Product
A player says what they can do. Doubles coordinates the rest.
The product is the work between “I’d like to play” and “four people are on a court”. This page separates what a person does by hand today from what the software is meant to do.
How to read this site
Four labels, used strictly.
- Today (Operating now, by hand or in production.)
- Operating now, by hand or in production.
- Prototype (Built in the repository. Not used with real players.)
- Built in the repository. Not used with real players.
- Research (A question we are working on. No result is claimed.)
- A question we are working on. No result is claimed.
- Planned (Intended. Not built.)
- Intended. Not built.
Manual operations are never described as autonomous software. If a person does it, it says so.
01The journey
Five steps from intent to a completed game.
| Step | Today | Intended |
|---|---|---|
| 1. A player says what they can do | Today (Operating now, by hand or in production.) A message on WhatsApp, in the player’s own words, read by a person. | The same message, read by Claude into a structured intent. Prototype (Built in the repository. Not used with real players.) |
| 2. Firm is separated from flexible | Today (Operating now, by hand or in production.) The organiser keeps it in their head. | Hard constraints and soft preferences are stored separately, with ambiguities listed. Prototype (Built in the repository. Not used with real players.) |
| 3. A group of four is assembled | Today (Operating now, by hand or in production.) The organiser finds the other players by hand. | The agent proposes groups across the player pool and asks a question only when it needs to. Research (A question we are working on. No result is claimed.) |
| 4. A court and time are confirmed | Today (Operating now, by hand or in production.) The organiser holds a court with the venue directly. | Proposals are checked against real inventory, then booked through a scoped tool. Planned (Intended. Not built.) |
| 5. The group survives a change | Today (Operating now, by hand or in production.) The organiser chases a replacement when someone drops. | The agent re-plans, the validator re-checks, a human is asked when authority runs out. Research (A question we are working on. No result is claimed.) |
The goal is minimal coordination burden on the humans. The player should only have to say what they want and show up.
02The wedge
Why padel is the starting environment.
Padel is played as doubles. A standard game needs four players. Two people can’t play it, and five can’t join it. So someone always has to assemble exactly four, which makes coordination unavoidable rather than optional.
That is useful for building coordination software for three reasons:
- The target is exact. A game is complete when four validated players are on a free court at one time. There is no partial credit to argue about.
- The constraints are real and mixed. Players differ in location, schedule, skill and preference, and they cancel. Every hard problem in the architecture shows up at small scale.
- The environment is bounded. One sport, one metro region, one fixed group size. Outcomes can be checked rather than guessed.
The claim is structural, not statistical. This site does not use market-size figures.
03Beyond padel
What would carry over, and what has not happened.
The shape is not specific to padel: a fixed number of people, one place, one time, hard limits, soft preferences, and cancellations. That shape also appears in other racquet sports, pickup sports, classes, small-group activities and local experiences.
Planned (Intended. Not built.) Doubles operates in none of these. The architecture is only worth extending once it holds up on padel, as measured by the evaluation on the Research page.
04Boundaries
What Doubles is not building.
- A court-booking marketplace. Transactions are the easy part and venues already have systems for them.
- A general-purpose assistant. The agent operates inside one narrow, checkable task.
- A ranking ladder or a social feed. The unit of value is a completed game.
- A system where a model can move money or confirm a booking on its own authority.
05Operating region
Initial operating environment: padel in Delhi NCR.
Games are intended to run across Noida, Delhi and Gurgaon. Players and venues are coordinated manually today. See Evidence for what is and isn’t verified.