The internet feels strangely empty, despite all the new content being published everywhere. It is crowded, but lonely. I can't really feel the human presence as I used to. I miss opening some random forum or public chat and finding other people who might share the same interests. I wanted my site to feel more alive. So I decided to build a town square for my site, where serendipity can bring people together and let them chat.

I wanted presence, not a social network. Something lightweight and temporary. A small reminder that there are other people here too.

You open the site and see a few other visitors wandering around at the bottom of the page.
Maybe someone says hello. Maybe nobody talks at all.
Either way, the site feels inhabited. It's a little space on the internet where people can chat, like a small café, or a small town square.

If you scroll down, you will see an orange stick figure. That's you!

All the other people online on the site will appear as black or grey figures. People that are on the same page as you will be in black. People that are reading other pages will be in gray, and if you hover their character you can see which page they are reading. ![[Pasted image 20260512081225.png]]

To identify those tab hoarders, like me, you will see the character sleeping whenever they don't have the tab active.

You can walk around and chat freely. To walk, use the left and right arrows if you are on a computer, or drag your figure if you are on touch devices. To say anything, click the 💬 button, type something, press enter.

This presence functionality is intentionally tiny and forgetful. No accounts, no cookies, no analytics (just a WebSocket connection that broadcasts a single number and the path of the page you're on). Anything you type into the chat bubble is sent to people currently on the site and then disappears.

I'm hoping people will discover this functionality and bump into each other. My goal will be reached if at least one meaningful conversation or connection happens through this functionality.