Friends & Challenges

Friendships are the backbone of the social layer. Adding a friend changes how the network treats your interactions — faster connections, unrestricted messaging, visibility into each other's activity.

Friends

Managing Relationships

friend add <player> — Send a friend request

friend accept <player> — Accept a pending request

friend decline <player> — Decline a request

friend remove <player> — Unfriend

friend block <player> — Block a player (they can't reach you at all)

friend unblock <player> — Reverse a block

friend list — Your friends

friend requests — Incoming requests

friend sent — Outgoing requests

What Friendship Does

Your IP is added to their ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (and theirs to yours)

Direct messages are unrestricted (strangers are rate-limited; friends are not)

You appear in each other's listfriends output

Leaderboard views default to friends-only rankings

Viewing Others

listfriends <player> — See another player's friend count and mutual friends

Incognito players hide their friend count from strangers

Challenges

Starting a Game

challenge <game> <player> — Challenge a specific player to a game

challenge <game> random — Challenge a random online friend

challenge list — View incoming challenges

challenge sent — View outgoing challenges

Accepting

Smart resolution — multiple ways to accept:

challenge accept 3 — By challenge number

challenge accept alice — By username (if only one pending from them)

challenge accept chess — By game type (if only one pending of that type)

challenge decline / challenge cancel — Decline or withdraw

Playing

onlinegames — View all your active matches (opponent, whose turn, expiry)

play <game-id> — Enter an active match (partial ID matching works)

resign <game-id> — Forfeit a match

Ghost Challenges

Some solo games can carry a challenge without creating a shared board. For example, challenge coalesce <friend> stakes your best recent Coalesce score. Your friend accepts the mark, plays on their own time, and both of you receive a Signal message if the score is beaten or the challenge window closes.

The challenged player does not need to be online when you send it, and neither player has to keep a game tab open. Run challenge list and challenge sent to check the standing marks.

Available Games

Any game that supports multiplayer can be challenged. Check the game's wiki page or man <game> for details on online play rules.

Two Tempos

A challenge carries its rules from the moment you send it.

A letter. challenge chess alice files a challenge that waits up to a

day for an answer. The board it creates keeps for a week between moves, so a game can run across evenings. You are told when it is answered, when it is your move, and how it ended — even if you were away for all of it.

A call. Placed from inside the game (run chess, choose Online, then

"challenge a friend"), a live challenge rings the other player and expires in minutes if nobody answers. It exists only while you are waiting for it.

The arcade games — rally, blockfall, snaker, retrace — are live only; their lobbies also offer "find a match" against anyone waiting. Chess offers both tempos and matchmaking from the same Online menu.