Scoreboard · argue and defend
You Know Ball
Sports takes, scored honestly, by something that actually watches.
Public web demo. Apple's July 2026 upload responses prove iOS builds 26 and 27 were accepted; current processing, tester assignment and distribution are unverified
Verified 2026-09-10 · 5 sources
- The public web demo responds; native distribution remains unverified
- https://you-know-ball-orpin.vercel.app — HTTP 200, checked 2026-09-10. The Apple acceptance records below are explicitly July 2026 history, not current distribution receipts.
- Builds 26 and 27 were accepted by App Store Connect
- Apple's own 409 responses: the 2026-07-16 upload log reports previousBundleVersion 26, and the 2026-07-19 log reports 27 — Apple naming builds it had already accepted
- The public web demo is still live
- HTTP 200 from https://you-know-ball-orpin.vercel.app, checked 2026-08-13
- Current Apple-side distribution state is unverified
- No authenticated App Store Connect query, current processing receipt, beta-group record or tester record was available during the 2026-08-13 evidence refresh; do not infer zero testers
- Build 27 runs on my own phone with its save intact
- devicectl reports 0.1.0 (27) installed; the pre-install container backup and post-install diff were byte-identical (2026-07-17 session record)
The human problem
Sports takes are the most passionate opinions most people hold, and they evaporate into group-chat noise within an hour. Nobody keeps score. Nobody has to defend anything. The most fun argument you had this week left no trace.
The thesis
The fun isn't in being told you're right. It's in being made to defend a position by something that knows ball and doesn't flatter you. No participation trophies.
Where it actually stands
- The web demo is playable right now, in a browser, with no account. Drop a take, the debate engine counters, your argument gets a transparent score.
- The engine is deterministic and mechanically neutral across five sports — no model deciding who wins, and a score a player can reconstruct.
- On iOS, builds 26 and 27 were uploaded and accepted by App Store Connect. Their current processing, tester-assignment and distribution state was not independently re-verified on August 13.
- Build 27 does run on my own phone — through a save-preserving developer install, which is how I caught the engine promising a comeback bonus it never actually paid. That's fixed, along with clutch-time framing for final possessions, on the unmerged branch.
- At the July 26 check, the recent engine work was unmerged to main and its working repository had no remote; the August 13 distribution refresh did not treat local source state as Apple-side evidence.
- Builds Apple accepted
- 2
- Reached a tester
- 0
- Outside players
- 0
- App Store review
- None
Decisions and tradeoffs
Made the engine deterministic instead of generative.
A scoring system you can't audit isn't a score, it's a vibe. If a player can't reconstruct why they lost, they stop caring about winning.
Tuned it until blind play loses badly.
Early on, someone who knew nothing could win often enough that the score wasn't measuring anything. Closing that gap is the whole product, and it's the work I'm proudest of and least able to show you.
Betting guardrails from day one.
I spent three years in sportsbook operations. I know exactly which sentence turns a game into something I don't want to have built.
What building it taught me
I uploaded two builds to Apple without preserving a durable record of what happened after acceptance — and until I went looking for evidence, I'd have told you confidently that nothing had ever been uploaded at all. Not knowing the state of your own release is its own kind of failure.
What isn't true yet
- Current App Store Connect processing and tester assignment are unverified; no current receipt or beta-group record was available in the August 13 evidence refresh.
- A current public iOS release has not been verified here.
- No current external-tester or install record was available; do not infer either zero testers or successful distribution.
- The engine numbers I'd want to quote here — cohort win rates, tournament results — I can't currently point at an artifact for, so I'm not quoting them.