What is Life MMO?
Life MMO is a production full-stack web app that turns a person's real life into an RPG. Players define their values and goals through a psychology-driven onboarding flow, which AI converts into a visual talent tree, epic quests, and daily habits. The game is mechanically fused to real life — breaking a streak resets the dungeon, completing real tasks earns real XP, and guild members hold each other accountable through human "Dungeon Master" coaches.
The entire product is built on the SST (System of Self-Transcendence) — an original framework synthesizing ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy) psychology with cross-worldview wisdom convergence and Universal Laws. Every AI interaction — from onboarding to daily coaching — is filtered through this framework, making Life MMO the only productivity app grounded in both clinical psychology and comparative philosophy.
Built and maintained solo from concept to production. The intellectual foundation — the SST framework, the comparative religion/philosophy research, and the Meaning Path system — comes directly from the founder's book, Be Yourself, and ongoing personal knowledge vault.
Luke Robell — self-taught full-stack developer, author, and comparative religion/philosophy educator. Author of Be Yourself: The Science and Spirituality of Who We Really Are (ACT + consciousness + cross-worldview wisdom synthesis). Former early team at Black Box VR. YouTube creator in the spirituality/psychology space. Built Life MMO entirely solo as both a product and a proof-of-concept for the SST framework. Works fully remotely and asynchronously.
- Designed and implemented 6 distinct AI subsystems using the Anthropic Claude API, each with purpose-built system prompts
- Authored the SST Framework — original synthesis of ACT, Universal Laws, and cross-worldview convergence — injected as universal AI context
- Built a production RAG pipeline: Obsidian knowledge vault → Voyage AI embeddings → Supabase pgvector → runtime retrieval filtered by player's Meaning Path
- Engineered the full onboarding pipeline: MBTI quiz → class assignment → meaning path suggestion → vision board → AI quest generation
- Shipped guild system with real-time chat, announcements, Dungeon Master roles, and member profiles
- Sole engineer from zero to production, including CI/CD on Vercel, push notifications (Web Push API), and tutorial system
6 AI Subsystems
Every AI call has a unique purpose-built prompt. The SST Framework is injected as universal context across all of them.
MBTI → Life Class Assignment
After the player completes a 15-question MBTI quiz, their type + life context is sent to Claude. The model maps them to one of 5 Life Classes (Sage, Herald, Guardian, Forger, Wanderer) with a tier, tagline, and description. Returns structured JSON, extracted with a resilient parser.
Meaning Path Suggestion
Claude suggests 3 Meaning Paths (worldview frameworks — e.g. Stoicism, Buddhism, Secular Humanism) based on the player's full onboarding profile. Each suggestion includes a title, description, and confidence framing. Player chooses or rerolls. Never imposed — only suggested.
Vision Board → Quest Generation
After the player defines their life vision (5-year goals, dream, focus areas, values), Claude generates 3–5 Epic Quests across the Three Pillars (Wisdom, Service, Leisure), each with a title, pillar, and description. These become the player's talent tree in the game.
Life Guide — Streaming Coaching Chat
A persistent AI companion that knows the player's MBTI, class, values, meaning path, active quests, and streaks. Streams responses via ReadableStream. Retrieves relevant vault chunks via RAG. Can propose tasks (structured JSON block) or value changes mid-conversation. Tutorial mode delivers a 500-word SST framework explanation on first prompt.
Value Suggestion System
The Life Guide detects when a player's language across multiple messages reveals a core value not yet in their list — or where an existing value is a poor fit. It appends a structured [VALUES] block proposing add/remove/replace actions. Enforces the 5-value cap (replace only when at max). Applied immediately to the player's profile with one click, with revalidatePath for instant character sheet sync.
Task Proposal System
When a player asks the Life Guide to create tasks, the model appends a [TASKS] JSON block with structured task proposals (title, pillar, frequency, XP reward, associated values). Parsed client-side and rendered as a confirmation card. Player approves and tasks are written to the database as real quest log entries.
System of Self-Transcendence
The SST is Luke's original synthesis, developed through years of comparative religion research and his book Be Yourself. It's injected into every AI prompt as the universal interpretive lens. This is what separates Life MMO from any other productivity app.
The subconscious runs ~95% of behavior until the player becomes the conscious observer. All four principles must be established before Conscious Action is possible.
Values are not feelings — they are freely chosen directions. Consistent conscious action (not motivation) reprograms the subconscious through epigenetics.
Drawn from the convergent inner core of multiple wisdom paths.
From Research to Runtime
Luke's ongoing comparative religion and ACT research lives in an Obsidian vault. A custom pipeline turns these notes into the AI's long-term memory, retrieved at runtime filtered by the player's Meaning Path.
- Vault structure: SST Overview · Mindful Connection · Conscious Action · Universal Laws · Worldviews as Witnesses · Science Layer (biology, physics, psychology)
- Chunking: ~500-token self-contained paragraphs, each meaningful out of context and player-readable
- Meaning Path filtering: YAML frontmatter tags per note; retrieval cosine-similarity search with optional path filter
- Dual purpose: the vault is Luke's personal research database AND the AI's long-term knowledge store — the same notes serve both
- Excluded from sync:
06 Sources & Research/and07 My Writings/— raw notes and drafts never reach players
Onboarding Pipeline
Core Game Loop
Guild & Social
Infrastructure & UX
isCancelled + ref reset), client-side soft-nav fallback, and server-side auto-advance.Plus: Server Actions for all mutations — task CRUD, quest completion, value updates, class confirmation, guild management, tutorial advance, vision board forge.
src/lib/ai/prompts.ts is the single source of truth for all AI prompts.
SST_FRAMEWORK, CLASS_SYSTEM_PROMPT, MEANING_PATH_SYSTEM_PROMPT exported and composed per use-case.
Structured output blocks ([TASKS], [VALUES]) parsed client-side with
regex extraction and JSON.parse with error recovery.
redirect() triggers soft navigation — shared game layout does not re-render.
Tour controller uses optimistic local state + server sync. Vision board forge uses
startTransition with loading overlay. Client-side auto-advance for tutorial
compensates for soft-nav server component gaps.
Tailored for AI research, psychology-adjacent AI, and remote product/engineering roles. Adjust metrics as they grow.
AI & Prompt Engineering
- Designed and implemented 6 distinct AI subsystems using the Anthropic Claude API — class assignment, meaning path suggestion, vision-to-quest generation, streaming life coaching, task proposals, and real-time value suggestion — each with purpose-built system prompts
- Built a production RAG pipeline (Obsidian → Voyage AI embeddings → Supabase pgvector) that retrieves context at runtime filtered by the player's chosen worldview, personalizing every AI interaction
- Engineered the SST Framework prompt architecture — an original synthesis of ACT psychology and cross-worldview wisdom — injected as universal context across all AI interactions in the app
- Implemented structured output parsing for AI-proposed tasks and value changes: the Life Guide appends JSON blocks mid-response, parsed client-side with error recovery and rendered as interactive confirmation cards
Psychology & Framework
- Author of Be Yourself: The Science and Spirituality of Who We Really Are — an ACT-grounded synthesis of consciousness science, comparative religion, and psychological flexibility that forms the intellectual core of Life MMO
- Developed the System of Self-Transcendence (SST) — an original framework unifying ACT's 6 principles, Universal Laws, and cross-worldview convergence, applied as the AI coaching model for the entire product
- Maintains an ongoing comparative religion and ACT knowledge vault (Obsidian) that feeds directly into the app's AI as a living research database, with notes spanning Stoicism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, depth psychology, and consciousness science
Engineering
- Sole engineer on Life MMO — a production full-stack AI coaching app built with Next.js 15, TypeScript, Supabase, and the Anthropic API, shipped from zero to production independently
- Implemented streaming AI responses via ReadableStream / SSE with real-time token-by-token rendering and mid-stream structured block extraction
- Built and deployed a push notification system (Web Push API + Vercel Cron) with per-user preference toggles and mention-based guild alerts
- Engineered a React Strict Mode-compatible tutorial system using Driver.js with soft-navigation fallbacks, optimistic local state, and server-side auto-advance
Work requirements: Fully remote and async. Flexible schedule accommodating cervical dystonia (a neurological movement disorder — managed, not degenerative). Strong preference for roles where deep, focused solo work is the output, not meeting-heavy collaboration. No degree — demonstrated through shipped product, published book, and domain expertise.