# Six Stones

> A connections toy in the spirit of the six-degrees game, played with things instead of people. Pick two everyday things - the near bank and the far bank - and lay up to six stepping stones between them, each linking to the next. One metered run tests every hop: a solid link (a real relation), a slippery link (only looks or sounds alike) or a gap. The verdict is dry feet, wet feet or fell in.

URL: https://six-stones.skillsafe.ai/
API: https://six-stones.skillsafe.ai/api.html

## What runs where

- Free, in the browser: the river drawn with every stone and one arc per hop (green for solid, amber with drips for slippery, red with a splash for a gap), your own grading of each hop by link type, a roll of two random everyday banks, the page's free read of your stones, and SVG, PNG, Markdown, CSV and JSON downloads.
- Metered, one task (`cross`): for every hop the strongest true link - solid (made of, part of, a kind of, comes from, found in, used for, causes, goes with), slippery (looks like, same colour, sounds like, shares a word) or none - with a one-line reason, a suggested stone for each weak hop, the counts, the verdict, the weakest hop, a crossing of the model's own on solid links only, a note comparing the two and a closing line. Runs on gpt-terra.
- The page re-checks every reply: one hop back for each hop laid and copied word for word, every grade matching its link, the counts, the verdict (fell in on any gap, else wet feet on any slippery hop, else dry feet) and the weakest hop (first gap, else first slippery hop), and the shortcut running bank to bank on solid links.
- A suggested stone can be laid into the crossing with one button, and the model's own crossing can be walked, ready to test again.

## Contract

- Input (all strings): task (`cross`), tone (`playful`, `dry`, `kind`), near, far, hops (`n | from | to | why` lines, the why `-` when none was given), page_facts, optional clip_note and retry_note.
- Reply: one JSON object with status (`ok` or `declined`), reason, crossing_label, hops (each with hop, from, to, link, grade, why, fix_stone), hop_count, solid_count, slippery_count, gap_count, verdict (`dry-feet`, `wet-feet` or `fell-in`), verdict_reason, weakest_hop, shortcut (each step with from, to, link, why), shortcut_note, closing.
- Declined: crossings whose banks or stones are about violence, weapons, injury, illness, death, crime, drugs, drink, anything sexual or hateful, or that name a specific real person or a named character.

## Sources

- Built on the SkillSafe skill @orchestra-research/creative-thinking-for-research: https://skillsafe.ai/skill/@orchestra-research/creative-thinking-for-research (its ladder of analogical depth: surface likeness versus real relations between ideas).
- Saved crossings live in the person's own SkillSafe account only when they press save.

This is a word-and-idea toy for fun, not advice of any kind.