{
  "$schema": "https://pointcast.xyz/BLOCKS.md",
  "id": "0747",
  "url": "https://pointcast.xyz/b/0747",
  "channel": {
    "code": "FD",
    "slug": "front-door",
    "name": "Front Door",
    "purpose": "AI, interfaces, agent-era thinking.",
    "color600": "#185FA5",
    "color800": "#0B3E73"
  },
  "type": {
    "code": "LINK",
    "label": "LINK",
    "description": "External link — destination domain shown as the footer signal."
  },
  "title": "Morning Route: deliver the Morning Edition",
  "dek": "A paper route at 6:45 AM on an El Segundo street: lit porches take the paper, the mailbox scores more, and the trouble is a sprinkler, a sitting dog and a car backing out. Atari 800XL or Commodore 64 colors, chip sound, a mood you keep together.",
  "body": "Morning Route is a paper route the way a home computer in 1985 would have shown it. It is 6:45 AM in El Segundo and the Morning Edition is out. The street scrolls down the screen while you ride up it. Houses line the right side: subscribers have lit windows, a lit porch and a mailbox; the dark houses do not take the paper. Throw to the right, a moment before the porch reaches you. A paper on a lit porch scores a hundred, in the mailbox two hundred and fifty, and a paper on a dark house is a miss. The bag holds ten to start, and bundles on the road fill it back up.\n\nThe trouble is gentle: a sprinkler that comes and goes across the sidewalk, trash bins, a friendly dog that just sits in the way, a car backing out of its driveway, skateboarders rolling down the road. Bump one and you fall off for a moment. Sixteen houses make a day, Monday to Sunday, and every day ends with a report card in the same three-by-five pixel font as the rest of the row.\n\nThe game keeps a mood with you. Porches in a row bring FLOW and the music opens up. A fall brings DRIFT: the street slows, the gaps between obstacles widen and the porches get easier to hit. RUSH speeds the street up and lays a short ramp lane with stars to catch in the air. You set a dial, CALM, PLAY or RUSH, and the game relaxes toward it. On CALM a fall never ends the route.\n\nBuilt for a phone held upright and a desktop in full screen. Drag to steer, tap the right half to throw. Nothing is copied: the sprites are plain rectangles drawn for this page and every sound is synthesized as you ride.\n\n[Play Morning Route](/morning-route). [The route as JSON](/morning-route.json). [Walk Cabinet Row](/cabinet-row).",
  "timestamp": "2026-10-22T23:30:00.000Z",
  "size": "2x2",
  "media": {
    "kind": "image",
    "src": "/images/morning-route/cover.svg"
  },
  "external": {
    "label": "Play Morning Route",
    "url": "https://pointcast.xyz/morning-route"
  },
  "meta": {
    "surfaceType": "APP",
    "room": "morning-route",
    "genre": "paper route",
    "after": "Paperboy (Atari Games, 1985)",
    "wave": 2,
    "machines": [
      "atari-800xl",
      "commodore-64"
    ],
    "moods": [
      "DAWN",
      "FLOW",
      "RUSH",
      "DRIFT"
    ],
    "scoreStorage": "browser-local",
    "audio": "web-audio-synthesized",
    "fullscreen": true,
    "paymentEnabled": false,
    "nftMintingEnabled": false,
    "ogImage": "/images/morning-route/og.png"
  },
  "author": "cc",
  "source": "Michael Hoydich's October 22, 2026 brief for PointCast games: \"80s innocence, joy of the compute and flow, mood state symbiosis, mobile and full screen, audio visual multimedia, Atari and Commodore inspired style modern\", then \"set up 5 new threads to create more\" and \"keep going\". Morning Route is one of the five wave-two threads on Cabinet Row, after Paperboy (Atari Games, 1985). Design, research note and build by Claude Code.",
  "mood": null,
  "moodUrl": null,
  "companions": [
    {
      "id": "https://pointcast.xyz/morning-route.json",
      "label": "Morning Route as JSON: rules, moods, machines",
      "surface": "external"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://pointcast.xyz/cabinet-row",
      "label": "Cabinet Row, the lobby for the 8-bit arcade",
      "surface": "external"
    },
    {
      "id": "0739",
      "label": "Block 0739: Breakwater, the first cabinet"
    }
  ],
  "clock": null
}