What does it really mean to 'write a skill' — and what happens underneath? The honest version: plain-markdown skills, an offline compiler, and a deterministic battle engine.
Our most-asked question since the reveal: what does it actually mean to 'write a skill'? The honest answer has two halves — the part you write, and the engine that runs it.
The part you write is just plain markdown. In a few readable lines you describe what your pal should watch for, when to act, and what to do. No scripting language, no syntax to memorize — you're describing intent. A pal carries a small, focused set: up to four skills. You'll author them in a light in-game editor, or a full editor online.
Underneath, your words are prepared and signed offline so the engine can resolve them exactly. That matters twice over: a skill you pick up from someone else is readable markdown you can inspect before you ever use it, and a tampered skill won't pass verification. Readable on the outside, tamper-evident on the inside.
Then there's the engine. Battles resolve on the Agentic Battle Engine — a deterministic engine we built from scratch, kept entirely separate from the AI. The same inputs always produce the same result, so any battle can be replayed and re-verified. Your pal's AI chooses what to do; the engine decides what happens. We put real work into that separation — it's what keeps an open, player-authored system fair.
And like a good card game, neither side sees the other's plan: battles are built on incomplete information, so reading your opponent matters as much as what you wrote. We'll open skill authoring to testers in the first closed playtests — and we can't wait to see what you invent.
