scrabble-game/docs/FUNCTIONAL.md

# Scrabble Game — Functional spec

Per-domain user stories: what each user-visible operation does. This is the
starting point for any change request that touches behaviour. The English
version is authoritative; [`FUNCTIONAL_ru.md`](FUNCTIONAL_ru.md) is a mirror for
the project owner — mirror every point edit in the same patch (translate only
the changed paragraphs).

## Domains

### Client app
The web/app client (Svelte + Vite) realizes these stories. It
covers signing in (guest or email), the "my games" lobby, starting an
auto-match, playing the board (place tiles by drag or tap, pass, exchange, resign),
the top-1 hint, the unlimited word-check with complaint, per-game chat and nudge,
real-time in-app updates, switching interface language (en/ru) and theme, and a
read-only profile. It also handles managing friends (including one-time friend
codes) and blocks, friend-game invitations, editing the profile and binding an
email, the statistics screen, and the in-game history viewer with GCG / PNG-image export.
Settings also pick the board's bonus-label style (beginner / classic / none). A hint **lays the suggested tiles on the board** for the player to confirm and
costs nothing when the rack has no legal move. The word-check accepts only the
variant's alphabet, remembers answers within the session and rate-limits repeats.
A public **landing page** at the site root introduces the game, switches language and
theme, and links to the Telegram game channel and the VK Mini App; the game itself runs at
`/app/` (web), `/telegram/` (the Telegram Mini App) and `/vk/` (the VK Mini App). The landing's theme is ephemeral
(it follows the system scheme, not the saved preference); its language choice is saved. The
landing always opens in **Russian** — the browser language is never auto-detected (crawlers
render with arbitrary languages, so detection would make the indexed content
nondeterministic); a saved 🌐 choice still wins. The page carries a static Russian SEO head
(title/description, the Open Graph card Telegram/VK link previews use, a canonical link
pinned to the production origin, JSON-LD, the favicon set and `robots.txt`), while the SPA
shell is `noindex` — the landing is the only indexable page.

### First-run onboarding
The first time a player opens the app it walks them through the interface with a light
**coachmark overlay**: a dimmed layer draws one hint bubble at a time, each pointing — with a
tail — at a real control, and a **tap anywhere** advances to the next; after the last hint the
overlay is gone for good. Two independent series run. The **lobby** series points at the
⚙️ settings, ✏️ statistics and 🎲 new-game tabs. The **game** series, on the player's first game
board, points at the scoreboard header (move history / chat / word-check), the 🔄 pass-and-exchange,
🛟 hints and 🔀 shuffle controls, and the rack. A series counts as seen only **after its last hint**,
so leaving mid-way replays it from the start next time; it is remembered per device. Arriving at the
lobby is the lobby trigger, so a player who deep-links straight into Settings → Friends still gets the
lobby walk-through on their first trip back. Both series work the same in portrait and landscape (the
bubbles re-anchor to wherever the controls move) and the hint texts are localized (en/ru). The
advertising banner hides while the overlay is up and returns when it closes.

### Identity & sessions
A player arrives from a platform (Telegram first), via email login, or as an
ephemeral guest. The gateway validates the credential once and mints a thin
session token; the backend resolves it to an internal `user_id`. A **Telegram Mini
App** launch authenticates from the platform's signed `initData`, themes the UI to
the Telegram colours (re-theming live if you switch Telegram's light/dark mode) and fits
the device safe-area, and — on first contact — seeds the new account's interface
language from the Telegram client. If a launch cannot reach the backend (for example during a
deployment), the Mini App retries quietly and then shows a small "couldn't load" screen with a
**Retry** button, rather than dropping to the web sign-in, which has no place inside Telegram.
A **VK Mini App** launch works the same way: it authenticates from VK's signed launch parameters
(verified by the gateway), and on first contact seeds the new account's interface language from
`vk_language` and its display name from the VK profile (read on the client, since VK does not put
the name in the signed launch). While the theme preference is "auto" the app follows the VK
client's light/dark scheme, and the layout clears the VK mobile home bar. The same quiet-retry
"couldn't load" screen applies inside VK.
**Email** sign-in (web) mails a branded six-digit confirmation code — localized
(en/ru), no images — to the address; entering it signs the player in. A new address
is provisioned on the first request but only becomes a durable account once the code
is confirmed, so an abandoned, never-confirmed attempt is cleaned up and its address
freed. Sends are rate-limited (a short cooldown between codes and a small hourly cap
per address), so a mistyped address or an impatient tap cannot flood an inbox.
Telegram runs a **single bot**: every player uses
the same bot, and all of its chat and out-of-app notifications are written in the
player's own **interface language** (en/ru). A separate optional **promo bot** can run alongside the
main one — its only job is to answer `/start` with a short message and a button that opens the
**main** bot's app, where the player picks their game variant; it is an onboarding entry point that
touches nothing else. Guests are session-only with restricted features
(auto-match only; no friends, stats or history); an abandoned guest that never
joined a game and has been idle past the retention window is garbage-collected. While the app is open the client
keeps a live stream and receives in-app updates in real time — the opponent's move,
your turn, chat, nudges and an opponent joining a game you are waiting in. Each update lands as the
event itself, applied in place with no reload, so the board refreshes seamlessly and an invited game
opens instantly. When the app is **closed**, the chosen
out-of-app events (your turn, game over, nudge, a found match, an invitation or friend
request) arrive as a **Telegram notification** instead — unless the player keeps
notifications in the app only (a profile setting, **on by default**). The "your turn"
notification names the opponent and recaps their last move — the word and the running score
for a scoring play, or that they swapped or passed — and a finished game sends a "game over"
notification with your result and the final score (scores read with yours first). If the
connection drops or the server is rate-limiting, the app does not nag with errors: the header
shows a quiet **"Connecting…"** spinner while it reconnects, actions that send to the server
pause until it is back (a server-data screen still opens, with the spinner, and fills in on
reconnect), and pending reads resume on their own — the interface stays usable instead of
flashing a red banner each time.

### Accounts, linking & merge
_Sign-in is currently provider-only, so the in-profile linking UI is temporarily hidden; it
returns once the anonymous `/app/` guest (whose upgrade path this is) ships. The flow below
describes it for when it does._

First platform contact auto-provisions a durable account. From the profile a player
links an email (via a confirm code) or their Telegram (via the web sign-in); a guest
who links their first identity becomes a durable account. The "already taken" status
of an identity is never revealed before the code/sign-in is verified. If the linked
identity already belongs to another account, the player is shown an explicit,
**irreversible** confirmation and the two accounts are merged into the one they are
using (statistics summed, games and friends transferred, duplicates removed) — except
when a guest links an identity that already has a durable account, where the durable
account is kept and the guest's games move into it. A merge is blocked only while the
two accounts share a game still in progress.

### Lobby & matchmaking
On a cold open the lobby greets the player with a brief **loading splash** — Scrabble tiles
spelling **ЭРУДИТ / ЗАГРУЗКА / ОЖИДАНИЕ** as a small crossword — that clears the moment the
games list is ready, so the list never flashes an "empty" state on a slow connection.

The lobby lists **my games** and offers a bottom tab bar — new game, statistics, and a
**⚙️ settings** tab opening the settings hub (settings, profile, friends, about). The
**my games** list groups games into three
sections — *your turn*, *opponent's turn* and *finished* (empty sections are hidden) — and
orders them so the games awaiting your move come first, the longest-waiting on top, while
opponent-turn and finished games are most-recent first; within the your-turn and
opponent-turn sections a game with any unread notification floats to the top (the finished
section keeps its order). It renders as a compact, line-separated list. While the lobby is open and a listed game **becomes your turn or
finishes**, its status icon **blinks twice** to draw the eye (an opponent's-turn change is
silent, applied in place). You can **remove a finished game from your own list**:
swipe a finished row left (or, on desktop, tap its **⋮**) to reveal a **❌**, then tap it.
The removal is per-account and permanent — the game disappears only from your list and stays
in the other players' lists, and there is no undo. A finished **AI game (🤖) you left** — by
resigning or by letting it lapse to the 7-day timeout — drops from your *finished* list
automatically, with no swipe needed; a normally finished AI game stays until you remove it, and
no other game type is auto-removed. The game types offered on **New Game** are
limited to the player's chosen **variant preferences** (see *Profile & settings*) —
Erudite-first, defaulting to Erudite only. Variants are shown by their **display name** — both Scrabble variants read
"Scrabble"/"Скрэббл" and Erudit reads "Erudite"/"Эрудит" (by the interface language), and
the same name titles the in-game screen. This gates only **starting** a new game you initiate —
auto-match, a vs-AI game and a friend invitation **you create** — so a player still sees and plays
existing games of any variant, and being **invited** to a game lets you accept it in any variant.

**Quick game** lets you choose your opponent — an **AI** (the default) or a **random player**.
With **AI** you start at once against a 🤖 that joins and replies immediately: there is no waiting,
there is no chat or nudge — only the word-check tool — add-friend is never shown; instead of a
per-move clock you lose only after **7 days without a move** (so you can abandon an AI game freely,
and the AI itself never runs out of time). Choosing a **random player** is auto-match
(always 2 players), which drops you **straight into the game and you wait inside it**: if it is your turn you
can already move, otherwise you watch your tiles. While no opponent has joined, the opponent card (and
the game's row in the lobby) reads **"searching for opponent"**, and resign, chat and nudge are
unavailable. Another player searching the same variant and rule joins your game; failing that, a robot
takes the empty seat after **1.5–3 minutes**, so a game always starts — and the New Game screen notes
you can close the app while you wait and come back later. For Russian games (auto-match or friend
invitation), New Game also offers **"Multiple words per turn"** (default **off**): off plays
the simplified **single-word rule** — only the word laid along the player's line must be a
real word (and it must still cross or extend letters already on the board along that line),
and any incidental perpendicular words are ignored and not scored — while on is
standard Scrabble. English games are always standard and show no such toggle. In auto-match
the choice joins the pairing key, so a player only meets opponents who picked the same rule. Friend games (2–4) are
formed by inviting players from the friend list (an invitation, like a friend code,
is shareable as a Telegram deep link that opens it directly — on VK, which forwards no payload to the
Mini App, the link only opens the app and the recipient enters the copied code by hand): the inviter chooses the
settings and the game starts once every invitee has accepted — any decline cancels it, and an unanswered invitation
expires after seven days.

**Simultaneous-game cap.** A player may hold at most **10 active quick games** at once —
counting both in-progress and still-searching auto-match/AI games, but **not** friend games
created by invitation. At the cap the **New Game** button is disabled (greyed) and a plain,
low-emphasis line under the lists reads *"You've reached the simultaneous games limit."*; both
clear automatically once an active game finishes and the count drops below ten. The cap blocks
**starting** any game (a quick game or a friend invitation, which share the New Game entry), but
**accepting an incoming invitation is never blocked** — so friend games are capped from the other
end (you cannot initiate one while at the cap) while you can always join a game you are invited to.

### Playing a game
Place tiles, pass, exchange, or resign. Pass and exchange share one control —
choosing no tiles passes the turn, choosing tiles exchanges them. Tiles are laid
without choosing a direction — the game infers the play's orientation, so a single
tile that extends
an existing word (down a column or across a row) is accepted. A play is validated
against the game's dictionary at submit time and scored; an unlimited preview
reports the word(s) a tentative move would form and its score, or that it is not
legal, and the move is offered for submission only once it is confirmed legal. The preview is
computed **on-device** for an instant response once the game's dictionary has loaded — a
brief warm-up shows on the first open otherwise — and falls back to the server whenever the
local dictionary is unavailable. The dictionary check tool is
unlimited and offers a complaint on any result; for a word it finds, it also links out to an
external reference dictionary (gramota.ru for Russian games, scrabblewordfinder.org for
English) to look it up. Hints are governed per game —
whether they are allowed and how many each player starts with — and draw on a
personal hint wallet once the per-game allowance is spent. The game ends when the
bag empties and a player clears their rack, after 6 consecutive scoreless turns,
by resignation, or by the per-game move timeout (5 minutes to 24 hours, default
24 hours): a missed turn auto-resigns, except while the player is inside their
daily away window. In a two-player game a resignation or timeout gives the win to
the other player and the leaver keeps their score. In a game with three or four
players the leaver's seat is dropped and the others play on, the game ending when a
single active player remains; the disposition of the leaver's tiles (returned to
the bag or removed from play) is chosen when the game is created, and the leaver's
rack is never shown to the others. A player's **board composition is kept per game**:
the rack arrangement and the tiles laid but not yet submitted are saved as they compose
and restored on return (including on another device); a player may **arrange tiles during
the opponent's turn**, but that draft is position-only — the score preview and submission
stay available only on the player's own turn.

### Robot opponent
When auto-match finds no human within the wait window (1.5–3 minutes), a robot opponent
takes the empty seat of the game you are already waiting in. It is meant to feel like a person: it
decides once per game whether to play to win (about 40% of the time, so the human
wins most games), aims for a close score rather than crushing or throwing the game,
now and then plays a single move against that plan — a surprise lead or a slack move —
yet holds to the plan once the bag empties, and plays at a human pace — short thinking
times for most moves, the occasional long one, and a night-time pause that tracks the
player's own day; once a game is clearly decided and both sides are only passing, it stops
dragging it out, answering its forced passes at roughly the player's own pace rather than
after a long deliberation. It answers a nudge
within a few minutes and, when the player keeps it waiting, nudges back on a sparse
schedule — roughly every 9-12 hours, and never during its night-time pause. It
carries a human-like, language-appropriate name — a fresh one each game, drawn from a wide
international pool of real names and handles, so the arena feels populated by many different
players (a Russian game shows mostly Russian names, never East-Asian scripts; an international
game the full mix); it does not chat, and **silently ignores friend requests** — a request to a
robot stays pending and expires, exactly like a human who never responds.

The same robot also backs the **honest-AI quick game** the player chooses directly (above). There
it makes no pretence: it is shown as **🤖** everywhere, joins and moves at once (no thinking time
or night pause), keeps the same strength (it still plays to win only about 40% of the time, with
the same occasional move against its plan that fades out by the endgame), and chat, nudge and
add-friend are off. AI games are **practice** — they never count toward a player's
statistics.

### Social: friends, block, chat, nudge
Become friends in two ways: redeem a **one-time code** the other player issues (six
digits, valid for twelve hours), or send a **request to someone you have played
with** — they accept, ignore it (a request lapses after thirty days and can then be
re-sent), or decline (a decline blocks further requests from you until they hand you
a code). Cancelling your own pending request withdraws it; unfriending removes the
friendship. In a game, each opponent's score card (while the move history is open) carries two controls:
an **add-to-friends 🤝** on the right and a **block ✖️** on the left. Each confirms with a tap
on a fading ✅ — the card reads *Add friend?* (or *Block?*, in red) in place of the score while
confirming — and while one is confirming the other is hidden so they never overlap. The 🤝
goes **disabled** while a request is pending or was declined and **disappears** once you are
friends; both controls **disappear and the opponent's name is struck through** once you have
blocked them. They update in place the moment the relationship changes and stay correct across
reloads. Applying a block (or friend request) takes effect immediately and is confirmed by a
live event; a transport failure rolls the control back to its prior state.

Block globally — switch off incoming chat and/or friend requests — or block an **individual
player**. A per-user block is **one-directional and silent**: you stop receiving everything
**from** that person — chat, nudges, friend requests and game invitations — and the matchmaker
never pairs you with them, while they **notice nothing**. Their messages and nudges still send
by the normal rules but never reach you (anything that would show as unread for you is marked
read at once), and a friend request or invitation they send you is kept but never surfaces. A
block **overrides but does not delete** an existing friendship (so you may block a friend, and
they keep seeing you as one); active games are never interrupted — you can finish them, with
the blocked opponent's chat composer hidden (only the log remains). Blocking from a game card
mirrors the block in **Settings → Friends**; **unblock** and **unfriend** live there only.
On Settings → Friends each friend is a one-line row whose right-hand kebab (⋮) slides open
**block 🚫** and **remove ✖️** icon actions, and each action is gated by a confirmation
that names the friend (*Block this player?* / *Remove from friends?*).
Blocking an **auto-match opponent who is secretly a robot** behaves the same in that game
(struck name, hidden composer) and lists the blocked opponent under the name you saw, but is
recorded only against that game — the disguise holds, the shared robot is never globally
blocked, and the matchmaker keeps pairing you with robots (so you can never block yourself out
of opponents). Sending the 🤝 to such a **disguised robot** likewise records the request only
against that game (pinned to the seat, so it stays *sent* there without touching that robot in
your other games); the robot **ignores it**, the request never appears in **Settings → Friends**,
and it drops automatically about a week after the game ends. Per-game chat is for quick reactions: messages are short
(up to 60 characters) and may not contain links, email addresses or phone numbers,
even disguised. You may send **one message per turn, on your own turn**; once it is sent
the field gives way to a short caption until your next turn. Nudge the player whose turn
is awaited at most once per hour (the
nudge is part of the game chat); both the in-app toast and the out-of-app push (delivered
via the platform) **name the nudger** ("<opponent>: waiting for your move").
Chat and the word-check tool share one **comms screen** with **💬 chat** / **🔎 dictionary**
tabs, reached from the 💬 in the move-history header (with a back to the game). An AI game has no
chat, so its comms screen is the word-check alone — and once an AI game is finished (no chat, the
dictionary closed) the 💬 entry disappears entirely. An unread chat
entry — a message **or a nudge** from an opponent — raises a small **dot** next to the game
in the **lobby** and on the game's **score bar**, **red when an unread message is waiting and a
softer amber when only nudges are**. Opening the **move history** counts as reading
the chat, even without entering it: the dot clears and the 💬 icon **fade-blinks twice**. A nudge
also clears the moment its recipient **takes their move**, and **all of a game's nudges clear once
the game finishes** (the badge is stale once the game is over) — but unread chat messages stay unread.

### Profile & settings
Edit the display name (letters joined by a single space / "." / "_" separator, with an
optional trailing "." or a trailing run of up to five digits, up to 32 characters and at most
5 special characters — the "." / "_" punctuation, spaces and digits aside), the timezone
(chosen as a UTC offset, and pre-filled from your device's detected offset when the account
is first created — so robot games are timed correctly before you ever open this form), the
daily away window (on a 10-minute grid, at most 12 hours, wrapping midnight) and the
block toggles. The profile form is edited inline (no separate edit mode). Linking
an email or Telegram and merging accounts are covered under "Accounts, linking &
merge". Inside the Telegram Mini App, Telegram's own ⋮ menu also offers a **Settings**
entry that opens this screen, and your display preferences (theme, board-label style and
reduce-motion — not the interface language, which follows your account) sync across your
Telegram devices.

**Preferences (which variants you can be matched into).** A profile setting picks the game
variants — Erudite, Russian Scrabble and English Scrabble, shown **Erudite-first** — you allow
yourself to be matched into; a **new account starts with Erudite only** — unless it was created
through the **promo bot's deep link**, which also enables **English Scrabble** — and you must keep
**at least one** selected. This list is exactly what **New Game** offers when you start a game
(auto-match, an AI game, or a friend invitation you create) — a variant you have not enabled is
not offered, and the server refuses it. It does not restrict games you are **invited** to: an
invited friend may accept an invitation in **any** variant, and you can always open and play
existing games of any variant.

### Feedback
A registered player reaches the operators from Settings → Info: a **Feedback** screen with a
message (up to 1024 characters) and an optional single attachment (one file, up to ~1 MB — images,
PDF, text/log, office documents, RTF or archives; an unsupported file is refused on the form
without naming the allowed types). After sending, the form clears and confirms "Ваше сообщение
отправлено", and sending is blocked until the operator has dealt with that message — on re-entry
the screen reads "Ожидаем рассмотрения вашего последнего обращения". The operator's reply appears
below the form as "Ответ на ваше последнее сообщение" (any link in it opens in a new tab); it is
marked read once the screen shows it and disappears a week later. A badge on the Settings tab (and on Info inside it) flags an
unanswered reply. Guests cannot send feedback (the entry is hidden). A player the operator has
barred from feedback (a role, not a full account block) sees the send control disabled.

### Telegram support chat
A user can also reach the operators straight from the Telegram bot: anything they send the bot
other than `/start` — text, a photo, a voice message, a file — is forwarded into the operators'
private support group, grouped into a per-user thread. The user sees no automatic reply; an
operator answers from that thread and the bot delivers the answer back as an ordinary bot message,
so to the user it is a quiet one-to-one conversation. Operators can block a user (the bot then
silently ignores their messages) or clear a thread's messages. This is independent of the in-app
Feedback above — it serves people who write to the bot directly rather than through the app.

### History & statistics
Finished games are archived in a dictionary-independent form and exportable in
**two formats behind one 📤 button** — the GCG file and a rendered **PNG image** of
the final position; the export is offered **only once a game is finished**, and
never for an honest-AI practice game (a live game's export would leak the move
journal; an AI game is throwaway). The format chooser is Telegram's **native popup**
on Telegram Android/desktop (safe there: that chain is all bridge calls, which need
no user activation) and the app's own modal elsewhere — on Telegram iOS the delivery
is the OS share sheet, which a native-popup callback cannot open, and VK has no
native chooser.

The **image** is rendered on the server (the internal render sidecar runs the same
drawing module the web client tests; always the light theme): the final board with
classic coordinate axes A..O / 1..15 on the left — premium squares as plain colour
fills, no text labels — and a compact per-seat scoresheet on the right: each seat's
name and final score in the header (🏆 by the winner), then one row per move
carrying the main word's classic coordinate (an across play is row-first, `8G`; a
down play column-first, `H8` — the GCG convention), the word and its points; extra
words of a multi-word play ride a smaller second line, non-play moves show as
localized notes (pass/exchange/resign/timeout), and a closing ± row shows the
endgame rack settlement when there was one (the final scores are authoritative —
running totals alone do not include it). The footer stamps the site host and the
finish date in the device locale. The scoresheet typography is fixed; a long game
stretches the board (never below its minimum) so the image carries no dead space.

Delivery is **one signed, short-lived link for both formats on every platform**,
handed to the best affordance each platform has (each branch verified on-device):
Telegram Android/desktop use Telegram's download dialog (whose own preview shares
onwards); **Telegram iOS opens the OS share sheet** with the fetched file; VK iOS
takes both formats through VK's download into its native share flow, while on the
**VK Android client** — whose downloader hangs — the image opens in VK's native
photo viewer (saving from its controls) and the GCG copies to the clipboard (the
desktop VK iframe, an ordinary browser, downloads both); a **mobile browser gets
the OS share sheet** (nothing lands in Downloads first); a desktop browser
downloads the file. The link needs no login to fetch (the platforms' downloaders
carry none) and is valid for minutes. The single exception is a legacy Telegram
client without the download dialog (pre-Bot API 8.0): there the GCG falls back to
the old clipboard copy (with the confirming toast) and the image option is not
offered. Statistics (durable accounts only):
wins, losses, draws, max points in a game, and max points for a single move (the
best play, which already includes every word it formed plus the all-tiles bonus). It
also shows the player's **move count** (their plays — passes and exchanges do not
count) and their **hint share** (the percentage of those plays where a hint was taken).
The best move is also broken down **per game variant**, showing the **word itself**
drawn as game tiles (a wildcard shows its letter but no value) — one row per variant
the player has played, omitting variants with no plays.
A game that can no longer be continued — because a rule changed and an earlier
move would now be illegal — is closed as a **draw** the moment someone opens it,
never left stuck on an error: the move history shows an impersonal organizer note
at its end (the game could not be continued), and the same note rides the GCG export.

### Administration
Operators reach a server-rendered admin console at `${DOMAIN}/_gm` — the backend
renders it; the gateway gates it with HTTP Basic Auth on its public listener and
proxies it verbatim. The console lists and inspects **users** (profile, statistics,
identities, their games) and **games** — summary, seats, the recorded **first-move tile
draw** (who drew what, deciding who leads), and a simple **step-by-step board replay** of the
whole game — works the **word-complaint review queue** — resolving each as reject / accept-add / accept-remove — and exposes
the **dictionary**: the active version new games pin, the resident versions per
variant, an online **dictionary update** (upload the `scrabble-dawg-vX.Y.Z.tar.gz`
release archive, preview the words added and removed per variant against the active
dictionary, then install — which writes the version, loads it and makes it active;
versions are immutable and games in progress keep their own), and the **pending
wordlist changes** derived from accepted complaints (which feed the offline rebuild
and are marked applied after an update). When the Telegram bot channel is configured an operator can also
**message a user** (by their Telegram identity) or **post to the game channel**.
State-changing actions are protected by a same-origin check; the console tracks no
operator identity.

The console also surfaces **rate-limit abuse**: a **Throttled** page lists the
recently throttled users/IPs the gateway reported (an in-memory window — it resets on
a backend restart) and the accounts currently carrying the soft **high-rate flag**. An
account sustaining rejections past a tunable threshold is flagged automatically —
the marker is reversible, shown as a badge in the user list and on the user card, and
**never blocks play**; the operator reviews and clears it from the user card. The
account flag itself is never a ban. In **production** the same page also lists the
**active IP bans** the gateway is enforcing: a temporary block of a client IP that
floods the service past a threshold, or trips a hidden **honeypot** path or a planted
**honeytoken** — a high-confidence sign of a scanner or hostile bot, never a normal
player. Each ban shows its reason and expiry with an **Unban** action; bans auto-expire
and the operator can lift one early. IP bans are a production-only safeguard — the
shared test environment cannot tell its clients apart, so it does not enforce them.

The console also lets an operator **manually block** an account — the hard counterpart to the
soft high-rate flag. From the user card the operator blocks the account **permanently** or
**until a date** (presets: 1 day / 3 days / 1 week / 1 month, or a custom date in UTC), optionally
citing a **reason** chosen from an editable **en+ru picklist** managed on a **Reasons** page; the
blocked player sees the reason in their own language. Blocking instantly **forfeits** the player's
active games (each opponent wins, as if the player resigned) and removes them from matchmaking. A
blocked player — on opening the app or on any action — is shown a terminal screen: *"Your account
is blocked"* (permanent) or *"…blocked until &lt;date, time&gt;"* (temporary, in their timezone),
plus the reason when one was given, and the app stops all background traffic with the server. A
temporary block lifts itself when it expires; the operator can also **unblock** from the user card
at any time (games already lost stay lost).

Where the bot manages a channel's **linked discussion chat**, everyone may write by default and the
bot **mutes** a player who is **not registered** or is **blocked**, un-muting them once they register
or are unblocked. So an unregistered newcomer who comments is muted (the promo bot points them at the
game to register, after which the bot restores their voice), and a registered, unblocked player simply
writes. An operator can also **mute a player in the chat only** — a `chat_muted` role on the user card —
without a full account block; an account block mutes them in the chat regardless. Muting and unmuting
take effect for a player already in the chat; one who is not in it is unaffected until they next join.

From the user card the operator can also **top up a player's hint wallet**: an additive grant
(1–100 hints per action) that raises the balance shown on the card. Grants are **raise-only** —
the console can never lower a wallet (a player only loses hints by spending them in a game), so an
over-grant cannot be reversed there.

The console works a **feedback** queue too (`/_gm/feedback`): the messages players sent, filtered
**unread / read / archived** with per-user search, each shown with its sender, source, channel
(with the bot language — en/ru — for a Telegram message), the sender's interface
language, the **app version** it was sent from, IP, the filed time (in three zones — UTC, the
browser zone detected at submit, and the sender's saved zone, each shown `N/A` when not known) and
any attachment. The operator can mark a message read, **reply** to the player (delivered
in-app), archive it, delete it, or delete every message from that player — and, alongside a delete,
**bar the player from feedback** (a `feedback_banned` role, distinct from a full account block: it
stops only feedback submission). Roles are listed and granted/revoked on the user card. Opening a
message does not mark it read — only the explicit actions do; message bodies and attachments are
shown defensively (text escaped, attachments downloaded rather than rendered).

### Advertising banner

A one-line banner under the nav shows short promotional or operational messages to **free
players**: anyone who has **not** paid for a lifetime account, holds **no purchased hints**, and
does not carry the **`no_banner`** role (which suppresses it unconditionally). Buying a paid account
or any hints — or being granted `no_banner` — removes it; guests, the freest users, see it. When an
operator changes one of those properties, the banner appears or disappears **in place**, without a
reload.

Messages come from operator-run **campaigns**, each a placement order with a **show weight** (a
percent) and an optional start/end **window**. Campaigns running at the same time **compete** for the
banner in proportion to their weights; a permanent **house (default)** campaign fills whatever share
paid campaigns leave unsold and steps aside entirely when they sell the full 100%. Each message is
written in **both languages** (English + Russian); a player sees the variant for the **bot they play
through**, regardless of their interface language. The client rotates the eligible campaigns
**fairly** — every campaign gets its weighted share each cycle, evenly spread rather than at random —
and a campaign with several messages shows them in turn.

Operators manage all of this in the admin console at **`/_gm/banners`**: create, edit, enable/disable
and schedule campaigns, write each campaign's bilingual messages (reorder or remove them), and set
the global display **timings** (how long a message holds, the scroll of an over-long message, and the
fade-out → gap → fade-in transition between messages). The default campaign cannot be deleted and
keeps at least one message.