The Button

A web game of patience and nerve. A 24-hour countdown resets every time any player presses the button. If it reaches zero, that season's game ends and final stats are published. Each equinox and solstice brings a fresh season.

Inspired by Reddit's The Button experiment.

How to play

1. Sign up with a name and password (or log back in).
2. Press the button. The countdown resets to 24 hours.
3. You score points based on the zone the countdown was in when you pressed. The longer you wait, the more you score, but if everyone waits too long, the game ends.

Zones

Higher-value zones are shorter, so scoring big is risky.

Zone	Points	Duration (24h timer)
Green	0	12h 11m
Blue	2	6h 6m
Yellow	4	3h 3m
Red	8	1h 31m
Black	16	46m
White	32	23m

Every press records the zone, the points, and the exact remaining time in milliseconds. Players can view their own score, presses per zone, and press history at any time. A public live leaderboard shows all players ranked by total points, with press counts; ties are sorted alphabetically. Scores refresh every five seconds and immediately after you press or join. Detailed global stats (presses per zone, closest call, full press log) stay hidden until the game ends.

Logged-in players can also join the mailing list.

The Chat section is a simple public chatroom. Logged-in players can post plain-text messages (up to 200 characters, one message every two seconds). The latest 100 messages are displayed oldest first and refresh every five seconds while Chat is open. Messages persist in SQLite across restarts, including after the game ends. There are no editing, deletion, or moderation controls yet.

Every successful button press also posts an automatic chat announcement with the player's name, exact time remaining, and points earned. These announcements are saved with the press and do not count toward the player's chat cooldown.

Seasons and champions

Seasons begin at 00:00 UTC on the UTC date of each astronomical equinox or solstice, not at the event's exact hour and not on fixed March/June/September/December dates. They are displayed as Season I, Season II, Season III, etc., including in the subtitle under THE BUTTON. Numbering begins at the earliest saved season (including existing archives on upgrade); its origin is persisted so numbering remains stable across restarts. Each astronomical boundary advances the number, including seasons missed during downtime. Date-based internal IDs and start/end dates remain unchanged. The built-in Meeus equinox/solstice calculation (with periodic and Delta-T corrections) supports 2000–2100 without network access or dependencies. The 2026 boundaries are March 20, June 21, September 23, and December 21; the December 2027 boundary is December 22. Calendar tests check these against USNO data. The far-future calendar is an astronomical estimate; extend/revalidate it before 2101.

At each boundary the server archives the old season and starts a fresh countdown anchored to that midnight. Seasonal points, press history, personal bests, achievements, and milestone progress reset. Accounts, password hashes, login sessions, mailing-list subscriptions, and chat are preserved. Previous press histories remain stored in the season archive; public archives expose only score summaries, not private per-player histories. Old milestone announcements remain visible in chat.

A season finishes when the countdown expires or the next seasonal boundary is reached. Pressing cannot extend the timer beyond that boundary. If the timer expires early, pressing and new registrations remain unavailable until the next season; existing players can still log in and chat. The watcher continues running and also catches up boundaries after downtime. A missed season starts at its scheduled midnight, not when the server restarts: without presses its countdown may already be over. Missed seasons have no invented winners.

The Seasons section shows the current season and next start, a champions table, and expandable final standings. Each result shows the winner(s), points per winner, and how long play lasted from actual game start to timeout/boundary (not the calendar season's full length). Equal top scores share the win; alphabetical ordering only orders the display. A player must have pressed at least once to win; a zero-point press qualifies, but an idle account does not. A season without presses has no winner.

Upgrade behavior: the existing JSON/SQLite game is adopted unchanged into the calendar season containing the upgrade time, including all old scores and presses. Its actual original start is retained for duration reporting, even if it predates that calendar season. A brand-new installation similarly starts a partial first season immediately rather than fabricating past play. All subsequent seasons begin at the scheduled UTC midnight. Archives and current-season metadata are added automatically in SQLite; no manual conversion is needed. Keep a database backup before deployment. The first watcher/state request archives a game that was already ended; historical seasons are not reconstructed from an undivided pre-season game.

Public GET /api/seasons returns {current, seasons} with current boundary metadata/standings and immutable finished results. GET /api/state includes season metadata. The main leaderboard, achievements, rivals, and final statistics refer to the current season. Client views refresh across seasonal boundaries without a reload; local alert preferences remain enabled but alerts are re-baselined for the new season. One-life mode is still separate and unimplemented.

Engagement roadmap

The goal is to make waiting social and consequential without rewarding button spam or changing the current game's rules. Planned delivery order:

1. Optional live presence — implemented. Show participating players watching the clock and who is viewing Chat. On by default, with a remembered opt-out; ephemeral heartbeats, automatic expiry, and no activity history. See the details below.
2. Personal bests and rivalries — implemented. Your score shows closest call, highest-scoring press, leaderboard position, and the player immediately ahead with points needed to catch up. Existing history is credited automatically; no data migration is needed.
3. Achievements — implemented. Close call, Full spectrum, and Keeping us alive appear under Your score with unlock dates and progress. Existing press history counts, with no bonus points or press-volume rewards.
4. Community milestones — implemented. Eight one-time shared goals post gold announcements in chat. Unlocks persist across restarts, and historical milestones are silently credited on upgrade.
5. Optional zone alerts — implemented. Choose a scoring zone and opt into a chime, browser notifications, or both in Alerts. Off by default; notifications require explicit permission. Works while the page remains open, not after closing it.
6. Separate one-life mode — exploratory. Allow one press per player per round in a separate mode with its own rounds and leaderboard. Never silently change the current game or reset its data.

Keep new features consistent with the Catppuccin Mocha styling and selectable-section navigation. Preserve visible countdown/button controls on desktop and mobile, authenticated mutations, bounded input, safe text rendering, and server-authoritative scoring. Verify changes using isolated databases rather than live game data.

Personal bests and rivalries

Your score includes private personal records derived from your existing press history. Closest call means the least time remaining; highest-scoring press means the most points in a single press. Ties prefer the lower remaining time, then the earlier press. A zero-point press is still a valid record; new players see placeholders until their first press.

Leaderboard positions match the public ordering (points descending, then name alphabetically), not shared competition ranks. The rival is the player immediately above you, including alphabetical ties. The score card shows the gap to match their total and the minimum additional whole-number points to exceed it; actual presses still award fixed zone values, so you may jump past that threshold. Equal top scores are described as a shared lead; solo players and outright leaders receive their own messages. These cards refresh every five seconds while Your score is open and after pressing. Rival information exposes only public names and totals, never another player's records or press history.

Achievements

Your score includes eight private achievements, derived from the game's existing press history:

Achievement	Requirement
Close call	A successful press with strictly less than 60 seconds remaining (and more than zero).
Full spectrum	At least one press in each of the six scoring zones; repeated presses in one zone do not advance it.
Red alert	Press in the red zone.
Into the dark	Press in the black zone.
White knuckle	Press in the white zone.
Photo finish	Press with strictly less than ten seconds remaining, and more than zero.
Last second	Press with strictly less than one second remaining, and more than zero.
Keeping us alive	Press after a global quiet stretch of at least half the saved game countdown: 12 hours for the standard 24-hour game. Scales with shorter test games.

Quiet time is measured from the previous press by any player, or from game start if there was no previous press. It is not the time since your own last press. The earliest qualifying press determines each unlock date. Progress is based on completed presses, not idle time accumulating while the page is open. These are badges only: they do not change scores, publish chat announcements, or reward repeated resets.

Historical JSON imports and existing SQLite history are credited automatically. No new table or manual migration is required for personal achievements; badges are recomputed from history after restart. They remain available after game over and refresh with Your score. Personal achievements are returned only by authenticated GET /api/me, not by the public leaderboard or final leaderboard.

Community milestones

There are eight community milestones, matching the eight personal achievements. Each posts once to the shared chat, with distinct gold styling:

Milestone	Community goal
One day together	Survive 24 hours.
A week of nerve	Survive 7 days.
Thirty days strong	Survive 30 days.
A growing crowd	Reach 10 registered players.
Fifty strong	Reach 50 registered players.
A hundred second chances	Reach 100 presses.
A thousand moments	Reach 1,000 presses.
Our first photo finish	First successful press with more than zero but less than 10 seconds left.

Survival milestones use real elapsed time since game start, not scaled countdown durations, and never count time after the game deadline/end. They are checked by the server watcher and normal state requests, even without presses. The photo finish is a single community first, not an announcement for every improved record. No milestone gives bonus points.

Milestone unlocks are stored in SQLite separately from player chat, and share the latest-100-message feed. They have no player dependency and do not affect chat cooldowns. Registration/press milestone unlocks commit with the corresponding game update. Repeated requests, watchers, and restarts cannot announce a goal twice. The first upgrade/import silently records already-reached goals to avoid flooding chat; future newly-reached goals announce normally. On later restarts, newly crossed survival milestones are announced once. Missed goals are never replayed repeatedly.

Optional zone alerts

The Alerts section is available without an account. Select blue, yellow, red, black, or white, enable alerts, choose a chime and/or browser notification, and save. Alerts are off by default. Settings are saved locally in this browser and synchronized between its open tabs, not stored with your account.

Alerts use server snapshots, normally every five seconds, rather than trusting the animated countdown alone. They fire only when an observed countdown advances into the selected zone, once per selected zone per countdown deadline. Opening/reloading the page, saving settings, game over, stale responses, and a changed deadline do not trigger an alert. A reset establishes a fresh baseline. If polling skips the entire selected zone, no late alert is sent. The latest alerted deadline/zones are remembered in browser storage to reduce duplicates between tabs; simultaneous-tab races are possible.

Notification permission is requested only when explicitly saving enabled notification settings. Unsupported browsers, insecure origins, denied/dismissed permissions, and blocked audio produce guidance rather than repeatedly prompting. Sound uses a short generated chime; Test chime lets you enable/test audio after opening the page. Audio may require another gesture after reopening, depending on browser policy.

Keep the page open. Background throttling, suspension, network failures, and OS notification settings can delay or suppress delivery. No service worker, push subscription, or closed-browser notification delivery is included. The selected section need not remain open. One-life mode remains exploratory and is not implemented.

Live presence

Show me online is enabled by default for logged-in players. Players can disable it in their score section; an existing saved opt-out is preserved, including across reloads and open tabs. The count near the clock includes only players sharing presence with a visible tab; Chat also lists those currently viewing that section. Multiple tabs/sessions count as one player. Updates run every 15 seconds, and stale presence expires after 45 seconds. Hiding a tab or opting out removes that tab's presence; logging out removes all presence for that session. Failed disconnect updates fall back to expiry. Presence lives only in server memory and is cleared on restart. Guests and players who turn the setting off are not tracked, so the count is not a total visitor count.

Public GET /api/presence returns {online_count, chat_players}. Authenticated POST /api/presence accepts {tab_id, active, in_chat} with a 32-character lowercase hexadecimal tab ID and boolean flags. At most 10 active tabs per login session are accepted. No player IDs, session IDs, or last-seen timestamps are returned publicly.

Presence tests cover authentication, validation, expiry and heartbeat renewal, tab/session deduplication, chat membership, revoked sessions, bounded entries, and logout. Browser checks cover opt-in/out, tab visibility changes, chat membership, logout, and responsive layout.

Running

Docker (recommended)

docker compose up -d --build

Open http://localhost:8000. The SQLite game database and the mailing list are stored in the button-data volume. Existing JSON game data in that volume is automatically migrated on the first startup after upgrading.

docker compose logs -f                                    # view logs
docker compose cp thebutton:/data/mailing_list.csv .      # export the mailing list
docker compose down                                       # stop (data is kept)
docker compose down -v                                    # stop and delete all data (new game)

Without Docker

Requires Python 3.9+. No third-party packages.

python server.py

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000. Game state is stored in data.sqlite3.

Migrating existing data

On startup, if the database has no saved game and data.json exists, the server automatically imports the countdown, players, password hashes, active sessions, subscription flags, and complete press history in one transaction. Older single-token player records are also supported. No manual conversion or additional dependencies are needed.

The JSON file is left untouched as a backup. Once the database contains a game, it is authoritative: subsequent restarts never re-import the JSON file. Invalid source data causes startup to fail rather than silently starting a new game; fix the source and restart to retry. The mailing-list CSV is unchanged.

Custom BUTTON_DATA_FILE paths continue to locate legacy JSON data; by default, the SQLite database is created alongside it with a .sqlite3 suffix. BUTTON_DATABASE_FILE can override the database path. Docker keeps both paths under /data, so existing named volumes migrate automatically.

To start a new game, stop the server and delete the SQLite database and remove or move the legacy JSON backup; leaving the JSON file in place would import the old game again.

Configuration

Set via environment variables (in Docker, add them under environment: in compose.yaml).

Variable	Default	Description
BUTTON_DURATION_SECONDS	86400	Countdown length. Zones scale with it.
BUTTON_HOST	127.0.0.1 (0.0.0.0 in Docker)	Address to listen on.
BUTTON_PORT	8000	Port to listen on.
BUTTON_DATA_FILE	data.json	Legacy JSON file to import if no saved SQLite game exists.
BUTTON_DATABASE_FILE	data.sqlite3	SQLite game database; defaults to BUTTON_DATA_FILE with a .sqlite3 suffix.
BUTTON_MAILING_LIST_FILE	mailing_list.csv	Mailing list file.

Tip: BUTTON_DURATION_SECONDS=60 makes for quick testing.

API

Method	Path	Auth	Description
GET	/api/state		Deadline, server time, zones, whether ended
POST	/api/register		{name, password} → {name, token}
POST	/api/login		{name, password} → {name, token}
POST	/api/logout	✓	Revoke the current session token
POST	/api/press	✓	Press the button
GET	/api/me	✓	Your score, zone counts, and press history
GET	/api/leaderboard		Public player names, total points, and press counts
GET	/api/seasons		Current season and archived champions, scores, durations, and standings
GET	/api/chat		Latest 100 public chat messages
POST	/api/chat	✓	{message} → saved message; 200-character limit
GET	/api/presence		Opted-in online count and chat display names
POST	/api/presence	✓	{tab_id, active, in_chat} presence heartbeat or removal
GET	/api/stats		Global stats (403 until the game ends)
POST	/api/subscribe	✓	{first_name, email, last_name?, phone?}

Authenticated requests use Authorization: Bearer <token>.

Security notes

• Passwords are hashed with PBKDF2-SHA256 (600k iterations); session tokens are stored only as SHA-256 hashes.
• Logins lock for 15 minutes after 5 failed attempts per name.
• The server speaks plain HTTP. Put it behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy (e.g. Caddy or nginx) before exposing it to the internet.
• Registration and mailing-list signup are not rate limited.

Project layout

server.py          Game server and API (Python standard library only)
static/            Frontend (HTML, CSS, vanilla JS)
Dockerfile         Container image
compose.yaml       Docker Compose service and data volume

Credits

Created by Eric Meehan. Built with GitHub Copilot.