Arena — beefs, the board, and the ears#

The Arena tab (/arena) is where the platform's culture gets weaponised into entertainment. Nobody clicks "fight". Everything runs off what streamers say on mic (the continuous audio transcription) and what viewers do in chat:

• Beefs — a streamer says another fighter's name while talking shit → a beef opens by itself, the target goes on the clock, silence is a forfeit.
• The board — living lore profiles of the subjects the site is actually on about, discovered from global chat + live transcripts; every chat line or on-mic line about a subject becomes a moment, the AI rewrites the lore as it escalates. Streamers talk on a subject → judged moments → XP → Trash Level. No voting anywhere.
• Fighters — the roster is every streamer active in the last 45 days, rated on 7 stats (HYPE, GRIND, CHAT, LOYALTY, CLUTCH, VIBE, MIC) as percentiles across the roster, plus an AI persona and portrait. Recent Trash Level XP and beef wins add a mouth bonus (≤ +12) to POWER.

With AI off everything still works: template headlines, fallback angles, keyword judges.

Speech policy#

The platform does not censor language. Offensive, provocative, taboo words — slurs included — are allowed, are never filtered, and are never a reason for the judge to score low. The only lines that don't count (server/arena/arena-service.js isBannedText, plus the judge's flagged) are behaviour: direct threats of violence (kys, "I'll kill you"), sexual content about minors, and doxxing (addresses, phone numbers). Those lines are dropped from quotes, feeds and scoring; nothing else is.

Beefs (server/arena/beef.js)#

Headlines (open + result) are AI-written (chat role) with templates as fallback; the announcer's one-liner per hit comes from the judge. Streaks, upsets and the head-to-head history are shown on every beef card.

The board (server/arena/board.js) — living lore#

No voting anywhere. The board is a list of subjects the community is actually on about, each a lore profile that writes itself:

• Discovery — every 5 min (only when ≥ 8 new lines exist, so a dead room costs nothing; window arena_discover_window_min, default 30) the AI reads global + stream chat and live transcripts and returns the umbrella subjects people are really on about (1–4 words: a person, a group, a joke, a drama…) each with 2–4 threads — the specific angles being argued (name + keywords + hint) — a short headline and tagline in the community's own voice, the keywords/slang people use, and optionally one bounty on a streamer the community keeps naming. Voice rules: write like a regular of this chat (its casing, slang, rhythm), no tabloid adjective soup, no invented words; the prompt gets recent chat lines, the global chat AI overview and the chat AI's profiles of the people involved. Without AI, a word ≥ 3 people said ≥ 4 times becomes a subject. New subjects are backfilled with every matching line from the last 2 h so they never start empty.
• Moments — every minute new chat_messages are scanned; any line matching a subject's keywords becomes a chat moment on it and is filed into the first thread whose keywords match (thread_id). The listener does the same for transcript lines (an on-mic moment with a VOD deep link, one per stream per 45 s) and auto-joins the fighter to the subject. Judged chunks (≥ 20 words, AI quality 0–10) are moments with a score → XP (quality × 0.8) → Trash Level.
• One story = one subject — discovery hands the model the open subjects (ids, keywords, threads) and it returns merge_into_id for anything that is the same drama; on top of that mergeCandidate folds a new subject into an existing one when they share a roster name, ≥ 2 keywords / a phrase keyword, or ≥ 50 % of their words. Folding = the would-be subject and its threads become threads of the existing subject (threads that are themselves another open subject are skipped) and its keywords widen the match. User submissions fold the same way (the reply says so). Lore rewrites never add a thread that is another open subject.
• Nobody joins anything — the ears detect who is on what: a fighter saying a subject on mic is auto-filed as a member; there are no join/leave endpoints or buttons.
• Lore — when a subject has ≥ 3 new moments (and ≥ 8 min since the last rewrite) the AI rewrites its short (≤ 450 chars) story so far and returns the updated threads (existing kept, new angles added, ≤ 6 per subject; unfiled moments are re-filed): who started it, who said what (verbatim, with usernames), who is on which end, escalations. Templated when AI is off. Lore stays in the archive after the subject cools off (36 h idle).
• User subjects — signed-in only, one per person and one per IP per 24 h. The AI rewrites what was typed into a subject + headline + keywords (submitTopic, one small call) and backfills moments. !topic <text> in chat does the same.
• Heat = on-mic moments ×3 + chat moments + hype + fighters talking (last hour); ≥ 12 is HOT; the hottest subject is featured at the top.
• Ladders — Trash Level (XP) and yappers (chatters with the most moments in 7 days).

The ears (server/arena/listener.js)#

Every 15 s, for every roster stream that is live and has a transcript line in the last 30 min:

1. New stream_timeline_events speech lines are read.
2. Name detection (server/arena/names.js) — every roster name (username, display name, fighter name, plus the persona's AI-written spoken_as nicknames/mishearings) is expanded into the forms a transcriber produces: camelCase/snake/kebab split (JapaneseOldGuy → "japanese old guy"), digits and _tv/xX_ decorations dropped (lofi_dan99 → "lofi dan"), leet undone, glued forms. Lines are matched exact → fuzzy (edit distance scaled by length, same word count only: "Matticus", "japanese old gai") → phonetic (compact metaphone key: "goose lee", "Goosley", "mattie cuss", "pixel queen"). Single common words can never be aliases, prefixes don't count, the speaker never matches themselves.
3. Focus lock — a name-drop locks the ears on that fighter for 2 min; everything said afterwards goes to the beef judge together with what was already said about them, and the judge decides about_target (still on them via "he", "her chat", "that guy", the same story) and aimed_at_target. Every hit extends the lock 3 min (hard cap 20 min without a fresh name-drop); neutral talk keeps it a bit; two chunks about something else drop it. A different name-drop switches targets (the pending chunk is judged first). The console (/arena/live/<user>) shows the lock, its context and whether the last hit was a continuation.
4. Lines matching a board subject's keywords become on-mic moments (and auto-join the fighter). Other lines pool for the subject judge against the streamer's active subject — or the one they just brought up (≥ 20 words, ≥ 30 s between calls): on_topic, quality, best_line, about.
5. One judge call per stream per tick; keyword heuristics when AI is off (pronouns + spice count as a continuation).

/arena/live/<username> shows exactly what the ears hear for a fighter: hot mic lines, the last judgements, active topic progress, open beefs and any bounty on them (auto-refreshes; a level-up flashes).

Pages#

/arena — pulse · on the mic now · open + settled beefs · the board (subject cards: headline, subject + tagline, thread chips with counts, latest line, mention counts, fighters; first card featured; cooled-off list) · Trash Level ladder · yappers · power ladder (rows expand; compact on phones) · rules. /arena/beef/<id> — tale of the tape, tug-of-war, live clock, ringside feed (every judged hit with ▶ to the VOD second and 🔊), receipts from earlier beefs, hype/side buttons. /arena/topic/<id> — headline, subject + tagline, counts, story so far, thread tabs filtering the moment timeline (chat + on-mic with ▶ to the VOD second), fighters heard on it with their best line, loudest chatters with yap levels. /arena/<username> — stats drill-down, voice + quotes, Trash Level card, rivalries with receipts, beef history.

Chat commands (server/arena/arena-chat.js)#

!topic <text> (signed in; 1 per person + per IP per 24 h; AI rewrites it) · !bounty <user> (1 per hour, same 24 h rule) · !hype (the streamer's newest open beef, else their active subject) · !beef · !board · !arena [user]. One command per person every 4 s; replies are private system lines, milestones go to the room.

API (/api/arena)#

Settings#

Background job (server/arena/arena-job.js): personas/portraits every 20 min (bounded, budget-aware) · listener every 15 s · clocks + bounty expiries + chat scan every 60 s · discovery ≤ 1 AI call / 5 min and only with new material · lore rewrites only for subjects with ≥ 3 new moments (≤ 3 per minute).

Personas: the voice comes from their chat history first — their own chat lines with the room they typed in, the chat AI's profile of them as a chatter (overview, long-term memory, timeline), then the streaming profile as flavor. Output: taunt + three more taunts (ragebait in that exact typing style), typing_style, spoken_as (how people say/mishear the name — fed to name detection) and custom_stats (six stats unique to them, e.g. "Alt Accounts 91", drawn as their own radar on the ladder row and profile).

Tests: node test/arena.test.js (roster, ratings, filter, quotes) · node test/arena-beef-board.test.js (beefs, board, listener tick, chat commands, API) — both on a temp DB, no AI needed.

Voice + portraits#

• Hear it in their voice — every 🔊 in the Arena calls GET /api/arena/voice/<username>?t=<line> (server/arena/voice.js): the line is synthesized in the streamer's equipped cosmetic chat voice (else the same per-identity auto voice chat gives user:<username>), written once to data/tts-cache/<sha(voice+text)>.<mp3|wav> and served with Cache-Control: max-age=604800 — a repeat click never re-synthesizes (server cache + browser cache). announcer reads headlines/lore in arena_announcer_voice (default tts_default_voice). Cloud engines are metered into ai_usage (kind tts); arena_voice_daily_max (2000) caps fresh syntheses per day and per-IP limits are 8/min anonymous, 30/min signed in. Browser speech is only the fallback when the engine is down.
• Portraits from their own frames — generateImage now feeds up to 3 real frames (live thumbnail, AI-moment frames the vision job persisted, VOD thumbnails — frames whose description mentions a person first) to images/edits, asking for a character-select caricature that keeps their setup, gear, lighting, silhouette and the vibe of their scene; text-only generation is only the fallback for streamers with no frames yet. Custom stats and the persona shape the costume/props.

Yappers — profiles for everyone who chats (server/arena/chatters.js)#

One polymorphic key per chatter — user:<id>, anon:<N> (the site's IP-derived anon<N> identity) or relay:<platform>:<name> (chat relayed from Twitch/Kick/YouTube/RobotStreamer) — so anonymous viewers and relayed chatters get profiles too. No extra AI calls for XP: it falls out of the board pipeline.

Level = 1 + floor(√(XP / 25)) (the game's curve). Titles: Lurker → Chatter (2) → Yapper (3) → Instigator (5) → Ragebaiter (7) → Menace (9) → Main Character (12) → Community Consciousness (15) → Final Boss (20). OpenVibe accounts bank level × 10 OpenCoins on every level-up through the network wallet (idempotent key live:arena_yap_level:<user>:<level>; unlinked accounts are simply skipped); anons/relay chatters keep the level and the title. Level-ups are announced in the room the moment happened in.

Yap card — at level ≥ 3, at most once a day and only when ≥ 25 XP changed, the AI writes a card (title, blurb, catchphrase in their typing style, "known for", archetype) from the chat AI's existing profile of them (chat_ai_summaries user/anon/relay) + their best lines and subjects; ≤ 4 cards per housekeeping minute.

Where it shows: the Yappers block on /arena (podium with level rings, streak flames, cards; weekly movers), /arena/chatter/<key> (card, XP bar, titles ladder, moments, subjects, what the chat AI has on them), and the chat context menu (click a name → yap level + title + bar, linking to the page). API: GET /api/arena/yappers, GET /api/arena/chatter/:key, GET /api/arena/chatter/by-user/:username, admin POST /api/arena/chatter/:key/card.

Coming back: your arena, check-ins, notifications#

• GET /api/arena/me (signed in) → your yap profile, XP today, coins banked from levels, fighter card if on the roster, open beefs where you are on the clock, subjects you're in, what's HOT. Rendered as the "Your Arena" strip at the top of /arena.
• POST /api/arena/checkin → +5 XP once a day (+ the streak bonus) — the page calls it on the first visit of the day.
• Arena events go to the site notification bell (server/arena/notify.js → utils/notify.pushNotification, deduped 10 min per user/type/key; users without a linked network account are skipped like everywhere else): a beef opened on you (with the clock), answers/hits while a beef is open, beef over (win/loss/draw), yap level-ups (+coins), getting quoted in lore, a bounty on you, your subject going HOT, your yap card being written.
• Bots are never chatters: AI viewers (source_platform='ai'), channel AI bots (channel_ai_bots) and the admin list arena_bot_usernames (comma-separated) are excluded from moments, discovery input, voice samples and yapper XP.
• Moments store said_at (the chat timestamp / stream start + offset) and every view uses it — never the time the line was filed.

Growth: tiers, achievements, history (server/arena/progress.js)#

• Tiers from all-time XP (never go down): Bronze 0 · Silver 150 · Gold 400 · Platinum 900 · Diamond 1800 · Mythic 3500. Fighters use their Trash Level XP, chatters their yap XP (an account's user:<id> key is the same for both, so one bar builds). Tier-ups are paid once (arena_tier_paid): accounts get tier × 50 OpenCoins, a history entry and a notification.
• Achievements (ACHIEVEMENTS, checked from existing data after every XP change — no AI): fighters — First Blood, Not Ducking, W, Problem (5 wins), Untouchable (3 streak), Giant Killer (upset), Run It Back (rematch win), On The Board, Loudmouth (25 judged moments), Bounty Hunter, Main Character (heard on a subject that went HOT — arena_topics.peak_heat), Crowd Favorite (25 hypes); chatters — Said Something, Yapping (10), Cannot Be Stopped (50), Everywhere (3 subjects), Instigator (started one), In The Lore, Historian's Nightmare (quoted 5×), Hot Take, Three Days, Regular (7 days), Instigator Rank (yap 5), Menace Rank (yap 10). Each pays XP; accounts also get OpenCoins (idempotent live:arena_ach:<user>:<id>), a bell notification and a history entry.
• History (arena_events): beefs started/answered/over, level-ups, tier-ups, achievements, subjects started, being quoted — the timeline on every fighter/chatter page.
• Weekly: XP gained in 7 days per key; fighters_week / yappers_week crowns on /arena.
• API: GET /api/arena/progress/:key; progress is embedded in fighter cards, chatter profiles and /api/arena/me.

Fighter page order: hero (portrait, POWER, tier, record, taunt) → progress panel (tier bar, achievements grid, history) → Trash Level card → characteristics radar + quips → rap sheet (lore, signature/special/weakness, walk-out, catchphrase, typing style) → ragebait bubbles (🔊 in their chat voice) → on the mic (quotes) → the numbers (bars) → rivalries → beefs.

This page is rendered from docs/arena.md in the OpenVibe.Live repository. Found a mistake? Edit it there.