Founding issue / April 17, 2026 Numero fondateur / 17 avril 2026 Grunnutgave / 17. april 2026 Builder energy, clean receipts. Energie d'atelier, comptes propres. Byggerenergi og ryddige spor.
Section 10 / Projects Section 10 / Projets Seksjon 10 / Prosjekter Jazz desk / machine room / family archive / pataphysical bulletin Cahier jazz / salle des machines / archive familiale / bulletin pataphysique Jazzdesk / maskinrom / familiearkiv / pataphysisk bulletin

davegilligan.com

Dave Gilligan

Private AI. Jazz rooms. Civic weather. Pataphysical field notes. IA privee. Salles de jazz. Meteo civique. Notes de terrain pataphysiques. Privat AI. Jazzrom. Samfunnsvaer. Pataphysiske feltnotater.

A bright retro paper for machine rooms, multilingual weather, Norway, family rights, live culture, and the deliberate misuse of the impossible. Un journal retro-lumineux pour les salles des machines, le temps multilingue, la Norvege, les droits familiaux, la culture vivante et l'usage delibere de l'impossible. Et lyst retroblad for maskinrom, flerspraklig vaer, Norge, familierett, levende kultur og bevisst misbruk av det umulige.
The interface changes language first. Long-form features stay in their original edition until translated. L'interface change de langue d'abord. Les longs articles restent dans leur edition d'origine pour l'instant. Grensesnittet skifter sprak forst. Langartiklene blir staende i originalutgaven til de er oversatt.
Section 10 / projects desk

The April project is a music-trivia machine with a rhinoceros in the judging booth.

Trivia & Tunes is the first full vibe-coded product in the portfolio: a live trivia platform built for homes, venues, tournaments, player identities, and now a genuinely theatrical AI layer.

Project notebook Trivia x AI x room design

Trivia nights usually suffer from one of two problems. Either they are dead administrative exercises disguised as fun, or they are charming little messes that collapse as soon as a room gets big, loud, or demanding. Trivia & Tunes is interesting because it refuses that choice. It wants proper room energy and proper system design at the same time.

The live public site still presents the older triptych: solo host, live display, and pro live. Even in that public form, the platform already reads as more than a hobby project. It speaks in formats, roles, display logic, music sources, venues, tournaments, and player identity. That is the vocabulary of an ecosystem, not a one-off game.

The working April build goes further. In the local codebase reviewed on April 6, 2026, Trivia & Tunes has already developed an AI vocabulary of its own: AI Home, AI Live, AI Solo, model selection, per-question commentary, round wrapups, game wrapups, and a named judging persona called Blue Note Rhino. That is not decorative AI sprayed over an old surface. It is a real change in product character.

What makes the Rhino interesting is not merely that it grades. Plenty of systems can call a model and pretend they have solved judgment. Here the ambition is theatrical. The Rhino has strictness levels, a configurable personality, free-text semantic grading, and the beginnings of a running relationship with the room. In other words, the machine is not only a checker. It is becoming part of the night.

That matters because music trivia is social timing more than raw database retrieval. A good night has pacing, tension, recovery, banter, and a little danger. The AI layer works best when it helps the host keep those qualities alive rather than replacing them. The most promising parts of the local build do exactly that: commentary between questions, wrapups between rounds, and mode-specific flows that respect the room rather than flatten it.

The codebase also reveals another practical truth: this is not a toy AI experiment sitting in isolation. There are management surfaces, player records, team structures, events, tournaments, login gates, model logs, and admin settings. Even voice is already staged, with a TTS service ready for testing across multiple languages. If the GPU and IIS side are not always awake yet, the architecture is nevertheless pointing in the right direction.

That is why this April project deserves the Projects desk rather than a casual mention elsewhere. Trivia & Tunes is the first full, opinionated, public-facing vibe-coded product in the portfolio: music-heavy, UX-led, multilingual, operationally serious, and now decisively AI-backed. It has enough room heat to feel alive, and enough systems underneath to survive contact with real users.

What Makes It Hot
The point is not that the product uses AI. The point is that the AI layer changes how the room behaves.

One game, multiple room geometries

The product is not just a quiz app. It is a room-design system. One-screen home play, host-plus-display nights, and phone-driven player lanes all exist as distinct social formats rather than accidental layouts.

Blue Note Rhino as judge and emcee

The AI layer is not framed as vague assistance. It grades free-text answers, applies strictness levels, generates wrapups, reacts to how a round went, and speaks in a built persona instead of silent utility.

Music is treated as infrastructure

Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube are not ornamental add-ons. They sit inside the trivia flow itself, which is why the whole thing feels closer to a hosted night than a generic browser game.

A real management surface

Questions, players, teams, events, tournaments, venue pages, and media links are all treated as editable operating material, not hard-coded brochure text.

The first real vibe-coded product

The internal build notes tell the truth plainly: start with room feel, iterate fast, keep it useful, document everything, and let the software earn its style through use.

The April turn

This month matters because the product crosses a line from 'music trivia with good UX' into 'music trivia with an actual AI performance layer,' and that changes the identity of the whole thing.

April feature Direct article

Trivia & Tunes and the Arrival of True AI at the Pub Quiz

A spring 2026 project dispatch on music trivia, Blue Note Rhino, multiplayer formats, and the small matter of giving a quiz night an actual machine personality.

Open the article
Source Credits
Public claims come from the live Trivia & Tunes site. Build-state claims are explicitly grounded in the reviewed local repository on April 6, 2026.
Trivia & Tunes games page

Used for the live public format breakdown: solo host, live game with big-screen display, and pro live with mobile answering.

Local Trivia & Tunes working repository

Reviewed locally on April 6, 2026 for AI Home, AI Live, AI Solo, Blue Note Rhino, wrapups, per-question commentary, model management, call logging, and voice-service staging.

How We Built Trivia & Tunes

Used for the internal product-development narrative around vibe coding, iterative delivery, UX-first decisions, and the explanation of the system for non-technical readers.