Frontier

Frontier is a Rust + Bevy prototype pivoting into an AI-lab strategy game about running a frontier AI company, outcompeting rival labs, and managing the tradeoffs between model capability, users, cash, trust, safety, compute, pricing, and talent.

Historical design reference: https://outline.gregagi.com/doc/garden-of-minds-game-design-brief-1dRK1Wt5yn

Current pivot backlog: see AGENTS.md.

Prototype Goal

The pivot slice answers one question:

Is it fun to make CEO-style AI-lab decisions and watch capability, users, cash, trust, safety, and competitors react?

Current Slice

• Deterministic AI-lab simulation seed
• One player lab and three competitor labs
• Core resources: capability, cash, compute, users, trust, safety, price, and talent
• CEO decisions with costs, benefits, and tradeoffs
• Competitor reactions each quarter
• Market model for price, adoption, revenue, and rank
• Decision forecasts before commit
• Event log with concise cause/effect feedback
• Short-run win and loss conditions
• Strategic Bevy dashboard

Controls

• 1: preview Train Model
• 2: preview Cut API Prices
• 3: preview Buy Compute
• 4: preview Ship Product Features
• 5: preview Invest in Safety/Reliability
• 6: preview Hire Researchers
• Enter: commit the selected CEO decision
• Space: advance one quarter after committing
• R: reset the run

Local Development

See docs/install.md for full macOS and Windows setup instructions.

cargo run
cargo test
cargo fmt

Agent Playtesting

The prototype includes a headless playtest mode for build-play-observe loops:

cargo run -- --script "train-model,advance-quarter:2,cut-prices,invest-safety,advance-quarter:3" --pretty

This runs the same simulation actions as the keyboard controls, prints a JSON state report, and exits without opening a Bevy window. Use it after gameplay changes to compare the planned consequence against quarter, market rank, competitors, status, events, deltas, and lab stats.

Useful options:

• --seed 42: run a deterministic alternate seed.
• --window-size 1000x650: launch the visual game at a stable size.
• --dump-state: print the initial state as JSON and exit.
• --strategy aggressive-growth: run a built-in CEO strategy script.
• --pretty: pretty-print JSON output.

--window-size only affects visual windowed runs; headless --script and --dump-state runs do not open a window.

Script actions:

• advance-quarter, step, or space: advance one quarter.
• 1 or train-model: Train Model.
• 2 or cut-prices: Cut API Prices.
• 3 or buy-compute: Buy Compute.
• 4 or ship-features: Ship Product Features.
• 5 or invest-safety: Invest in Safety/Reliability.
• 6 or hire-researchers: Hire Researchers.
• r or reset: reset the run to the configured seed.

Built-in strategies:

• aggressive-growth
• quality-first-research
• trust-safety-first

Repeat an action with action:count, for example advance-quarter:4. Repeats are capped at 10000 to catch accidental runaway scripts.

Prototype acceptance criteria are mapped in docs/prototype-acceptance.md.

Pivot Note

The original prototype explored a god-game about artificial minds, nodes, values, and interventions. That intent is preserved as historical context, but the current playable slice is now scoped around the clearer AI-lab strategy fantasy. See docs/pivot-model.md for the keep/remap/cut decisions behind the pivot.

macOS And Windows

This prototype can be run from source on macOS and Windows with Rust installed, or downloaded from the Desktop Artifacts workflow.

• macOS: install Xcode Command Line Tools, install Rust with rustup, then run cargo run --release.
• Windows: install Visual Studio C++ Build Tools with Desktop development with C++, install Rust with rustup-init.exe, then run cargo run --release.

The Desktop Artifacts GitHub Actions workflow can build downloadable prototype packages for macOS and Windows. The latest manually built artifacts are linked from the Desktop Artifacts workflow page. See docs/install.md.

Scope Guardrails

Do not add these before the first prototype loop works:

• real AI API calls
• combat
• multiplayer
• save/load
• complex procedural worlds
• production art pipeline
• fake desktop UI