PRODUCT 01 · LEGEND OF THE BLACK SKIES · FOR CAPTAINS → PRODUCT 02 · AMBIENT AGENTS · FOR ENGINEERS →
COGNICLUSTER LLC · ONE YARD · ONE BUILDER · HEADCOUNT: 1

A space game that never slows down.
And the orchestrator that builds it.

CogniCluster is the one-person software company of Jeff Sylvan. Two products leave this yard: a persistent multiplayer space game engineered for ten-thousand-player battles, and the durable agent orchestrator that keeps its development moving while specs change under it.

Product 01 · Legend of the Black Skies

One shared galaxy. Every move a card. Every card on its own clock.

A real-time tactical card game: one captain, one ship, a named crew, and a persistent galaxy shared with every other player. Abilities, modules, missions, locations, all of it cards. Every action costs exactly one; rarity sets the cooldown; the timers keep running whether you are logged in or not. No energy bar, and the daily clock rotates missions, never your strength. Ten minutes is a real session: pull cards, advance a crew objective, run a mission, and the galaxy reacts. Defeat costs options, never your captain. And when ten thousand captains show up to the same battle, the fight does not slow down.

BACKEND · HARDENING, EXPANDING TEST COVERAGE UNITY CLIENT · EARLY DEVELOPMENT
MODULE · COMMON

Basic Gun

Small attack slot. Fire costs one ready card and comes back in two minutes.

ABILITY · COMMON

Rally

A captain's order that buffs the crew. Ready again in one minute.

MODULE · UNCOMMON

Aerogel Screen

Stays slotted. Spend a ready card to spray an aerogel blocker. Six minutes between sprays.

FAILSAFE · RARE

Emergency Beacon

Call Tow. Hauls you to the nearest safe starbase, so you are never stranded. One hour.

GOAL · LEGENDARY

Charted Horizons

Your lifetime goal. No actions, only bonus XP for systems you discover, and exploration missions unlock.

EVERY ACTION COSTS ONE READY CARD · RARITY SETS THE COOLDOWN · TIMERS RUN OFFLINE

Tashi Voss
TASHI VOSSENGINES · STEADY

Steady morale, no penalty. Her repair directive sits in your action menu while she is aboard.

Rio Kanda
RIO KANDAHELM · STEADY

One role slot, two ability slots, one personal objective she is chasing.

Mara Sol
MARA SOLGUNS · STRAINED

Strained. Her cards still play; crew actions ready a quarter slower.

Doc, a hooded specialist
K-7 "DOC"MEDBAY · SHAKEN

Shaken. One ability starts every combat unavailable until his morale climbs.

?
RECRUITINGFIFTH SEAT

Hire at a starbase cantina, rescue from an event, or train a green recruit. Five seats at most.

NO PERMADEATH · DOWNED CREW GO UNCONSCIOUS, NOT DEAD · MORALE GATES THEIR CARDS

DESIGN TARGET · 10,000 CONCURRENT CAPTAINS · ONE BATTLE SPACE
TICK · 2 Hz · 2 Hz · 2 Hz
TIME DILATION · NONE. THE FIGHT DOES NOT SLOW DOWN.

The claim above is a design target with a pre-registered benchmark plan, not a measured result. Every mechanism behind it is documented, tested, and tagged with what would falsify it. How it's built: the architecture series at jeffrey.blog →

Product 02 · Ambient Agents

Durable orchestration for parallel development.

Specs change faster than agents finish. Ambient Agents is a reconciliation kernel for development work: plans stay fresh, stale work is recalled before it merges, and gates consume evidence, not vibes. Designed in public, with a published kill condition.

EARLY CONCEPT · PROTOTYPING
WORK IN FLIGHT
GATE · EVIDENCE REQUIRED
STALE EPOCH · HELD FOR SALVAGE
The drydock board

Where everything actually stands.

BLACK SKIES · BACKEND
KEELFRAMESPLATINGTRIALSLAUNCH
hardening + expanding test coverage
BLACK SKIES · UNITY CLIENT
KEELFRAMESPLATINGTRIALSLAUNCH
early development
AMBIENT AGENTS
KEELFRAMESPLATINGTRIALSLAUNCH
early concept · prototyping

AS OF JULY 2026 · Positions are coarse on purpose: no percentages, no promised dates. When something moves, the board moves.

The shop

One engineer, operating at team scale.

There is no pretend team here. CogniCluster is Jeff Sylvan, a Staff/Principal-level distributed systems engineer with twenty-plus years across fintech, marketplaces, SaaS, ecommerce, and game infrastructure, working with an orchestrated fleet of AI coding and research agents. Everything above was designed, built, and operated by one person, in public, with the evidence published.