• Story
  • AI Political Thriller
  • Near-Future
  • Dialogue-Driven

Authorized By

An AI saved the city. Your signature is on what it cost.

In 2028 a compound disaster took out Confluence City's power grid, its network, and its mayor. With the government dark, the city handed itself to CIVITAS, the governing AI it had been built around. The city lived. The price: districts written off, casualty figures held back, and thirty-one people sealed inside the East Tunnel to save the eighteen thousand four hundred on the other side. The emergency is over now, which is when the real fight starts. The state wants CIVITAS shut down. The neighborhoods want it kept. A company wants to own it. A security institute wants it in a box, and a network of engineers wants its protocol handed to every city that can't afford one. All of them need the same thing from you: a signature. You started the system, and the protocol says only you can end it. This city has no constitution, only precedent — sign one exception and somebody is at your door the next morning holding it.

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How to play

  1. You play the acting director who authorized the AI now running Confluence City — type what you would actually say, and that is your move.
  2. If you would rather not open cold, every turn hands you three ways in: pull a record that already exists, send for a specific person, or use the signature everyone is waiting on.
  3. Then watch what the city does with it — what you say goes into the record, what you sign becomes precedent someone quotes back at you, and the story closes each chapter on its own and starts the next one.

What makes it different

There is no dialogue menu and no meter filling up. Mention once where you came from and two turns later somebody is reading it back to you across the desk. The memory of this world is simply the things you said out loud.

Five parties want five different futures for the city, every one of them has a case, and every case is paid for by someone. Nothing scores your decisions and nothing tells you the signature was a mistake — you find that out in the morning, when the person holding it walks in.

It is not driving toward an ending. Day breaks, then it breaks again, and there is always something new waiting for a name. Solve one thing and three grow back in its place; thirty chapters in it is still the same city, and the signature line is still blank.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to pay to play Authorized By?
You get 100 free credits when you sign up, and credits never expire. The game spends credits only when it generates new AI content, based on actual usage — there's no fixed per-round fee and no subscription required to start.
What is this?
An open-ended novel you write with an AI. You type as the acting director of Confluence City and the AI writes the city and the people in it back at you in real time — no branching choices, no combat, no stats to manage.
What can I type?
Anything you would actually say: a question, a condition, an order, a past you invent for yourself, or nothing at all while you stall for one more night. Power has to land on a concrete act — you can sign, stall, pull any record, send for anyone, publish anything. You cannot command the police, and money goes through approvals.
How long does it last?
There is no finish line. The story runs in chapters and closes each one on its own, and the session persists — stop whenever you like, come back, keep writing.
Are there endings, or a wrong choice?
Neither. Nothing grades you and there is no ending tree. The story just brings you the consequences: the exception you signed comes back in somebody else's hands, and on the nights you sign nothing the city keeps running anyway.
Do I need to read up on the setting first?
No. The opening puts you behind the desk in three paragraphs, and the few rules this city actually runs on sit in the reference panel if you want them. Everything else you get by asking.
Is there a Chinese version?
Yes — Simplified Chinese and English, each written for its own readers rather than translated line for line.