HyperCard let people build small applications by connecting cards. AfterStack brings that approachable idea into an offline browser page: an author writes a card, adds choices, and decides which named flags those choices change. A player explores the resulting world without an account, a cloud service or arbitrary imported scripts.
The current prototype includes two original examples. In The Last Lighthouse, two keepers pass the keyboard between shore exploration and a notebook. They collect a lens, charge a battery and learn the door code before lighting the lamp. Circuit Garden uses the same runtime for a short puzzle about two switches in series. Both have reachable endings verified by an exhaustive traversal of their finite state graphs.
The player can undo a move without losing the earlier state. A downloaded save file preserves the current card, flags and history. Tab and Enter operate ordinary controls. Optional scanning cycles through available choices, Undo, Restart and Stop scan; Space activates the highlighted item. Save/load and scan speed are outside that single-input control set. The interface uses text and standard buttons so the branching interaction does not depend on dragging or timed puzzles. It has not been tested with assistive-technology users, and no accessibility-conformance claim is made.
Authors use a form to choose a card, edit its title and body, add a uniquely named card, and add or remove choices targeting existing cards. Declared flags can be selected as requirements or effects without writing code. Validate & play applies the edits, while editor Undo restores earlier edits. JSON import/export remains an advanced option. The validator rejects broken links, duplicate card ids and undeclared effects. Imported text is displayed as text rather than executed as code. The single-page build contains the runtime, editor and both examples and can run without a server or network connection.
AfterStack reinterprets the card-stack model rather than emulating a Macintosh or opening old HyperCard binary files. Decker already offers integrated card authoring, scripted interaction and self-contained HTML; Twine is another relevant alternative. AfterStack deliberately narrows that broader authoring space to named flags and reversible choices. Its intended contribution is a small local teaching and handoff-play tool where a beginner can change a branching story through forms and inspect its reachable-state count and ending list, while a player can recover through the same switch-scanning loop.
A real Kiro CLI session added the form editor, recoverable scan controls, editor tests and the required single-file bundler changes. The current Node suite passes 52 tests across the engine and editor. Local browser checks covered form edits and validation, editor undo and revalidation, a lighthouse ending, scanned selection and ending Undo, and a downloaded save restored after Restart. Pressing Space while an editor field had focus did not advance play. These checks establish those interactions, rather than general accessibility or learning effects. The Kiroween category under consideration is Resurrection.
