🐢 The Terrible Turtle Oracle

An AI-powered oracle deck for the Burning Man camp Terrible Turtle — Move Slow & Bite Things.

▶ Live site: https://unforced-dev.github.io/Turtle-Oracle/ Browse the full 48-card deck, read the vision, download the booklet — and ask the oracle (runs entirely in your browser).

Built on a synchronicity: Burning Man 2026's theme is Axis Mundi (the World Tree), and in myth the World Tree grows from the back of the World Turtle. The camp's mascot is the foundation the whole theme stands on. So the deck is that tree, on that turtle.

48 cards, four realms of twelve — Shell (archetypes) · Roots (what to face) · Trunk (where you stand) · Branches (what to reach for). Every card carries universal life-wisdom, a Turtle Dare (one real adventure into the burn), and — in the app — this year's real camps/art + where to find them.

The two forms

• 🃏 Print deck — timeless, woodcut + gold, ~50 physical copies for the camp. Print-ready files in print/.
• 📱 The oracle — two flavors:
  • Static (this site): the reading engine runs client-side in JS. Always on, nothing to break.
  • Local server (app/): the full experience — fluid LLM readings (Ollama), city map + directions, and a 58 mm thermal-receipt "adventure guide." Runs fully offline on a laptop in the shell. PYTHONPATH=app python3 -m oracle.server.
  • 🔮 The Séance (/kiosk): the tablet ritual for playa — a speaking Oracle avatar greets the seeker, asks how their burn is going (voice or keyboard), asks one light LLM-crafted follow-up, theatrically pulls three cards shaped by what they shared, reads them, and offers a quest: three moves with real places, a proof to bring back from each, and the vow — return to the shell, tell the tale, receive a gift. Accept it or say "hear me further" and the quest is re-woven around your words. Printable on receipt paper.
    • Live on the internet now (served from the camp Mac mini): https://parachute.taildf9ce2.ts.net:10000/kiosk (Tailscale Funnel → HTTPS, which is also what lets the mic work in browsers).
    • Voice input is local: the browser records audio and the mini transcribes it with whisper.cpp (/api/transcribe, ~0.6 s) — no cloud speech API, works on playa.
    • LLM: Ollama gemma4:e2b (~50 tok/s on the M4 mini), pinned in memory; template fallback if it's down.

Repo map

• index.html / oracle.html / cards.web.json — the static Pages site (showcase + client-side oracle).
• app/ — the offline server + reading engine (deck, select, weave, geo, printer, server).
• data/ — cards.json (canonical deck), brc_geo.json, playa_2026.json, schema. See data/README.md.
• cards/web/ — web-optimized thumbnails + medium images. cards/back.png — the card back.
• print/ — booklet.pdf, proof.pdf, print README. (Full-res fronts + cards/art/ are kept local; too large for git.)
• docs/ — design docs (deck, app, style guide) + sourced 2026 research.
• tools/ — build scripts (web images, contact sheet, booklet, print prep, static build).

The 2026 data (August refresh)

The app overlays real 2026 placements via the Burning Man API — dev GPS unlocks Aug 9, 2026. See data/README.md.