---
number: 24
title: The Game World on the site, and the Builder behind it
date: 2026-09-04
summary: The game's building blocks — the sixty-four elements, the same sixty-four as ground, the creatures, the world and each of its areas — shown on spellgrove.com live from the game, view-only for everyone and editable by Kris through the Builder, a separate admin service with the game's own sign-in; plus the first thing built through it, Dirt, the first item the ground grows.
epic: building-the-game
status: delivered
artifacts: ["docs/handoff/building-the-game.md","builder/README.md","workshop/epics/building-the-game/overview.md"]
cta: [object Object]
---

The ask, on 2026-09-03: one central, live view of everything the game is made of, with the
existing editors joined up and no copy of any data anywhere that could drift. A day later it
was live and signed off — APK v26, the web build on `/play`.

## The Game World

`spellgrove.com/building` is the front door. **Elements**: the sixty-four hexagrams as the
game's elements — name, colour, rarity, where each comes from — and the same sixty-four as
the ground a cell can be made of. **Creatures**: the kinds the game can hold and the models
they wear. **The World**: every area and the portals between them, exactly as the server knows
them. **Areas**: each place on its own, with its size, its rules, its doors and the ground
painted into it. None of it is a copy: the pages ask the game for the current values when they
render.

## The Builder

Behind the pages is the Builder — an admin and authoring service that is deliberately not part
of the game. Its own process, its own path (`/builder/`), its own database; the game's
director knows nothing about it. You sign in to it with your game account; Kris's account is
the administrator, and everyone else is a viewer. An edit made in the world or area editors is
published with two tick boxes, Staging and Live, both on by default, and every publish writes
the repo's content files as snapshots, so the database is canonical and the files never lag.
From any section, a signed-in administrator can hand an agent a task about that section, with
the right files and the current values already in the prompt.

## Dirt

The first thing built through that panel. Earth over Earth — plain grass — now grows Dirt over
time, up to three per cell, and walking over a Dirt sweeps it into your inventory. It was the
first item the ground had ever generated and the first inventory the game had, so the
machinery underneath was built for the next item, not just this one: a ground type says what
it generates in the element table, and the game does the rest. The Dirt has a model that turns
on its card, and the Ingredients panel shows the count beside it.

## What was left open

Other people editing their own areas — the Builder decides who may edit what by game account,
but a player does not yet get a named area of their own to edit. That waits on a design call,
noted in the epic.