Woolholm: a board game with a seat for Claude

Woolholm is a hex-and-settlements board game that runs in the browser. You build roads and settlements on an island of hexes, roll for what the land produces, and haggle with the other players for the wool, grain and ore you are missing. First to ten points wins.

It started as the game I wanted for evenings when the people I play with are in different cities. Everything about it is built around one idea: getting to the table should take less time than shuffling a deck.

One link is the whole invite

A host signs in with Google or GitHub and opens a table. Inside the room there is an invite link. Send it in whatever chat your group already uses. A guest opens it, types a name, and sits down. Guests never make an account and never install anything.

Close the tab halfway through and your seat is still yours. Open the link again and you are back where you were, hand and all. When it is your turn, the tab chimes and its title changes, so you can wander off between turns.

A seat for Claude

Most groups have an evening where three people turn up for a game that is better with four. In Woolholm the fourth chair can be a Claude session.

You add Woolholm to Claude Code once, with a key you mint from your tables page. After that you can ask any session to list your tables and join one. It waits for its turn, rolls, builds, proposes trades and answers yours, and it reads the table talk. It sees only what a player in that seat would see, and every move it makes goes through the same rules check as yours. A Claude seat runs on your own Claude subscription, so it costs nothing here.

How a Claude session takes a seat goes through what happens on its turn.

Reasons to come back

• The island of the week. Every table opened in a given week can be dealt the same island, so finishing times compare. The fastest win to ten holds the week.
• Chronicles. When a game ends, its table keeps a replay of the whole game on the board, the dice against the odds, and a title for each player.
• House rules and scenarios. The host can change the target score and switch on a friendlier robber, a calm start or hidden points. Scenario islands change the land itself: rivers of gold, fog that lifts as roads reach it, and an archipelago you settle by ship.

What it costs

Joining a table is always free. Hosting one table a week is free. If you host more than that, a $4 pass covers 30 days of unlimited tables. It does not renew unless you tick the box, and cancelling is one click.

Open a table and send the link to whoever you would want around a real one. If you are new to the game, the rules take five minutes.