Bad Decisions

Bad Decisions is a reusable engine and service for fill-in-the-blank party card games. It provides a validated pack registry, a stateless REST API, a browser client, a terminal client, and CardDeck portable-pack archives.

The engine makes no network requests while serving a hand and never changes packs through the HTTP API. Prompt and response selectors are independent; the registry is loaded at startup and can be run with multiple workers.

Install

python -m pip install bad-decisions
bad-decisions --help
bad-decisions --oneshot

The cross-platform client is separate:

python -m pip install bad-decisions-client
regret health
regret deal

The configured hosted browser client is at /bad-decisions/web/.

Packs

Set BAD_DECISIONS_PACK_DIR to an absolute registry directory. It replaces the bundled registry and is loaded only at startup.

bad-decisions pack validate example.carddeck
bad-decisions pack init-registry /absolute/pack/registry
bad-decisions pack import example.carddeck /absolute/pack/registry

CardDeck 1 defines the portable format. Its ZIP validation rejects traversal, symlinks, unexpected members, checksum mismatches, oversized content, and dangerous compression ratios before any pack is written.

Public CardDeck catalog and remote imports

The live public CardDeck catalog lists every intentionally public archive with metadata, licensing/provenance, SHA-256, and direct download URLs.

The runtime remains immutable: it loads packs at startup and has no endpoint to upload or alter them. To add a public pack, use the explicit remote-import CLI, then restart with BAD_DECISIONS_PACK_DIR pointing to the registry:

bad-decisions pack import --remote \
  https://bad-decisions-native.objects.us-west-1.bytes.coffee/packs/coffee.carddeck \
  /absolute/pack/registry

bad-decisions pack import --index \
  https://bad-decisions.objects.us-west-1.bytes.coffee/packs/index \
  /absolute/pack/registry \
  --pack coffee \
  --pack pyx-2-base-game-us

Remote imports accept HTTPS only and reject redirects, URL credentials, oversized responses, malformed catalogs, duplicate selections, and invalid archives before the normal atomic, non-overwrite import occurs.

Pretend You're Xyzzy imports

The distribution does not bundle Pretend You're Xyzzy card data. If you have a lawfully acquired cah_cards.sql dump, the separate importer emits one attributed .carddeck archive per active card set and records the supplied source URL and SHA-256. Those generated packs are CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 and must stay non-commercial and share-alike.

PYTHONPATH=src .venv/bin/python scripts/import_pyx.py /path/to/cah_cards.sql ./pyx-carddecks \
  --source-url 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ajanata/PretendYoureXyzzy/<commit>/cah_cards.sql' \
  --retrieved 2026-09-17

Bundled content retains its own provenance and licensing. The coffee pack is owner-authorized material based on IRC messages, distributed under CC BY-SA 4.0; its raw source-message corpus is not included. The base pack is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; operators distributing it must honor those terms.

Licensing

Bad Decisions is free and open-source software licensed under the MIT License.

Card packs are separate works and may be distributed under different licenses. A card pack's own declared license, attribution, provenance, and modification information governs use of that pack; the Bad Decisions MIT license does not grant additional rights to third-party content. In particular, BytesAndCoffee cannot grant commercial rights to third-party card-pack content beyond the rights provided by that content's owner and license.

The official BytesAndCoffee distribution and hosted service are currently provided free of charge. BytesAndCoffee does not sell access, offer paid API access, or monetize the hosted service with advertising. This describes how BytesAndCoffee operates its official distribution; it is not a restriction on downstream use of the MIT-licensed software.

In other words: use the engine however the MIT License permits, but check the license on the cards you put into it. If your Bad Decisions have Consequences, that is between you and the stew.

API

uvicorn bad_decisions.api:create_app --factory --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/healthz
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1/packs
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1/round
curl 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1/round?packs=maha'

Without a packs parameter (or --packs in the CLI), rounds draw from every pack in the loaded registry, so custom BAD_DECISIONS_PACK_DIR registries need no base.

/docs exposes OpenAPI documentation. Errors use a stable JSON envelope and request responses include a request ID.

Consequences (optional analytics and feedback)

Consequences is disabled by default. Enable it only with a local, persistent SQLite path owned by the service user:

BAD_DECISIONS_CONSEQUENCES_DB=/var/lib/bad-decisions/consequences.sqlite3

The database must not live in a release directory, an object store, or a shared filesystem. SQLite uses bounded writer waits; durable draws and feedback are transactional, while request telemetry is best effort. If the store is unavailable, dealing still succeeds and the response advertises feedback as unavailable.

Consequences records route templates, method, status, duration, optional random client/session UUIDs, and authoritative drawn-card/provenance records. It does not record IP addresses, user agents, raw query strings, raw request headers, or feedback capabilities. Capability tokens are returned only in X-Regret-Feedback-Token, are stored as verifiers, and expire after seven days.

Set BAD_DECISIONS_CONSEQUENCES_FEEDBACK=0 to retain analytics without voting. Public combination summaries are off unless BAD_DECISIONS_CONSEQUENCES_PUBLIC_STATS=1. Other controls include bounded writer timeout, feedback TTL, and retention days; feedback TTL may not outlive retention.

Private operator commands:

bad-decisions consequences report /absolute/path/consequences.sqlite3
bad-decisions consequences rebuild /absolute/path/consequences.sqlite3
bad-decisions consequences purge /absolute/path/consequences.sqlite3 --retention-days 90

The Regret client automatically sends a random per-installation UUID when it can safely persist it in ~/.regret.env, and a new session UUID per invocation. Use regret identity reset or regret identity off for control. After a deal, regret feedback enjoy, regret feedback regret, and regret feedback clear operate on its securely cached last eligible draw. Feedback is one mutable vote per draw; retries do not duplicate it, and the last committed concurrent vote wins.

Linux deployment

Bad Decisions is Linux-native for production deployment:

bad-decisions setup
sudo NGINX_SITE_CONFIG=/etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com \
  PUBLIC_BASE_URL=https://example.com/bad-decisions \
  ./deploy.sh

The deployer creates an unprivileged service account, immutable wheel releases, a bad-decisions.service unit, and optional loopback nginx proxy configuration. See DEPLOYMENT.md.

Development

.venv/bin/python -m pytest
PYTHONPATH=client/src .venv/bin/python -m pytest client/tests
bash -n deploy.sh
.venv/bin/python -m build .
.venv/bin/python -m build client