Deck in a Dash logo

# Deck in a Dash A Pebble smartwatch app that produces a daily personalized tarot (Celtic Cross) and astrology (natal chart + transits) reading. This repository holds the core engine: a plain-C, dependency-free library and standalone CLI (`dist/deck-engine`) that computes a full reading without needing a Pebble device, emulator, or SDK, designed so it links straight into Pebble watch code without rework. ## What it computes - **Astrology**: a personalized natal chart (Sun through Pluto, plus the Ascendant and whole-sign houses) from a birth date, time, and location, and the day's transits — including moon phase and aspects — against that chart. - **Tarot**: a 10-card Celtic Cross spread, drawn from the 22 Major Arcana, with upright/reversed orientation per card. The full spread is deterministic: the same seed string always produces the same cards, in the same positions, with the same orientations. Card meanings and spread positions are sourced from A. E. Waite's *The Pictorial Key to the Tarot* (1911, public domain), in his own original drawing order. Readings are available in **English and German** (`--lang en`/`--lang de`, or `lang=` in `user.properties`); adding another language is just dropping a translated `key=value` file into `engine/i18n/` — see [`docs/input-output-format.md`](docs/input-output-format.md). ## Repository layout ``` res/ Tarot card art (22 RWS Major Arcana), the Waite and Sepharial PDFs, logo, research notes. engine/ third_party/astronomy/ Vendored cosinekitty/astronomy C library (MIT). src/ Engine source (rng, tarot, astro, i18n, reading, CLI). i18n/ Translation files (en.lang, de.lang, ...). tests/smoke_test.c Determinism, ephemeris, and i18n regression checks. scripts/ run-engine.sh, run-interpreter.sh, and the user.properties template. dist/ Build output (gitignored) — see below. interpreter/ Separate module + binary (dist/interpreter-cli): scores how significant a day's transits are, reads out the full Celtic Cross spread with every card's meaning, and closes with guidance (every day, tailored to how significant it is) tying the top transit to the spread, reading deck-engine's --format json output. Supports --format text|html|json and --lang en|de for its own output too (see CLAUDE.md). watch/ The actual Pebble watchapp - links engine/src/ and interpreter/src/ in directly (see CLAUDE.md's "Portability to the watch"), plus its own persistence, reading recompute, UI, daily notification, and config page. Built separately from the rest of this repo (`make watchapp`, below) - requires the Pebble SDK. docs/ Architecture/dataflow diagrams, input/output format reference. build-image/ Dockerfile for the reproducible build environment (C toolchain + Pebble SDK) used by CI and by the build-image.sh/run-image.sh/upload-image.sh scripts at the repo root (see "Building" below). Makefile Single root Makefile, builds both engine/ and interpreter/, and packages a release (`make package`). ``` See [`CLAUDE.md`](CLAUDE.md) for the detailed architecture and the sharp edges worth knowing before changing the engine, or the [`docs/`](docs/) directory for diagrams ([`docs/architecture.md`](docs/architecture.md)) and the full CLI/file/ struct format reference ([`docs/input-output-format.md`](docs/input-output-format.md)). ## Building ```bash make # -> dist/deck-engine, dist/interpreter-cli, dist/img/, dist/i18n/, # dist/run-engine.sh, dist/run-interpreter.sh, dist/user.properties make test # builds and runs engine/tests/smoke_test.c and interpreter/tests/*_test.c make package # -> dist/deck-in-a-dash--linux-.tar.gz, a # self-contained release bundle (binaries, scripts, img/, i18n/, # LICENSE, docs) - version from the current git tag, or # VERSION=1.2.3 make package to override ``` Requires only a C99 compiler and `make` — no other dependencies. **Building the watch app itself** (`watch/`, the actual Pebble app) needs the separate Pebble SDK (`pebble` on `PATH`), so it's a separate target, not part of `make`/`make test`/`make package` above: ```bash make watchapp # -> dist/deck-in-a-dash-.pbw, same version # resolution as `make package` ``` **CI runs `make watchapp` too** — `.gitea/workflows/build.yml` builds and tests everything inside a container built from `build-image/`, which bundles the Pebble SDK alongside the C toolchain so the runner itself doesn't need either installed. To build/test that image yourself, copy `registry.env.example` to `registry.env` and fill in your registry credentials, then: ```bash ./build-image.sh # build and locally tag the image ./run-image.sh # run `make test package watchapp` inside it, against # this checkout, for a CI-equivalent local build ./upload-image.sh # push the image so CI can pull it ``` ## Running **Daily use**, via `dist/run-engine.sh`: pulls today's date and the current UTC time from the OS clock (used as the tarot seed and the transit moment) and reads your birth data from `dist/user.properties`. Edit that file first — it's seeded once from a placeholder template and is never overwritten by later builds: ```bash dist/run-engine.sh # text output, language from user.properties (default en) dist/run-engine.sh html # HTML report with card art, open in a browser dist/run-engine.sh html de # override the language for this run ``` **Direct CLI**, with every input explicit: ```bash dist/deck-engine --seed "2026-07-03" \ --birth-date 1990-05-14 --birth-time 14:32 --birth-utc-offset 2 \ --birth-lat 52.5200 --birth-lon 13.4050 \ [--date YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM] [--format text|html|json] [--lang en|de] ``` **Interpreter** (`interpreter/`, built by the same root `make`): scores how significant a day's transits are, reads out the full Celtic Cross spread with every card's meaning, and closes with guidance tying the day's biggest transit to the Attitude/Outcome cards - reading `deck-engine`'s `--format json` output. Its own output supports the same `--format text|html|json` and `--lang en|de` as `deck-engine` (note this `--lang` is independent of whatever language `deck-engine` was run with - `--format json` is always language-independent, see `docs/input-output-format.md`). `dist/run-interpreter.sh` is the daily-use equivalent of `run-engine.sh` (same OS clock + `user.properties` inputs, including `user.properties`' `lang=`), piping straight into `interpreter-cli`: ```bash dist/deck-engine ... --format json | dist/interpreter-cli [--format text|html|json] [--lang en|de] # or, for daily use: dist/run-interpreter.sh # text output, language from user.properties dist/run-interpreter.sh html de # HTML report with card art, override the language ``` ## License The engine source code in this repository (`engine/src/`, `engine/scripts/`) and the root `Makefile` are released under the **MIT License** — see [`LICENSE`](LICENSE). `engine/third_party/astronomy/` is vendored from [cosinekitty/astronomy](https://github.com/cosinekitty/astronomy) (MIT, unmodified) — see its `VENDORED.md` for the pinned commit. Card and spread text in `engine/src/tarot_data.c` is condensed from A. E. Waite's *The Pictorial Key to the Tarot* (1911), which is in the public domain. Transit narrative text in `interpreter/src/narrative.c` is condensed from Sepharial's *Transits and Planetary Periods* (1920), also in the public domain, except the Moon and Pluto entries, which are original (see the file's own comment). Guidance text in `interpreter/src/guidance.c` is original, written for this project. `engine/i18n/de.lang`'s translations of the above two files' text (`narrative.*`/`guidance.*` keys) are original German translations made for this project, same status as its card/spread text.