The Project Story: ZeroTrust Daily

Inspiration

As a cybersecurity graduate, I am acutely aware that in this evolving age of cyber threats, there is a critical need for people to be more informed and vigilant. I was motivated by the prospect of building a tool that helps people protect themselves in the real world. I loved the idea of creating something that is both fun and educative, so I built this project on Reddit to meet people where they already congregate.

My goal was to build a daily habit for players while making them more cyber-aware and secure. I wanted to create a "Live Fire" simulation that turns threat detection into a daily ritual.

What it Does

ZeroTrust Daily is a tactical cyber-defense simulation living entirely inside Reddit. It features an integrated ecosystem designed for long-term engagement:

• Intercept (Daily Challenge): Players receive a classified document containing "leaked" sensitive intel. Using a custom Redaction Tool, they must find and scrub PII while preserving necessary context.
• Blitz (Speed Round): A high-speed triage mode where players identify malicious domains against a database of 20,000+ real-world examples. To challenge elite analysts, I engineered an integrated difficulty curve: as streaks build, the Subtlety Score (0–100) rises, dynamically triggering the Zero-Trust "Kill Zone"—a phase where AI-generated "Ugly Safe" domain traps appear to test linguistic pattern recognition at the highest level.
• PvP Challenge System: A dedicated mode where users can challenge friends to beat their specific Blitz score, creating a viral loop of competitive security training.
• Community Intel: A collaborative development feature where users can submit real-world threats they encounter. Verified submissions are added to the database, making the game an evolving, community-driven threat intelligence platform.
• The Operative Handbook: An animated, interactive tutorial system (not just static text) that onboards new agents with cinematic flair.
• The Economy & Progression:
  • CryptoKeys & Black Market: Earn currency through accurate play to unlock specialized themes (Matrix, Red Room, Midnight).
  • Persistent Streak System: Daily streak tracking with built-in "Freeze" mechanics and a custom Reminder System to ensure agents never miss a mission.
  • Achievements & Ranks: A robust badge system (e.g., 10x Streaks) that allows players to level up from "Intern" to "Director".
  • Granular Leaderboards: Compete across specific categories—Blitz, Intercept, Community, and Global—to prove your status as an elite defender.

How I Built it

I pushed the boundaries of the Reddit Devvit Platform using a research-driven approach. I consulted expert game design principles to determine the exact elements—such as tactile feedback, responsive controls, and high-frequency reward loops—that make a game "pleasing" and habit-forming.

• The Engine: A React application wrapped in Devvit’s custom runtime, using Framer Motion to create a tactile UI where text types character-by-character.
• Adversarial AI: I implemented a Round-Robin fetcher using Groq and Cerebras APIs to generate real-time, context-aware phishing decoys.
• X-Ray Polish: Every component—from the CRT scanline overlay to the haptic-like "thud" of the redact button—was audited against a 50-point usability checklist.

Challenges I Ran Into

• The "Hallucination" Crisis: Initial AI-generated datasets had a 67% failure rate. I engineered a custom Sanitizer Pipeline to logically verify every puzzle, filtering 4,000+ candidates down to 1,490 perfect scenarios.
• The "Back Button" Trap: On Android, the hardware "Back" button kills the webview instantly. Since this cannot be strictly overridden in the browser, I had to engineer a creative UI Workaround that traps internal navigation states, ensuring players don't accidentally exit the mission during critical gameplay.
• The Clipboard & Sharing Wall: Accessing the native clipboard and sharing intents from within a webview iframe proved incredibly difficult due to browser security policies. I had to develop specific fallback mechanisms to ensure users could still copy their "Challenge Codes" to share with friends.
• The Audio "Autoplay" Jail: Browsers aggressively block audio contexts on the web. I had to build a custom Sound Manager that queues and unlocks the entire SFX library (typing, glitches, ambient hum) on the very first user interaction.

Accomplishments that I'm Proud Of

• The Hybrid Viewport Engine: I successfully engineered a responsive system that allows the game to be played seamlessly in both Inline (embedded in the post) and Expanded (full screen) views. Balancing the UI layout, touch targets, and font scaling across these two drastically different aspect ratios on both PC and Mobile was a massive technical undertaking.
• Massive Scale: ZeroTrust launched with 20,770 unique domain scenarios, ensuring a player might not see a repeat question for years.
• Native-Grade Physics: I achieved 60FPS spring-physics (Stiffness 500) for the card swiping mechanism, making a web-based view feel indistinguishable from a native mobile application.
• The "Subtlety" Engine: Successfully coding the logic that mixes static database questions with live AI injection based on a player's real-time streak performance.

What I Learned

Building for Devvit taught me that a game isn't an island; it's a community event. I learned how to design "Daily" loops that encourage collective discussion and "Sit-Rep" reporting within Reddit threads.

What's next for ZeroTrust

• Global DEFCON: A community-wide cooperative goal to lower global alert levels.
• Community vs. Community Battles: Expanding the challenge system to allow entire subreddits to battle for supremacy on the leaderboards.
• True Accessibility Integration: Going beyond simple text scaling to support every form of disability, including full screen-reader support, motion reduction modes, and high-contrast UI rendering.
• Modular Theme Engine: Improving the design architecture to render the UI layer separately, allowing for deeper, totally distinct visual overhauls.
• Community-Driven Evolution: Working directly with player feedback to refine the threat database and gameplay loops, ensuring the game evolves alongside real-world threats.

Built With

• devvit
• framer-motion
• react
• redis
• tailwind-css
• typescript