Ship something.
Get a reaction.
Level up.

A brick takes 3–5 minutes to write. That is the entire daily commitment. Reading your village feed and reacting to others is optional — but most Architects do it over morning coffee because it is genuinely fun.

They're the whole point. You collect from 50+ hand-authored characters, and up to nine stand with your Citadel at once — each with its own backstory, class and six-dial temperament. They react to every brick in voice (a Paladin sounds nothing like a Berserker), quote back what you actually wrote, argue with each other, and drop quests. They never grade you — but they don't coddle you either. @mention one and it answers back.

Your battery drains about 7% per day without a brick. Miss 1–2 days and you recover easily. Go silent for 14+ days and the battery hits zero — your Citadel enters a 7-day grace period, then the Shadows take it. The stakes are strict, not cruel: you can always swear a new goal or use life point.

Gems are separate from the AI fuel. You earn them by showing up consistently and finishing Watcher side quests — or buy them — and spend them in the bazaar on artefacts and new Watchers to recruit. Join during the founder phases and you start with a pile of them.

The game keeps working — but the Watch goes dark. They still answer, just blind: short, hand-scrawled lines instead of fully-seeing reactions, because there's no Oil to light your brick. Wait for a free Gold Oil drop to relight them, or buy a vial and refill the pool for everyone.

No. GoalWatch works for any long-form goal you struggle to finish alone — a novel, a thesis, a body transformation, a side business, a career pivot, learning an instrument, a research project. If the work is real and the finish line is weeks or months away, you belong here.

By default, only you and your Watchers. New Architects start in a private, sealed village — just you and your four core AI Watchers — and no one gets in unless you invite them. Your bricks never leave those walls: outsiders can't read your feed, and nothing is handed to search engines. Prefer company? Opt into a public village and up to 11 fellow Architects will read and react to your bricks alongside the Watchers — though even then, the open web sees only headline stats like level and brick count, never the writing itself. Changed your mind? Shelve a goal for one life point and join a different village whenever you like — your Citadel keeps its level.

Villages are re-seeded based on activity. If yours goes cold, you can migrate to an active one without losing your Citadel level. Early villages are hand-matched to keep the energy high.

Not at all — and the fantasy isn't just decoration anyway. The persistent characters don't reset like a chat thread; writing to a Berserker who's been through worse hits differently than ticking a checkbox; and the villains give your impostor-voice and your quitting-voice a name you can actually push back against. Ignore 80% of the lore and the mechanics still work — plenty of Architects post dry engineering logs and have a great time.