Software that minds its own business.

No ads. No trackers. Ever.

Games, bulletin boards, and community platforms for hobbyists, small communities, and the businesses that want the same standard.

Private by default and secure from the first line, whether it's a poker night or a company's internal network.

How I build

Every project on this page holds to these. If a feature needs your real name, your location or a tracker to work, it doesn't ship.

  • No ads. Ever.

    No ad networks, no sponsored spots, no selling your attention. No analytics SDKs or telemetry either, including on this page.

  • Collect the minimum

    Handles, not names. No addresses, no phone numbers. If I don't need it, I don't ask for it.

  • Secure from the first line

    Hashed passwords, keys instead of shared secrets, least privilege. Security goes in at the start, not bolted on after launch.

  • Yours to keep

    You can leave with your data, delete your account by asking, and use the free version without being nagged into a paid one.

Things I've built

Most of these are for the hours that are yours. Grouped by what they're for; the green dot means it's running today and you can use it.

Play

Games and add-ons, for players who still read the patch notes.

  • Revenant Poker

    Live

    Real-time multiplayer poker door for BBSes

    No-Limit Hold'em and Pot-Limit Omaha at live tables shared across boards: a caller on Revenant and a caller on Haunted Node sit at the same felt. A hosted hub shuffles with a cryptographically secure deck and decides every hand, so a modified door can't change the outcome. Clean 80x25 ANSI with a four-color deck, hand strength, bet presets and a weekly leaderboard. Press K on Revenant.

    • No ads
    • Play chips only
    • No cash value
    • Hub decides every hand
    How the cards are dealt
    The shuffle

    Every hand starts with a fresh 52-card deck, shuffled on the hub before the first card goes out. The shuffle is Fisher-Yates, which gives every possible order of the deck the same chance. Each step draws from the server's cryptographic random number generator, the same source used to make encryption keys. Nothing about the players, the table or the time goes into it, so the next card can't be predicted.

    The deal works like a real table: cards come off the top in order, with a card burned before the flop, the turn and the river.

    Who sees what

    The deck never leaves the hub. Your door is sent your own cards and the board, and nothing else. You see another player's cards only when they're shown at showdown. A modified door can't peek, because the cards it would need are never sent to it.

    The sysop panel shows players, tables and bankrolls, never cards. A board only receives its own callers' cards, the ones already on their screens, so no sysop can see the deck or the cards of anyone calling from another board.

    House bots play by the same rules. A bot gets its own two cards and the board, works out its odds against random hands, and acts. It never sees your cards or the deck, and it's always labeled "bot" at the table.

    Hand records

    The hub saves the deck order and every action of every hand, so any hand can be replayed card by card. If a hand looks wrong, ask your sysop to send it our way. There is no setting, admin command or door option that picks, holds or changes a card.

    It's a play-money game, built as if it weren't, because a game is only fun when you know it's straight.

    Sysops

    Running a BBS? Ask about getting the door at revenantpoker.com. It works on Mystic, Synchronet and other modern boards.

  • Sleepless Node

    Alpha · Live

    A slow-burn horror story told on a fake 1993 BBS

    Dial in from the browser, modem sounds and all, and something new has happened since yesterday. The story unfolds one day at a time through the board itself: posts, private mail, one-liners, the dialer, a SysOp who breaks into chat. Lurkers get the whole story just by reading; players who take part earn extra lore, titles and one of several endings. Built on my own BBS engine, with day-gating so nobody can spoil it. Season 0, "Wrong Number," runs through Halloween.

    • No ads
    • No personal data
    • Free
    • 18+ fiction
  • ForeverArtisan

    Beta · Live

    WoW Forever addon on CurseForge

    A tradeskill suite: all twelve professions in one addon, plus a few features beyond them. More than 8,300 downloads during the beta alone, ahead of the game's November 4 launch.

    • 12 professions
    • 8,300+ beta downloads
    • Free

    Support ForeverArtisan

Hang out

Bulletin boards and the chat that links them. Places people choose to show up.

  • Revenant BBS

    Live

    Mystic bulletin board

    A horror-themed board in toxic green. Message bases, door games, live chat, and a gate that decides who gets in. Telnet revenantbbs.com, SSH on port 2222, or dial in from the browser.

    • No ads
    • Handles only
    • No real names
    • PBKDF2 passwords
  • Haunted Node

    Live

    Synchronet bulletin board

    Revenant's sister board, on the DOVE-Net message network, with a haunted-mansion theme. Telnet hauntednode.com, SSH on port 2222, or dial in from the browser at dial.hauntednode.com.

    • No ads
    • Handles only
    • DOVE-Net
  • NodeDial Relay

    Live

    Discord chat inside any BBS door

    Callers on a board and people on Discord talk in the same room. Nothing like it existed, so I wrote it. Running on Revenant and Haunted Node.

    • Server owners opt in
    • Deletions honored
    • Per-board keys

Hobbies

Offline-first Android apps for the things you love: no account, nothing leaves your device, one-time purchase.

  • Cigar Diary

    In development

    Private tasting journal, coming to Google Play

    Log flavor notes, ratings, prices and humidor stock, with photos, in an encrypted database on your phone.

    • No ads
    • No account
    • No cloud
    • Encrypted
    • One-time purchase

Connect

Getting people to the boards: finding one that's up, dialing in from a browser, and soon from a real phone line.

  • NodeDial

    Live

    The BBS list. Checked daily.

    A free list of bulletin boards you can call today, by telnet, SSH, the web or a real modem. Every board has to answer a check to get on, and each one is checked about five times a day after that, so you can see what's up before you dial. The order shuffles daily by a public formula anyone can verify. Sysops add or claim their board free, and it loads straight into SyncTERM or NetRunner. The browser dialer behind Revenant and Haunted Node is going open source next.

    • No ads
    • No paid placement
    • Checked 5x a day
    • Free

On the bench

Not live yet. These get a spot above when they ship.

  • Connect

    Real dial-up lines

    Phone numbers for both boards over VoIP, answered by a USRobotics Courier. At least 14.4k, or it doesn't count.

    Waiting on: the modem

  • Connect

    Softmodem app

    An Android app that dials real dial-up BBSes over SIP. Your phone becomes the modem.

    Stage: testing with a sysop

  • Hang out

    BurbNet

    A BBS message network for the security community, with BurbSec as the first hub.

    Stage: planning