Amulet scratchpad (multiverse edition)
What's an amulet?
Start by reading Robin Sloan's explanation of amulets.
Demo
Try out the amulet scratchpad (multiverse edition) here: amulet.samnabi.com
About this app
Creating an amulet from scratch is no easy task. You might go through hundreds of versions of a poem, trying different variations of wording and capitalisation, before stumbling upon one that qualifies as an amulet.
We can use computers to help us generate amulets — feed a massive set of words into an algorithm and comb though the results to find one that's particularly poetic. But where's the fun in that?
This scratchpad attempts to strike a middle ground. As you write your poem, it will scan the multiverse for similar poems — these could use different capitalisation, or synonyms of the words you've written. The exact poem you wrote might not be an amulet, but a similar one could very well be.
If stumbling upon an amulet is like rolling dice, this scratchpad loads the dice in your favour.
This app uses the Merriam-Webster thesaurus API to find synonyms. There is a daily usage limit of 1,000 requests, so the app uses a PHP script to save the requests locally. This avoids requesting the same words over and over.
Getting started
To run this on your own server, you'll need:
- PHP
- A developer API key for the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Thesaurus API
Configuration
Rename config-sample.php to config.php, and enter your API key.
The config.php file is included in .gitignore, to avoid accidentally committing the secret API key to a public repository. So, you might have to re-create the config.php file when you push the project to a production server.
Caching
To avoid querying the thesaurus API repeatedly, this app saves the thesaurus results in JSON files. These files are saved under thesaurus/{word}.json. The name of the file is the word, and its contents are an array of synonyms.
find-synonyms.php is the file that handles querying the thesaurus API. If a local .json file for the word exists, it uses that data instead.
There isn't a method to clear this cache, so if you want to fetch fresh data from the thesaurus API, you'll have to delete the corresponding file manually.
Contributing
If you have questions, bug fixes, or feature requests, please don't hesitate to open an issue here on GitHub. I won't bite.
Why no NFTs?
By using this app you agree not to create NFTs of the amulets you make. I just don't think NFTs are a net good for society, culture, or the planet. If you want to discuss this further, open an issue and let's talk.