How to contribute

Pale Jack is a solo-dev project, but the wiki, the dealer corpus, and the arcana catalog are all hand-authored and deliberately collaboration-friendly. PRs are welcome.

Repo

github.com/brentvincent/palejack

The basics

Fork.
Create a branch off main. Branch names should be descriptive but short (add-foggy-bottom-arcanum, voice-typo-cleanup, etc.).
Make your change.
Run flutter test and flutter analyze. Both must pass.
PR against main. The CI workflow runs the full suite (1869+ tests).
After merge, .github/workflows/deploy.yml auto-deploys to palejack.com (game) or wiki-deploy.yml to wiki.palejack.com (this wiki).

Tests are the contract

Every shipped feature has tests. The catalog floor, the corpus floor, the cascade math, the campaign state — all assert their invariants in the suite. If you change one of these, expect the corresponding test to need an update.

Surface	Test
Catalog count	`test/sim/arcana_test.dart`
Per-charm fire rules	`test/sim/<feature>_test.dart`
Voice corpus floor	`test/sim/dealer_corpus_floor_test.dart`
Voice tone	`test/sim/dealer_voice_test.dart`
Book of Hours	`test/data/book_of_hours_test.dart`
Campaign state	`test/data/campaign_state_test.dart`
Decision impact (Monte Carlo)	`test/sim/decision_impact_test.dart`

Commit message style

Conventional-commits with feat: / fix: / chore: / docs: / test: prefixes. Subject under 72 chars; body explains the why in the same register as the rest of the project.

What gets accepted, broadly

Welcome	Comment first
Bug reports + repros	Major design changes
Voice-line additions	New build identities
Wiki page edits + new pages	Engine refactors
Test additions / coverage	Cross-cutting type changes
Typo / grammar fixes	New cascade rules
Per-charm tuning data	Changes to the dealer’s tone

The dealer’s tone is sacred

Per CLAUDE.md:

Don’t make it whimsical. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers owns the comedic blackjack-roguelike lane. We ship the opposite tone.

The dealer is never campy, never quippy, never breaks frame. Voice-line PRs that drift toward casino-Vegas, snark, or pop-culture references will get pushed back. The Aziraphale-Crowley register is the brief.

Filing bugs vs. proposing features

You have…	Go to
A bug repro	Filing bugs
A new dealer line	Writing dealer lines
A new arcanum idea	Proposing arcana
A wiki edit	Click the Edit this page link in the page footer

Maintainer cadence

Replies usually within 2-3 days. The project is solo-dev so PRs may sit longer when the maintainer is heads-down on a feature, but the queue is reviewed every weekend at minimum.