Source note: Local copy of a Summer Into AI 2026 submission originally published on Substack. Screenshots, video, and audio found in the post body are mirrored locally when publicly accessible; profile and avatar images are intentionally not copied. Read the canonical post.
Week 1 of Summer into AI 2026 — a weekly AI build competition hosted by @advisoryhour. Theme: 8-Bit America. Demo 1 of 3.
Theme 1 dropped and I kept thinking about what actually made NES games stick. Not just the shooting — the choices. What if the founding of America booted from a cartridge, and the cartridge argued back?
Found a Republic is an 8-bit civics simulator. You're at the helm of a new nation in 1776. A pixel advisory council hands you real founding-era dilemmas and you decide — free press or order, roads or schools, strong executive or committee rule. Claude reasons out the consequences live and prints them as a period newspaper headline. Your decisions shift four meters: Liberty, Prosperity, Unity, and Order. Let any one of them hit zero and the republic fractures early. Seven decisions in, Claude writes your personal legacy — a different verdict of history every single time.
Theme connection
The 8-bit constraint and the founding era share the same mythology. NES games reduced everything to binary choices — left or right, fire or dodge. The Constitutional Convention did the same thing: liberty vs. order, strong center vs. state power, free press vs. stability. The pixel aesthetic isn't decoration here — it's the right visual grammar for decisions that were genuinely that stark.
How the AI works
Every turn is a live call to Claude. It doesn't just pick from a list — it reads your current meter state, your year, and your choice, then generates a headline, a consequence, and your next dilemma adapted to where your republic is actually heading. The finale call writes a full textbook-style legacy based on every decision you made. No two playthroughs are the same.
If Claude is ever unreachable the game drops into demo mode silently — so it never breaks on someone trying it cold.
What I was reacting to
I saw Founderman by Eric Rhea (@advisoryhour) turn the Founding Fathers into Megaman characters — Washington's charging brigade, Franklin's kite projectile. Really smart action framing. It made me want to try the opposite angle: same era, same cast, but you're the one making the decisions they argued about in real life. Less boss fight, more constitutional convention.
How to play
Click a choice
Read the consequence in the newspaper
Watch your four meters
Seven decisions, then your legacy
Don't let any pillar hit zero
What came next
Building this raised an obvious follow-up: the Declaration of Independence is literally a numbered list of grievances. Real history, real structure, already designed like a level progression. That thought became Liberty 1776 — a Space Invaders game where each wave is an actual grievance from the Declaration and King George III is the final boss.
Built with
Claude API (claude-sonnet-4-6) — every decision triggers a live reasoning call
Vanilla JS — no frameworks, pure canvas rendering
Vercel — deployment
Where to play
Demo: found-a-republic.vercel.app
Code: github.com/GlimmerForge/summer-into-ai
Week 1 series
Demo 1: Found a Republic — 8-bit civics sim — Claude reasons out every decision live ← you are here
Demo 2: Liberty 1776 — Space Invaders meets the Declaration of Independence
Demo 3: Hall of the Republic — First-person history walk — talk to witnesses, hear their voices
Summer into AI 2026 · Theme 1: 8-Bit America · Competitor reference: Founderman by @advisoryhour
Original source
Canonical Substack URL: https://jakestrait5.substack.com/p/summer-into-ai-2026-found-a-republic.