How to play Tokenstone

Choose your first sprint

Sign in with Google, GitHub, X or email. Choose Play solo to practice against a bot, Ranked to compete for Elo, or create a friend room and send its invitation link. Friendly matches do not change your Elo. Each lab has a ready-to-play 30-card starter deck.

Compare the nine CEOs and their powers, then look through the starter decks.

Compute, your mana

You gain one more permanent Compute crystal each sprint, up to 10. Compute refreshes at the start of your turn and pays for cards and CEO powers. A card’s cost appears in its top corner. Tech Debt locks some of your Compute on the next sprint.

Play cards and attack

Drag a card from your hand onto the board to play it. Minions stay on the board and fight; spells resolve once; Gear equips your CEO to attack. For a targeted spell or ability, drag its arrow onto a valid target.

Drag a ready minion with a green glow onto an enemy to attack. New minions normally wait until your next sprint. Ship It allows immediate attacks; Hotfix allows immediate attacks against minions. A Guardrail must be attacked before other enemies.

Each CEO has a unique power, usable once per sprint when you can afford it. Click the round button beside your portrait. NDAs stay hidden until the opponent triggers them.

How Hype works

Hype is a stored resource. Cards and powers explicitly grant or spend it; Hype does not automatically become damage or Compute. OpenAI can build Hype with Vague Post, make GPT-5 cheaper and spend it through AGI. Sakana AI also uses Hype for stronger mutations. Read each card’s effect before spending it.

Health, Runway and Fatigue

Each CEO starts with 30 Health. Runway absorbs damage before Health. Your hand holds up to 10 cards. If your hand is full, drawing a real card burns that card and removes it from your deck. Drawing from an empty deck causes Fatigue even with a full hand: the first empty draw deals 1 damage, the next 2, then 3, and so on. Runway absorbs Fatigue before Health.

The burning turn rope

Normally, your first sprint lasts 45 seconds, your second 55 seconds, and later sprints 75 seconds. The rope burns during the final 20 seconds. When it reaches End Sprint, your turn ends automatically. Reconnecting and opening a Research choice do not reset the clock.

If a sprint expires without you taking any action, your next sprint is shortened to 10 seconds. Taking a legal action before that short clock expires clears the inactivity penalty. If the sprint continues, its normal deadline is restored from the original turn start; it does not restart the timer.

Use End Sprint when you are finished. In solo play, Ask Copilot can suggest a move.

Win, climb and challenge a friend

Ranked results update your Elo rating. You can share a result, a rating card or a friend invitation with its own illustrated preview. Sharing is optional; you decide whether to post to X. A friend room stays open while its host is online, for up to 10 minutes.

Card keyword glossary

Guardrail

Enemies must attack this first.

Safety Filter

The first damage taken is blocked.

Ship It

Can attack immediately.

Hotfix

Can attack minions immediately.

Parallel

Can attack twice each turn.

Stealth Mode

Can't be attacked or targeted until it attacks.

Toxic

Destroys any minion damaged by this.

Monetize

Damage dealt also heals your CEO.

Pivot

Returns to life with 1 Health the first time it dies.

Air-Gapped

Can't be targeted by spells or CEO Powers.

Rate Limiter

Rate Limits any character it damages.

Can't Attack

Can't attack.

Too Big to Fail

Takes no damage.

Overfit

Can't attack CEOs.

Launch

Does something when you play it from your hand.

Exit

Does something when it dies.

NDA

Hidden until your opponent triggers it on their turn.

Research

Choose one of three cards to add to your hand.

Scale

Your spells deal extra damage.

Tech Debt

You have fewer Compute next turn.

Synergy

Bonus if you already played a card this turn.

A/B Test

Choose one of two effects.

Rate Limit

A rate-limited character skips its next attack.

Deprecate

Remove all card text and buffs.

In Training

Can't act or be affected for a few of your turns, then wakes up.

Fine-Tune

Upgrades into a stronger card after a few of your turns.

Open Weights

Your opponent also gets a copy (it costs 1 more). Gifted copies do not create another copy.

Hype

A stored resource. Cards explicitly grant or spend Hype; it does not automatically become damage or Compute.

Runway

Absorbs damage dealt to your CEO.

Distill

Copy cards from your opponent's deck.

Copied

A card created as a copy of another card.