A court that talks back.

Guided demo / class practice: a local teaching scenario with scripted opponents. No account is needed. Choose the default Physician or another class, then choose manual progression or timed phases. It runs a preset story; typing a claim does not turn those scripted characters into the online social AI. The Nightshade lesson does let a poisoned scripted character request help and a scripted Physician respond to a poison claim; it remains a preset teaching scenario. Practice grants no account gold or achievements. It can work offline after the app is cached.

Online AI court: a real server-hosted match with one or more humans and AI filling the remaining seats. You need an email-activated account and a connection. These AI courtiers evaluate the public record, permitted private information and player claims, then choose actions, nominations and votes. Roles are assigned by the server.

1. Sign in and open the lobby. Create a private court and enable AI.
2. Choose 8, 12 or 16 seats. Advanced killer variants require 16 seats. Eight-seat Standard Court is a manageable first game.
3. Invite any friends before the host chooses Fill … seats with AI. One human is enough; the lineup is fixed when the ready check begins.
4. Choose Ready for this court. Read your private class, allegiance, objective and current ability restrictions when the match opens.

Use the normal ability, nomination and ballot controls throughout the match. Chat shares a story with the court; it cannot perform those actions for you. See the beginner’s guide for phase and trial rules.

The online AI uses English phrase patterns and authored dialogue. It is not a general conversational chatbot. Use a full class name and a seat number, with one clear statement at a time. Replace the example numbers with seats in your court and the night with one that has already occurred. Keep each message within the 280-character chat limit.

Class prefixes include I am, I'm, My class is, My role is, I claim and Claiming. Use the full class name in public: I am the Physician. is safer than shorthand. Trust also accepts I believe in Seat 3.; suspicion accepts I accuse Seat 3. and I distrust Seat 3. Seat references can use #3 in those declarations.

Action claims recognise treated, guarded, protected, fortified, detained, trailed, watched, examined, recruited, attacked and inventoried before a seat reference. An examination can also use I checked Seat 3 and found Cult. or Not Cult.

• Night 2 and N2 both date a statement. An undated statement is attributed to the current night count, which may make an old report misleading.
• Use canonical Cult, Not Cult, Innocent and Neutral in report templates, even if the match has custom faction names.
• Use seat numbers rather than character names to identify targets. Copy actual report wording and dates when sharing evidence. Visitors are not automatically attackers; a role category is not a faction.
• Do not rely on sarcasm, quotations, conditional statements or complicated negation being understood. The public parser is narrower than the private interview parser. Vote Seat 3 is not a ballot or nomination command.

The Warden opens an anonymous private channel by committing Detain. The prisoner is isolated from incoming visits and cannot send or receive new Cult chat that night. Detain has unlimited uses in current courts, but each body can be successfully jailed only once in the match. The prisoner sees “Warden”, not the Warden’s seat.

The Seer opens an anonymous channel with Commune. The Seer’s words arrive immediately; replies from the target appear to the Seer as #### until the following night. They unlock only if the Seer is alive and still an Innocent Seer. The AI cannot read the hidden text or establish a class from its length. Revelation is a separate power with two charges with a faction result delayed until the next night.

An AI interviewer asks for one class, then a dated night, target and result. An AI target may give its real claim or a cover story. Each AI sends at most two messages per private conversation. Expect a brief interview rather than an answer to every custom question.

Private class replies also accept a bare full class name; I play, I rolled, I got, Playing and Claiming prefixes; and the aliases doc, doctor, phys for Physician and MM or master mind for Mastermind. These extra forms are not all recognised as public class claims. Different explicit class claims in one private conversation leave the claim ambiguous. A refusal, unclear answer or silence is not automatic proof of hostility.

Living non-Ruler Cult allies can use the night’s private Cult channel, except while jailed. AI allies recognise these exact coordination forms, including their capitalisation and final full stop:

Use the normal action controls as well. These messages communicate an intention; they neither commit an action nor order another AI to obey. AI allies use plans to help avoid attacking a recruitment target. The secret Cult Ruler has no Cult roster or Cult chat.

AI courtiers compare claims with dated reports, visible deaths, visits, nominations and contradictions. A readable claim can affect their view of a player, but recognition is not belief. Repeating the same allegation does not create independent corroboration. Reports may age as recruitment or Shade possession changes who occupies a seat or where their loyalty lies.

• Innocents investigate uncertainty and try to support players they judge useful and trustworthy.
• Cult players know their permitted allies, avoid deliberately attacking them, coordinate in their private channel and may invent Innocent cover claims.
• Neutrals pursue their own objectives. A Martyr wants execution; a killer or survival role has different reasons to help or mislead.
• Shade Court hides account names and AI badges during play. A familiar body can have a new occupant and a corpse can carry a false class. Keep claims tied to their seat and night.

The server supplies each AI with that character’s authorised view. Other players’ secret roles, unreleased Seer replies and other factions’ private chat are not ordinary AI knowledge. An AI can still guess incorrectly or lie about what it claims to know.

1. Read dawn first. Wait for all death cards and your private reports before drawing conclusions.
2. Offer a clear claim if it helps you. For example, I am the Physician. is a class claim; it does not authenticate your allegiance.
3. Share a dated action or result. A Physician might say Night 1: I treated Seat 5. Treatment does not prove that an attack was stopped. An Examiner should copy the actual dated finding.
4. Explain your judgement. Use I trust Seat 3. or I suspect Seat 3., then compare the court’s reports. Claims can be false.
5. Use the controls. Nominate a candidate when the case is convincing. At trial, read the defence and choose Guilty, Spare or Abstain. From Day 2, a Ruler can instead spend Royal Execution during discussion after reviewing and confirming a target. An accusation in chat never casts your vote.

Do not execute someone merely because they are quiet or their message was unclear. Compare their account with other evidence—and remember that executing the Martyr immediately ends the match against both primary factions.

In ordinary discussion, AI class declarations are sequenced with varied pauses across roughly the first two minutes, followed by a smaller number of replies. Reading time and phase length affect delivery. An early majority or shorter phase can end discussion before every planned message. Sending a message does not trigger an immediate personal answer; AI decisions happen at scheduled points.

Both public recognition and private dialogue are deliberately bounded. Unrecognised text may produce no interpreted claim. Private uncertainty is tracked explicitly as ambiguous, refused, no response or still masked. Neither system can reliably understand every natural-language sentence, foreign-language phrase, joke or implication. The examples above describe supported wording, not a guarantee of trust, a particular vote or a victory.

If you die as the only remaining human in an eligible AI court, Fast-forward shortens ordinary remaining phases to at most 15 seconds; voting and execution keep their normal rules. The AI’s decision schedule is compressed rather than replaced with a simpler strategy. Explicitly leaving forfeits rewards and schedules your character’s death at the next applicable morning; closing the app alone does not leave the match. With no humans remaining, the court fast-forwards to its recorded outcome.

Chat examples are checked against the game’s AI parser in the repository tests. This is an editorial guide; changes to dialogue recognition require a wiki release. The linked class abilities and objectives continue to follow the live rules reference (25 classes).