium (11×11, 9),
Large (14×14, 13). Large packs more words = a longer sit ("too fast" fix).
All sizes share the day's theme; every size still code-placed + solvable.
* Word Search themes can now be neutral everyday scenes ("Around the house",
"At the beach", "In the kitchen", "A walk outdoors", "Making music"…), not
only hopeful — same shape as the articles.
* Each found word gets its own colour from a calm palette, in the grid and its
word-list chip. Per-size local progress + best time.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per Codex. Pool grown 51/44 → 115/104 hopeful answers (5/6 letter) via the
agreed workflow: LLM proposes themed candidates → code filters to the bundled
guess dictionary (length/alpha/dedup) → human spot-check prunes tone-drift
("growl", "plain", "color"…). ~3.5-month runway before repeats per variant.
test_wordpool.py locks the invariant in CI: every answer must be lowercase
alpha, correct length, unique, and present in words-5/6.json — so no future
addition can become an unguessable puzzle.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A calm /play space — "after the brief, a small thing to enjoy." Framework-ready
for more games (Word Search next; zen/coloring later).
* Daily Word (5 letters / 6 guesses) + Long Word (6 / 7) — same Wordle mechanic,
Upbeat Bytes flavor (no "Wordle" in the UI). Hopeful answers; after solving, a
one-line "why this word matters."
* LLM proposes, code disposes: answers are picked deterministically by date-seed
from a hand-curated hopeful pool that's pre-validated ⊆ the guess dictionary
(always typeable), avoiding recent repeats; the LLM only adds the optional
"why" (with fallback). daily_puzzles(date, game, variant, payload) stores them
so everyone gets the same daily; the cycle pre-generates with the "why".
* Bundled guess dictionaries (words-5/6.json, ~12.6k/22.4k) for client-side guess
validation — never the LLM. Answer lightly obfuscated (base64) in the payload.
* Private, gentle stats (played/solved/streak, guess distribution); spoiler-free
emoji-grid share. No leaderboard, no timer, no streak-loss drama.
* Play in the bottom nav (replacing Browse, still on the lane rail) + the header.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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