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QuaterniTS

Notation & scope

Unofficial and unaffiliated

Section titled “Unofficial and unaffiliated”

QuaterniTS is an unofficial, community-driven project. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the rights holders of the official Quaternity game or project, and it uses no official logos or visual assets.

The MIT LICENSE covers this project’s original work only — not third-party names, rules text, trademarks, artwork or other assets. QuaterniTS is developed free of charge with no monetization; that is a project intention, not a license condition, and it limits no one’s MIT rights.

Bounded rules contract

Section titled “Bounded rules contract”

QuaterniTS is a bounded, fail-closed rules library, not a complete game engine. It generates committable moves and applies supported outcomes; it does not guess an outcome when the official rules leave one unknown. A lone active controller wins, and a two-active-controller stalemate or unanimously accepted draw offer is a draw. Other positions remain in-progress unless a supported action produces an outcome.

A checked controller can have internal defensive moves but no safe publicly committable move after mate and army-transfer effects are considered. The constructed coordinate witness shows why this is not ordinary checkmate: its only apparent defence exposes its own king after another king is removed. The library rejects that unresolved commit atomically with UnresolvedAdjudicationError; it can also raise the same error when such a state is encountered on turn. Neither case is a game result. Ordinary checkmate, where there is no internal defence, still applies. The official outcome for the unresolved position remains unknown: no mate, pass, draw, elimination or award is inferred. Until an authoritative ruling establishes an outcome, this fail-closed contract remains in place; publishing the package does not make the library a complete game engine.

Other limits

Section titled “Other limits”
  • No notation compatibility. Long coordinates in, typed event records out; there is no FEN, PGN or SAN support in any form, and no chess.js API parity. See the compatibility matrix.
  • No board renderer. The library is headless and ships no UI, server, clock, opponent or AI.