Pythia

What Pythia is

Pythia is an assistant built into the table that writes automation for you. You describe what you want in plain language ("deal five cards to every hand when I press this button") and Pythia proposes a sequence. Nothing is saved until you press Confirm.

Pythia is AI that runs on a large language model called DeepSeek. What it produces is ordinary automation: sequences and triggers exactly like the ones you build by hand, readable and editable in the Sequences panel afterwards.

Pythia never touches artwork. It cannot generate, alter, or replace an image on your table, and it never will.

Who can use it

Pythia comes with Pro. Anyone who can edit the game, the owner and any collaborator, can use it at every table of a game whose owner is on a Pro plan, including while setting up a table configuration. At a table of any other game, Pythia opens once the session is made a Pro session, from that moment on: press the sparkle button and choose Get Pythia: make this a Pro session. A dialog first says that this uses one of your Pro sessions for good, how many you have left this year, and that a Table Reset ends a Pro session; on a Pro plan it uses none. With no Pro session to spend, the button says how to get Pythia instead. Players and spectators sitting at your table do not see it and cannot open it.

How many questions you can ask

Pythia answers up to 30 messages an hour and 200 a day. A normal design session is a handful of questions, so you are unlikely to meet either number. If you do, Pythia says so and tells you exactly how long to wait.

Opening Pythia

Press the sparkle button in the table toolbar. It shows only to people who can edit the game. Where you can use Pythia the panel opens on the right side of the table. You can drag it by its header to move it, or drag any edge to resize it, and it remembers where you put it.

On a phone the panel fits itself to the screen: it sits below the table toolbar, keeps clear of the tools down the right edge, and shrinks to what is left when the keyboard comes up, so the message box and the panel header stay reachable. A size you set on a desktop never leaves the panel half off a smaller screen.

The panel keeps your conversation for the session, so you can close it and come back without losing the thread. Use New Conversation to start clean when you move on to a different problem, since a long thread carries the earlier context with it.

Asking for something

Type what you want and press Enter. Shift+Enter gives you a new line.

Pythia can:

• read your table to see what decks, bags, bowls, spaces, dice, counters, timers, buttons and seats exist
• look up a specific card or token by name, colour, or tag when you name one
• read a sequence you already have and explain or revise it. When a step points at a deleted deck and only one deck on your table could replace it, Pythia proposes the fix straight away instead of asking which deck you mean
• search the documentation and cite the pages it used
• propose a new sequence
• propose a change to an existing sequence, keeping its id so buttons wired to it stay wired
• wire a proposed sequence to an existing button, or add a new button together with the sequence it runs
• set up a table from scratch: add pieces from the piece library, lay out spaces, and change player hands, Max Hand Size, player spaces, the number of players and the table's size
• build your game's setup from a description and wire it to Set Up Game
• do one small thing right now without saving a sequence
• tag pieces for you, so a sequence can shuffle or deal them by tag
• put stamps on a tile, for example a score sheet (see below)

Good requests name the pieces the way they are named on your table. "Deal 7 from the Draw Deck to each hand" works better than "deal cards", because Pythia matches against the real names it can see.

When Pythia offers you a choice

When your request has more than one sensible reading, Pythia offers the readings as buttons under its reply rather than asking you to type an answer. Click one and it is sent as your reply, in your words, and Pythia carries on.

Sometimes the buttons appear next to a proposal rather than instead of one. That means Pythia picked the reading it thinks you meant and built it, and the buttons are the other readings it considered. Nothing is saved either way until you press Confirm, so you can read the card first and click an alternative if it guessed wrong.

Pythia never asks you a question you can only answer by typing, and never asks again what you have just answered: it builds from your answer. It does not tell you PP cannot do something before checking every step PP has. When PP really cannot, it names what is missing and offers the closest thing it can build. It does not leave you a problem to fix after its card, such as spaces to move: it fixes it in the card or asks you to choose. The card counts it gives match the cards it builds. When you paste an error from a sequence, Pythia reads that sequence and tells you the cause it finds in the steps, rather than agreeing with your guess.

Setting up a table from scratch

Pythia can build a table from an empty one, for any game. Name a game Pythia knows and it uses that game's standard setup:

Set up Klondike with a standard deck and shuffle it at the start of each session.

Or describe the setup in your own words, for a game of your own. When you name a game and also describe how you want it, your description wins.

Pythia proposes one do-it-now card that does three things, in order. It changes the table settings the game needs: player hands and player spaces on or off, Max Hand Size, the number of players, and the table's size, from 500 to 12,000 mm each way. For Hearts it raises Max Hand Size to 13. It lays out the spaces the game needs, for Klondike the stock, the waste and four foundations along the top with seven tableau columns below. Each space gets the display its pile needs: the stock and foundations stack their cards, and each tableau column fans its cards downward so a strip of every card shows, and dragging a card brings the cards on top of it along. And it adds the pieces, each on the space it starts in. Press Do it now and it all appears at once. Each part is its own step in undo, so you can take back the deck and keep the spaces.

Pythia adds pieces only from the piece library: standard playing cards, blank tiles, dice, tokens, bags, token bowls, counters, timers, buttons and sleeves. A button always comes with the sequence it runs, on one card, so a button Pythia adds never sits on the table doing nothing. It cannot make custom cards or add your imported pieces. When a game needs them, it says so and sets up the rest. Tokens come in the size Pythia picks for the game; ask for another size if you want one.

When a game uses only part of a standard deck, Pythia adds just those cards, chosen by rank, suit or card name. For Euchre it adds the 24 cards from 9 to Ace. Pythia gives each piece the name it picks for the game, such as Euchre Deck. If it asks for a card a standard deck does not have, or for cards that match nothing, it is told which ranks and suits there are and corrects itself before you see the card.

Before proposing, Pythia checks the whole card against your table: the settings are ones the table accepts, every piece is put on the table at a size the table takes, a piece meant for a space goes in after that space, and every space fits on the table without partly covering another space, including player areas the new settings add or move. If a space has no room by the time you press Do it now, because the table changed in between, the card says how many spaces were not added. If an action fails, the card says so and keeps saying so after a reload: it says how many of its actions ran and asks you to have Pythia do what is left, so nothing ever runs twice, even if your browser closes partway. When every action ran and only marking the card done failed, Do it now finishes it. Pythia sees the same, so on your next message it knows exactly what happened. Pythia never offers a settings change your table already has.

Shuffling or dealing the new pieces needs them on the table first, so Pythia wires that part after you press Do it now. Reply to it, for example "go ahead", and it proposes the setup sequence for Set Up Game (see below).

The setup sequence can also turn up a card onto a space, such as Euchre's trump card onto a space named Trump: it draws the top card of the deck face up into that space. PP does not enforce trump or any other rule of the game; the players do.

Making the table smaller moves everything on it inward, and nothing else can happen on the table until that is done, so Pythia always makes it the last step. Pythia checks a smaller size against what will be on the table: the pieces and notes already there, the spaces and pieces the card adds, and the player areas, unless player spaces are off, since the table does not show them then. If the size is too small, Pythia is told the smallest size that fits and proposes that instead. After you press Do it now, the card says Resizing the table… until the table has its new size, then Done. If the table changed in between and the size no longer fits, the card says so, with the smallest size the table can be, and the table keeps its size. Pythia sees what the card says, so on your next message it knows whether the table got smaller.

Building a score sheet

Ask Pythia for a score sheet, such as "make a Yacht score sheet on that blank tile", or describe the rows you want. It lays the sheet out with the tile's stamps: a label for each row and a box beside it to write the score in, or boxes to check off. Stamps have no printed words, so each label is a text stamp with the word written in, and players can still change it.

On a tile already on the table, Pythia replaces that tile's stamps. It keeps any stamps you want to stay, and marks already made on the tile stay too. With no tile on the table, Pythia adds blank tiles from the piece library that each carry the sheet: a pile of 10 cards that players draw a sheet from. Either way you see the proposal first and press Do it now to make it, and undo takes it back.

Setting up your game

Describe how your game starts, in your own words, and Pythia builds the setup:

Shuffle the market cards, they're the ones face up along the top. Deal five to each player. Everyone gets three gold. At two players, take the purple tokens out of the bag before drawing.

Pythia turns that into one setup sequence and wires it to Set Up Game. When everyone has sat down in a play session, any player presses Set Up Game in the Action Dock and the setup runs once, for however many players are seated. The button does not appear while you edit a table configuration. To try the setup there, press Test Fire on the Set Up Game trigger in the Session Triggers section of the sequences editor, or start a play session with Play. Deals go to every seated player, and anything that changes with player count ("at two players") becomes a step that only runs at that count, using the Seated Players condition.

If Pythia cannot tell which pieces you mean, it asks you to point at them (see below) and offers to tag them, so the setup finds them by tag every time.

When one deck serves several player counts with some cards left out at some counts ("Euchre for 2 uses the deck without the 9s"), Pythia keeps one deck and uses Filter Stack: the button for that count collects the deck, sets the left-out cards aside, shuffles and deals, and every other count's button collects them back.

Every deal or draw step Pythia writes says whether its cards land face up, face down, or as the deck's own rule says. When it builds a sequence like one you already have, such as a 4 Players button next to a 2 Players one, it deals the cards the same way up as that one.

To start a new round, ask Pythia for a button that clears the hands or collects all the cards. It uses Collect into Stack, which takes every card of the deck back from every player's hand, the table, bags and sleeves, not only from the hand of the player who presses the button.

When your rules change, say so: "deal four, not five". Pythia edits the same setup in place rather than making a second one. The setup is an ordinary sequence, so you can also open it in the Sequences panel and change it by hand.

When Pythia asks you to point at pieces

When you name pieces by what they mean in your game ("the market cards", "the starting resources"), Pythia may not know which pieces on your table those are. Instead of guessing, it asks you to show it. A card appears under its question:

1. Click one of the pieces on the table.
2. Press Find more like these. Pythia selects every piece that looks like the ones you picked: cards with the same back, tokens of the same shape and colour, or anything else with the same name.
3. Shift-click any piece to add it or leave it out.
4. Press Use these. Your reply says how many pieces you picked and what they are called, and Pythia gets the exact pieces, not a guess from their names.

Pointing at pieces changes nothing on its own. Pythia usually follows up by offering to tag them, so a sequence can find them by that tag every time it runs. Once you have answered, Pythia remembers which pieces you meant for the rest of the conversation and does not ask again.

Reviewing a proposal

When Pythia has something to offer, it appears as a proposal card in the conversation with the steps written out, including any Only-if guards on each step. Read it before you accept it.

• Confirm creates the sequence (or applies the edit) and, if it targets a button, adds the case that wires it up. When you asked for a new button, Confirm adds that button already wired, so pressing it runs the sequence straight away.
• Dismiss hides the card. Nothing is created.

Pythia only ever asks you to press Confirm when a card is actually there to press. If it could not put a proposal together, it says what went wrong instead of asking you to confirm something that does not exist, naming the step it could not finish and what it was missing, in the same words the step editor uses.

Pythia also keeps a record of what happened to each card. When you confirm, it knows which sequence was saved, so asking it later to add a step or change something revises that same sequence in place rather than making a second one. If you did not press Confirm, Pythia knows nothing was saved and will say so rather than assuming.

A confirmed sequence is a plain sequence. It shows up in the Sequences panel, you can edit it, copy it, delete it, and undo it exactly like one you wrote yourself. Nothing records that Pythia authored it and nothing depends on Pythia to keep running it.

There are two kinds of card:

• A sequence proposal is automation that gets saved and can run again.
• A do-it-now proposal performs a single action once and saves nothing. Pythia uses this when you ask for something that is a one-off, like shuffling a set of tiles, setting a counter, or tagging the pieces you just pointed out. It fires the same action you would fire yourself from the table, so it is recorded as your doing and can be undone the same way.

When Pythia says it cannot see something

Pythia reads a bounded sample of your table rather than the whole thing, so on a very large table it will tell you its view may be incomplete instead of guessing. Name the piece exactly and Pythia will look it up directly, which reaches pieces the summary never listed.

Spaces you can see by name in your table are spaces Pythia can target directly. "Put the top card of each performance deck on the space of the same colour" is a normal request: Pythia builds one step per deck and space pair. You never have to tag a space so Pythia can address it, and it will not ask you to.

Tags are for the other shape of request: "every space tagged judge card", on a table with more spaces than Pythia can list by name. Pythia sees every tag on your table and how many pieces and spaces carry it, so a tagged request works at any size.

Pythia also checks your table settings before it proposes anything. If you ask it to deal to hands while hands or player spaces are turned off, to put more pieces in one hand than Max Hand Size allows (adding up every step that reaches the same hand, and for something it does right away, what that hand already holds), or to change or check whose turn it is while turn tracking is off, it tells you which setting to change in table settings instead of proposing something your table would refuse.

Pressing Confirm saves the sequence, its steps and its button or Set Up Game wiring together, or none of them, so a confirm that fails never leaves a half-made sequence behind and you can press it again. Pythia also refuses to save automation built against a stale view. If you rearrange the table between the proposal and the confirm, the confirm is rejected and you ask again. This is deliberate: it stops a sequence being saved against pieces that have since moved.

What Pythia sees, and what it does not

When you send a message, Pythia sends the model the text of your conversation plus a structured summary of your table: your decks and how many cards each holds, your bags, bowls, spaces, dice, counters, timers, buttons, triggers and saved sequences by name, where each space is, how big it is and how it lays out its pieces, the table's size and number of players, the tags, names and colours in use, counts, counter values, seat numbers, whether hands, player spaces and turn tracking are on and how many pieces a hand holds, and the steps of any sequence you asked it to read.

Individual cards and tokens are not all listed, because a table can hold thousands. When you name one, Pythia looks it up. If you ask for something it cannot find, it will tell you rather than guess.

It does not send:

• any image, artwork, or asset, in any form. No image data, no image URLs, no asset references
• anything at all unless you open the panel and send a message. Pythia never runs in the background, never volunteers a suggestion, and makes no request when you are not using it

Tips

• Ask for one behaviour at a time. A sequence you can read in one screen is one you can debug.
• Let Pythia read an existing sequence before asking it to change one. "Read the Setup sequence, then add a step that resets the score counters" beats describing the sequence from memory.
• If a proposal is nearly right, say what is wrong rather than starting over. Pythia revises in place.
• Check the steps. Pythia is helpful, not infallible, and a sequence you confirmed is yours.