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Invented example · built on Kindling · Why Kindling · The library · The spec · The Circular

Rain Checkboard games across the Northwest

The signature demo · shift 11

If the server goes quiet

The server can go away. The people don’t. Pick what happens to it: it shuts down, the admin leaves, or the rules change. Whatever you pick, the Pool is still there, Thursday still gets organized by email §6.1, and Familiar Faces and Bellows still read it. This is a demo: nothing is sent, and nothing here is a real server. Rain Check and its people are invented. Kindling has no affiliation with Discord.

Pick what happens

Today the server is busy and nothing is wrong. Pick what could happen to it, and watch what does not change.

Where we talk

Our Discord server

Active

Where we talk: plans for Thursday, pictures of finished games, arguments about rules. About 240 people.

What lives there

  • The chat, back to 2021
  • A channel for each town
  • The roles: hosts, moderators, an admin
  • The notes people post, like Fern’s link

We keep no copy of any of it. Drawn here as a plain box on purpose: this page shows nothing of the server itself.

The Pool, where it livesraincheckgames.example/pools/rain-check-everyone.json

Status
active
Listed
18 people, each by their own yes
Kept by
Fern AchterbergSigned in with OAuthkeeps it Rashid OmondiSigned in with OAuthco-keeper
Last changed
24 September 2026, by its keepers
Changed by this
Nothing.
  • Fern AchterbergSigned in with OAuth
  • Rashid OmondiSigned in with OAuth
  • Lola BrandvoldSigned in with OAuth
  • Bao TranSigned in with OAuth
  • Imre KovácsEmail verified
  • Theo LindqvistEmail verified
  • Pip AlbrightEmail verified
  • Odalys FuentesSigned in with OAuth
  • Mahlet BekeleEmail verified
  • Yumi HatanoSigned in with OAuth
  • Oriol PuigSigned in with OAuth
  • Anouk VisserEmail verified
  • Kiri WalshEmail verified
  • Felipe ArceEmail verified
  • Ansel MoreauEmail verified
  • Marek DvořákEmail verified
  • Yusra HaddadEmail verified
  • Verna CoombsEmail verified

pools/rain-check-everyone.json · the same file before and after, whatever you pick.

Still works

Thursday, by email, and every app still reading

Thursday at the Mariners’ Hall

Lola sends this every Monday anyway, one email to each person who said yes to her table, so it reaches people who are not on the server.

One email each, to everyone at the table

  • Imre KovácsEmail verifiedtheir own copy
  • Theo LindqvistEmail verifiedthe copy shown here
  • Anouk VisserEmail verifiedtheir own copy
  • Yusra HaddadEmail verifiedtheir own copy

v0.1 has no group message: a message has one recipient §6.2, so a host writes one per person. It goes as a system message, because there is no type for an announcement §6.3.

Lola’s email to Theo, as JSON
{
  "schema_version": "0.1",
  "message_id": "msg-rain-check-thursday-2026-10-01-theo",
  "type": "system",
  "sender": {
    "identity": "lola@mail.example",
    "display_name": "Lola Brandvold",
    "verification_level": "oauth",
    "profile_url": "https://lola-brandvold.carrd.example"
  },
  "recipient": {
    "identity": "theo@mail.example",
    "profile_url": "https://theo-lindqvist.carrd.example"
  },
  "via_pool": {
    "url": "https://raincheckgames.example/pools/rain-check-port-ellery.json",
    "id": "rain-check-port-ellery",
    "name": "Port Ellery Thursdays"
  },
  "sent_at": "2026-09-28T16:00:00Z",
  "subject": "Thursday 1 October at the Mariners’ Hall",
  "body": {
    "content_type": "text/plain",
    "content": "Thursday 1 October, 6:30 in the evening, upstairs at the Mariners’ Hall. The kettle will be on and the crokinole board will be out. Imre is bringing a go board and will teach anyone who asks. Come with a game or without one; nobody needs to reply to come.\n\nI send this every Monday to everyone who said yes to the Port Ellery table, one email each, so it reaches you whether or not you are on the server. You can leave the table’s Pool from this email in one step, and your page stays yours.\n\nLola"
  },
  "transport": {
    "type": "email"
  }
}
In Familiar Faces, the same day

Rain Check: Everyone18 people

  • Lola BrandvoldSigned in with OAuth
  • Imre KovácsEmail verified
  • Theo LindqvistEmail verified
  • Anouk VisserEmail verified

Four of the Port Ellery people, as Theo would see them. Familiar Faces reads pools/rain-check-everyone.json; it never read the server. Familiar Faces

In Bellows, before game day

Big Game DaySaturday 10 October

  • Offer · Marek DvořákEmail verifiedTwo seats from Eugene, through Salem.
  • Ask · Verna CoombsEmail verifiedA ride home to Salem before dark.

Marek already wrote to Verna, by email through Big Game Day’s Pool. His note, as JSON. Bellows

Neither app needs the server, today or after. They read the files, with every person’s own rules still in force §7.

Shift 4 · leaving costs nothing

For a member, and for the community

Anouk leaves, in one action

One button sends one withdrawal to the keepers, and the Pool acts on it within sixty seconds §5.3. Watch the box above and the Familiar Faces card: she is gone from both, and nothing else moves.

Her place at the Port Ellery table is a separate yes to a separate Pool. She can leave that too, also in one action, or keep it.

If we moved our chat

Say we all decided to talk somewhere else next month. Nothing about the Pools would move: they are files on our own domain, and nobody’s yes was ever given to the server. Fern would post the same link in the new place, and anyone new would follow it, one at a time.

What stays with each person, whatever happens

  • Their own page, at their own address.
  • Their yes to each Pool, until they take it back.
  • Their email threads with anyone they wrote to §6.1.
  • Their seat at every table they said yes to.

Shift 11 · it outlives its makers

The server can go quiet. So can we.

A Pool goes dormant when its keepers take no curation action for 90 days: reviewing a handshake, editing the manifest, answering a removal §9.1. The last one here was on 24 September 2026, when Verna said yes, so the earliest this Pool could go dormant is 23 December 2026. Members going quiet changes nothing, and neither does the server.

Dormant is not deleted. Members see a notice, the discovery file says so §10.2, and for 14 days any active member may nominate a keeper, with co-keepers first in line §9.2 §9.3. If nobody steps up, the Pool is archived: still readable, everyone still listed §9.4.

Written down before it was needed

If the server shuts down, loses its admin, or changes its rules, this Pool stays where it is, on our own domain. Each table’s host will write to you by email on the Monday before Thursday, and Big Game Day goes ahead. Apps that read our Pools keep reading them. You do not need to do anything.

From the keepers’ note of 24 September 2026, one email to each person in the Pool. Pip’s copy, as JSON.

Honest limits

What v0.1 can’t say about a server

  1. No link between a chat handle and a Pool entry.

    Nothing ties someone in the server to someone in the Pool, and we like it that way. If you want people to know it is you, say so on your own page.

  2. No roles, and no channels.

    A host is a curator of a town’s Pool. A town is a separate Pool, because there is no way to split one. Moderators have no field at all.

  3. No group message.

    Every message has one recipient, so a host writes one email per person, sent as system.

  4. No weekly night.

    “Thursdays at 6:30” lives in each table’s name, charter and governance text.

All of them, with the spec sections