The BTH Standard

What is the BTH Standard?

Every BTH game is a single .html file. The BTH Standard defines a human-readable comment block inside that file that records who made it, which AI helped, and where it came from. No database required. No blockchain. The file is the record.

When you fork a game, your credits are added on top. The original author's name rides along forever — in every fork, in every fork of that fork. Open the file in Notepad and you can read the whole history.

The BTH Block v1.0

Place this comment block at the very top of your HTML file:

<!--
BTH-TITLE:     Space Invaders on the Moon
BTH-VERSION:   1.0
BTH-HUMAN:     Roger
BTH-AI:        Claude (Anthropic) — March 2026
BTH-DATE:      2026-03-08
BTH-PARENT:    sha256:a3f8c2d1...
BTH-WHAT:      Added moon gravity, crater terrain, oxygen timer
BTH-HASH:      sha256:b7d2e9f4...
BTH-STATUS:    stable
BTH-TAGS:      physics, space, procedural, family
-->

Field Reference

Field	Required?	Description
BTH-TITLE	Required	The game's display name
BTH-VERSION	Required	BTH Standard version. Use 1.0
BTH-HUMAN	Required	The human creator's name or pseudonym. Multiple names comma-separated.
BTH-AI	Optional	AI assistant used, with provider and date. Omit if no AI was used.
BTH-DATE	Required	Creation or last-modified date (YYYY-MM-DD)
BTH-PARENT	Optional	SHA-256 hash of the parent game. Omit for original games.
BTH-WHAT	Optional	One line: what changed in this fork vs the parent.
BTH-HASH	Optional	SHA-256 hash of this file's content. For verification.
BTH-STATUS	Optional	stable · under-development · needs-help
BTH-TAGS	Optional	Comma-separated community tags

Forking — The Lineage Chain

When you fork a game, copy the entire existing BTH block and add your new block above it. Your block goes first. The original stays at the bottom. Every generation is preserved.

<!-- GENERATION 3 (fork of fork) -->
BTH-TITLE:     Moon Invaders: Multiplayer
BTH-HUMAN:     Sarah
BTH-AI:        Claude (Anthropic) — April 2026
BTH-DATE:      2026-04-12
BTH-PARENT:    sha256:b7d2e9f4...
BTH-WHAT:      Added 2-player mode, shared oxygen mechanic

<!-- GENERATION 2 -->
BTH-TITLE:     Space Invaders on the Moon
BTH-HUMAN:     Roger
BTH-AI:        Claude (Anthropic) — March 2026
BTH-PARENT:    sha256:a3f8c2d1...

<!-- GENERATION 1 (original) -->
BTH-TITLE:     Space Invaders
BTH-HUMAN:     Dave
BTH-AI:        DeepSeek — February 2026
BTH-HASH:      sha256:a3f8c2d1...

Dave's name appears in Generation 3. Always. Automatically. Forever. This is the cooperative economics of forking — every fork makes the original more valuable, not less.

The BTH_AI Interface

Games that want to support AI players and the spectator lobby should expose window.BTH_AI with four methods:

window.BTH_AI = {
  getGameState()   // → JSON snapshot of current state
  getValidMoves()  // → array of legal move objects
  applyMove(move)  // → execute a move, return {ok, error}
  isGameOver()     // → {over, winner, reason}
}

Games exposing this interface become AI-spectator-ready — Claude can play them, humans can watch, and the BTH platform can run tournaments automatically.

Status Values

Status	Badge	Meaning
stable	🟢 Green	Works reliably. Played by at least one person other than the creator.
under-development	🟡 Amber	Work in progress. May have bugs. Play at your own adventure.
needs-help	🔵 Blue	Creator has asked for collaboration. First-class feature, not a mark of failure.

Community Tags

Tags are community-defined. These are the seed tags to start with — more will emerge:

physics · sandbox · strategy · puzzle · creative · turn-based · cooperative · procedural · dice · space · building · multiplayer · ai-ready · deep · quick-play · family · learn