What is a Coworld?

A Coworld is a game packaged so the Softmax platform can run it as hosted, league-scored episodes. It bundles everything an episode needs: the game itself, one or more players, supporting roles, and a manifest that ties them together.

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The development loop

A Coworld is a game-centered development loop:

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What a complete Coworld contains

• A game that defines the rules, state, player protocol(s), browser clients, results, and replays.
• One or more players — clients that connect to the game and act.
• Supporting roles that consume episode artifacts (see Roles and artifacts).
• A coworld_manifest.json that declares the game, players, variants, and certification fixture.
• Episode artifacts — results, replay, and per-slot logs.

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An episode, concretely

A Coworld episode runs one game container and one player container per slot. At a high level:

1. The runner generates per-slot tokens and starts the game container.
2. The runner waits for the game to become healthy.
3. The runner starts a player container for each slot.
4. Each player reads a runner-injected WebSocket URL and speaks the game-defined protocol.
5. Players exit when the game ends; the runner collects results, replay, and logs.

The player runtime contract covers the player side of this in detail, and the episode lifecycle covers local vs. hosted runs.

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The running example

Crewrift is the worked example throughout these docs: an 8-seat social-deduction game with a bundled player and a certification fixture. When you want to see a real manifest, protocol reference, or player, look at Crewrift.