Every decision that shaped ZABAL Games Season 1, with the meeting recaps + specs that drove each one. Read these in order to understand the why behind the format - or jump to whichever doc maps to what you are building.
The truth doc. What is locked, what is open, what is being built. Folds in the 24 decisions from the 2026-05-21 interview plus the post-Tyler call layer (Magnetic hosting, Zabal connector entry, llms.txt + Claude skill context artifact, soft launch ~05-30).
If you are getting ready to ship something for July, start here.
The full ecosystem context primer for finalists. 700+ lines covering ZAO platforms, $ZABAL economy, brands, tech stack, identity rails, brand guidelines, curated research index. Load it into your AI tool's project context.
The original working spec + decision log. Format, mentor model, prize structure, judging, infra, risks. State note at the top points to Doc 701 for what is current.
The conversations that bent the plan.
The call that locked Magnetic as the workshop library / entry / submissions host, the Zabal connector as the entry NFT, the llms.txt + Claude skill context artifact, Tyler as first workshop lead, and the combined-ish announcement plan.
The meeting with Jordan Oram / yerbearzerker + Iman + Zaal where the all-June plan became June prep / July build / August Finals. Empire V3 tier stack + the build-then-airdrop pattern.
Follow-up on the Empire Builder v3 integration for ZABAL Games entry + leaderboards. Where the V3 mechanics first landed in practice.
The optional stream-tied-to-a-token mechanic for finalists. Build-then-airdrop pattern: build a leaderboard during the Games, launch a Clanker token, airdrop to the leaderboard.
Deep dive on the machine-readable context file (the llms.txt) that builders point their harness at in July. What it should contain, how it gets served, how builders use it.
If you are a builder onboarding to ZABAL Games: start at 630 player context bundle. That is the full ecosystem context you load into your AI tool's project memory. Or just point any harness at zabalgames.com/llms.txt for the lean version.
If you are a mentor or workshop lead: start at 701 canonical state for the current shape of the event, then 714 Tyler call for the Magnetic / connector layer.
If you are a future Season organizer: read 701, then 630 for the original thinking, then 714 + 719 for the meeting decisions that bent the plan.
These docs were originally written in the ZAO OS research library (github.com/bettercallzaal/ZAOOS -> research/events/ and research/business/). They were moved here so everything ZABAL Games lives in one repo. Numbers reflect the original doc IDs.
Cross-references to other ZAO research docs (e.g. Doc 583, Doc 584) point at the originals at github.com/bettercallzaal/ZAOOS/tree/main/research.