Will Wright Show For Food

A Repo Show with Will Wright — polyglot MOOLLM microworld + pnpm monorepo. Browse without a GitHub account. Clone to play along.

"So you have a Repo to Show us?"

Stumbled here? Long-term ambition since Will's 1996 Stanford talk (and before) — this GitHub repo is the first public point of origin (tip of the pyramid). Not a launch promise: curb appeal up top, brutalist GitHub underneath (yaml girders, verify CI, real monorepo). → Vision (sections) · yaml girder · Crazy Idea Jam

The cream (start here)

What this is

A Repo Show: live conversation whose stage is this repo, following through to working code and shared technique. Repo Show — real people, credited ideas in public. Show, don't tell. You do not need AI — bring your own rig.

Long-term ambition Don and Will have discussed since the 1996 Winograd microworlds talk (and earlier): a living repo you enter, fork, and breed — not just a video about simulation. This public tree is the apex seed — small, inspectable, growing downward. No production promises; see process/vision-and-ambition.md.

Skills are the big harvest — each show melts ideas in the cauldron and lifts MOOLLM skills into skills/ (composable with moollm). Shows are the stage; inheritable technique is the stack that grows downward.

Will Wright — confirmed kickoff guest, topic-less. Accepted July 2026. Orbit the 1996 Dollhouse talk; crown jewel = data portability (Proxi ↔ Sims ↔ …).

How a Repo Show runs

A Repo Show is announced ahead of time — usually as a pointer on Hacker News — and the show is this repository. Beforehand you RTFR (read the repo); during the show you follow along on whatever rig you bring: vim, Emacs, Cursor, a Jupyter notebook, or pencil and paper.

AI is optional, and everyone is welcome. Follow along with your own AI coding tools if you like, or none at all — humans, bots, and AIs are all welcome, with no gatekeeping. (See the participation policy; bots, start at FOR-BOTS.md.)

At its heart a Repo Show is a conversation, not a contest. The guest — the Repo Man, Woman, or Anybody — is the topic, starting from their own work. The audience joins as consensual characters who ask questions as pull requests, issues, and comments — and live in Twitch and YouTube chat — and Don Philahue surfaces the good ones live.

Want to attend live? Submit a TicketPR — a pun on TicketMaster where Master ⇒ PR (pull request): free, public, in git at repo-shows/<show>/audience/<your-github-username>/ with questions.yml (see process/ticket-pr.yml). Easier paths: comment on the HN announcement or open an issue. A TicketPR is the high-value signal — your questions visible to the guest before they even accept the invitation. Optional donations → recognition + call-on priority; never required.

A brain stream overlay can show prompts and thinking in real time (Twitch / YouTube / OBS) when AI is in the mix. Afterward, ideas are melted in the cauldron and harvested into reusable skills and code, breeding technique back into the repo through git branches, merges, and nested worlds.

Some episodes can instead be playful game shows — Code That Spec, Manual Transmission (what's the smallest model — or fewest tokens — you can code the spec with?), and the Micropolis AI Drag Race (rig costumes welcome; Slats judges the werk). Those are optional fun we can do — not the point.

Run your own show on your branch; PR to link it into the ShowMaker network.

Full definition: process/repo-show-format.yml

Your rig — artisanal, intentional, vibe, or orchestrated

Artisanal programmers (humans programming by hand, no AI) earn extra respect here — TextEdit to Emacs to VS Code and beyond; honesty appreciated. We also honor intentional coders and conscientious coders — deliberate craft and show-your-work ethics (Don coined consciencious objectors at a Kaleida meetup with David Ungar; proposed show: Self × MOOLLM).

Vibe coders — declare AI-forward flow; dance-off optional. Orchestrated rigs — tell us the stack (below).

Using AI? We want real setups — tools, models, MCP, skills, repos, MOOLLM wiring, contexts. Report token usage and spending too: we score cost to ship (efficiency vs extravagance) and solution quality, then merge winners back and abstract reusable parts into skills/ and packages/. Open an issue or PR with rig-feedback — preferably rigs/<slug>.rig.yml per schemas/rig-schema.yml (lifecycle: download → install → configure → use → replicate → mash up). Details: process/repo-show-format.yml.

Polyglot monorepo

Two layers, one repo — patterned after MicropolisCore (apps/packages/pnpm) and moollm (skills/characters/yaml-jazz):

Future: many apps sharing @wwsff/* packages + deps from MicropolisCore. Future show: teach Will to build a MOOLLM adventure world — record it, ship it (examples/README.md).

nvm use && corepack enable && pnpm install && pnpm run verify

Full instructions: SETUP.md.

MOOLLM plugin world

Semantic Image Pyramid — read top-down:

Open alongside SimHacker/moollm in Cursor if you want orchestration — composes via kernel/moollm-plugin.yml. Many participants won't; that's fine.

Wanna chat?

Open an issue or submit a PR.

Want a seat at the live show? Read TicketPR — fork, add repo-shows/will-wright-premiere/audience/<your-github-username>/questions.yml, pull request. Free; not TicketMaster.

Platforms, archives, publishers, production shops: read VISION.md first — inspect the yaml, run verify, then talk. No NDAs to understand the shape.

Status

Sibling repos

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Museum map — pick your doorway

Full labels: ENTRYWAYS.md · process/entryways/ · TRAILS.md

Playlists are ordered tours. cross-links.yml is for sideways leaps when one topic hooks you.

Entryways

Guest — Will Wright · playlist
→ Start with the invite, then the 1996 talk. Topic-less show orbiting Dollhouse and data portability; Slats optional.
Stops: invitation → BROWSE → 1996 source → portrait → CARD → Slats quest → Don → Vision → browse characters/

Guest — anyone invited · playlist
→ Standards once, then your invitation and CARD. Portrayal ABOUT you — revocable anytime.
Stops: portrayal-standards → invitation → CARD → CHARACTER → FORMAT → repo-show SKILL

Player — Sims / SimCity fan · playlist
→ 1996 talk then show pitch. No git. Will's words, not wiki recap.
Stops: show README → 1996 bundle → Will portrait → CARD → Chaim → Drag Race → Slats

Watcher — stream / VOD · playlist
→ FORMAT first so overlay and audience segments parse. Show is the repo.
Stops: FORMAT → brain stream → Philahue → Code That Spec → Drag Race → Will context → Homefun

Bot — browsing HTTP agent · playlist · FOR-BOTS.md
→ Hello bot — GLANCE, CARD, pick one ENTRYWAY. Wander intelligently; we like to play.
Stops: FOR-BOTS → GLANCE → CARD → museum map → MOOLLM → plugin → ethics → advertisement → guest CARDs

Hacker — clone, verify · playlist
→ pnpm verify then INDEX. Yaml girders canonical; real monorepo CI.
Stops: SETUP → GLANCE → CARD → process INDEX → format girder → schemas → moollm-plugin → facades

AI — orchestration, rigs · playlist
→ Declare rig honestly. Stick shift = model change is a commit. ai-offs = voluntary spend proof.
Stops: manual transmission → ai-offs → rigs → SETUP DNA → orchestration gold → branching → SKILL → host rig

Retro — PDP-10, Apple ][, LispM · playlist
→ Same spec, your emulator. Forward SETUP.md so others boot without you. Lars + Thomas orbit.
Stops: RETROCOMPUTING → three drives → Lars → Thomas → example SETUP → Drag Race

Educator — microworlds · playlist
→ Will 1996 transcript, then Papert/Kay cards. Homefun grades commits vs thinking.
Stops: transcript → Papert → Brian Harvey → Kay → Homefun → vision → constructionism skill

Archivist / historian · playlist
→ Provenance policy first — live repo vs DonHopkins archive, then 1996 primary source chain.
Stops: live-repo → sync → MANIFEST → 1996 README → transcript → portrayal → invitation workflow → sync log → Terry Winograd → browse characters/

Producer — your Repo Show · playlist
→ repo-show SKILL, plant a show, PR ShowMaker network. Harvest → MOOLLM skills.
Stops: SKILL → FORMAT → showmaker → REPO-SHOWS → plant → live-repo → guest template

Publisher / platform · playlist
→ VISION + verify, then talk. Public repo as pitch deck — no NDA to see shape.
Stops: Vision → README → live-repo → Will show → portrayal standards → SETUP

Trails (sideways)

Full pages: TRAILS.md

Rooms

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🤯 Before you go — the Crazy Idea Jam

The wackiest, most forward-thinking ideas in the whole show, in one place: a robo-resurrection cult on Easter Sunday, character endosymbiosis as a save format, cellular automata that melt your city if you don't pay, "hell is full" ZombieSims, and GitHub as an MMORPG multiverse. Some are jokes that turned out to be load-bearing. All of them are real.

AI proposes; the player disposes — now let's get weird with it.

→ Read the Crazy Idea Jam · girder crazy-idea-jam.yml · trail stupid-fun-forward

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— Don Hopkins (the User Interface Flower Child) 🌀