Everything is a verse
Particles, nuclei, minerals, organisms, tools, bases — all are compositions scored 0–100 on five axes and tiered Gold → Red. One crafting system, applied recursively at every scale.
prototype v0.2 · design build
There is no item table.
There never will be.
Every thing in χcraft is a verse — a composition the engine scores at runtime — and crafting is the act of performing that verse coherently so that it persists.
Four pillars
Pathway primacy
How you bind matters as much as what you bind. Ramp, jump, or ring: two players reaching the identical endpoint by different trajectories hold different objects.
The world keeps score
Rehearsal depth, persistence, and census share are live measurements of the actual world, not authored constants. The physics drifts because the players are part of it.
Anomalies are the content engine
The simulation fits its own catalog to observed events. Persistent tensions accrue τₖ-mass and surface as long-arc mysteries the catalog cannot yet voice.
The TMI kernel
The Temporal Mass Index is the only scoring function in the game — pure, deterministic, versioned. It is not hit points and not price: it is compositional inertia, how hard the world resists un-making the thing.
TMI(P) = 100 · [ w_r·R + w_p·H + w_c·C + w_s·S + w_g·G ] weights: 0.25 rehearsal · 0.25 half-life · 0.20 census · 0.20 symmetry · 0.10 lineage Χ(P, path) = S_match · exp(−γ·Δgen) · I(path) · (1 − η_local) Χ ≥ 0.62 cuts · Χ ≥ 0.38 rings · below that, clean failure
Census share inverts the genre's rarity economy. Ubiquity is mass — hydrogen is Gold and always will be, while the exotic thing you pulled out of a collider event stays Red until you can make it persist.
Calibration, live
| p⁺ + e⁻ + γ | 94.6 | Gold |
| t + H⁰ + χ | 38.0 | Red |
| χ (primitive) | 36.9 | Red |
Computed on this page by the same kernel the composer runs. Nothing here is a stored number.
the cut · stage 2
Coherence: the benchmark of performance
A verse is not a thing you have. It is a thing you perform, and the engine asks one question of every performance: does it hold? That question is the coherence functional, Χ — a single scalar in [0,1] that gauges whether the world agrees to keep what you just bound. Hit the cut and the verse enters the Ledger; fall short and it rings once, then un-makes itself, leaving a residue the anomaly engine will later weigh — and in the source framework, that residue is what we understand gravity to be.
Cuts
The verse persists. A new pattern enters the Ledger and the census shifts. This is the only route to a durable object.
Rings
It resonates but will not hold. The residue it leaves settles into the substrate — and that settling is what gravity is: not a pull, but what couldn't keep up with the verse.
Fails clean
Clean refusal with pathway-dependent loss. No residue, no ledger entry — the universe never parsed the sentence.
residue = gravity
A verse that rings but won't hold doesn't vanish — it sheds what it couldn't carry. That shed, the residue, is the part of the binding that failed to keep up with the verse's own coherence, and it settles into the world as mass. In the source framework this is exactly what gravity is: not a force that pulls, but the settling of what couldn't keep up.
residue = (1 − efficiency) × intensity × gradient × dt mass accrues where coherence could not fully discharge
Χ is multiplicative on purpose: a symmetry mismatch, a χ substrate that refuses, or a low-I pathway each drag the product down independently. There is no grind that compensates for an incoherent verse — the only way up is to perform it more coherently. And every fraction of coherence you leave on the table settles as residue, thickening the world's mass.
Coherence here is a playable instance of the Temporal Composition Theory — the τₖ Composition source framework χcraft is built on, where persistence is scored compositionally and residue is gravity. A sibling instance lives at Temporal Depth Amplification, voicing the same residue formula as the settling that becomes a black hole.
world-anchor anomaly
The Black Sun
The sky's oldest deficit. The disk swallows ≈65% of predicted luminosity; the rim carries ≈35%. It boots with 13.8 Gyr of accrued τₖ-mass and is deliberately the heaviest anomaly in the catalog — the tutorial mystery and the endgame mystery are the same object.
Read the addendum →the rendering substrate
The CDT substrate: a world that keeps score
The physics needs a rendering engine coherent with it. Instead of discrete block IDs and lookup tables, every voxel holds a localized complex field — Ψ(x) = Σ Aₖ·e^{iθₖ}. Amplitude is density and permanence (what the TMI kernel measures as persistence), phase is material state, and τₖ is the same binding term a ramp writes deep and a jump writes shallow. Edits superpose rather than overwrite; the maximum spectral density becomes the visible world; multiple realities coexist on identical coordinates, selected by observer phase.
component k=1
component k=2
component k=3
| CDT concept | In χcraft / TMI terms |
|---|---|
| Amplitude (A) | Density & permanence — field strength the TMI kernel measures as persistence |
| Phase (θ) | Material state — crystal, fluid, vapor as angles, not block IDs |
| τₖ coefficient | The binding term a ramp writes deep, a jump writes shallow |
| Superposition merge | No overwrite locks: cooperative builds reinforce, opposed phases unmake |
| Consensus geometry | Maximum spectral density is what the world agrees to show |
| Observer phase | Multi-reality layering — same coordinates, different realized worlds |