Compliance

High school athletes are minors, and wagering on their games is prohibited or tightly restricted in most jurisdictions. Declining to build a book would have been the easy half. The harder half, and the one this page is about, was making the thing impossible to turn into one: every control below is held in place by a test that fails loudly if it is removed.

Mission and purpose

Hometown Line exists to make high school football more fun to follow: a free game of skill in which fans forecast their teams' games, and a public record that credits every real score to the source it came from.

Forecasting Distributed Algorithmic Outcomes. A forecast of a real game's result, set against the model's algorithmic line, made alongside the forecasts of every other player, and scored only against a result with a named source. It is a contest of skill and prediction. It is not sports wagering: no money is staked, nothing is paid out, units have no monetary value, there are no prizes, and no money changes hands.

Posture

Mode: SIMULATION_ONLY
Notice: Skill and prediction only. A free game: the site's forecasts are generated by a model, and a score is real only where its source is named. Nothing in the game takes money or accepts a wager.
Payment rails: None in the game. Nothing a player does here can touch a payment path. The site's server holds dormant code for an optional Supporter plan, software beside the game; it is switched off, nothing is charged, and the game never reads it.
Units: An abstract score. There is no currency conversion anywhere.

Every prediction, probability and points figure produced by this system is synthetic model output, generated for research, education and fan engagement. None of it is an offer, a solicitation, or advice to act on. Confidence is denominated in abstract units, which cannot be bought, cashed or moved and have no monetary value.

A score is real only where its source is named beside it. The sources lists every one, and every source assessed and refused.

How it is enforced

Each control has a test that fails if it regresses.

The API refuses to start if any mounted route matches a money-surface pattern.
A syntax-tree scan rejects every payment or exchange import, and every money-moving name, anywhere in the game's code.
Picks have no currency column, and a database constraint pins units to an abstract score.
Simulation-only mode and robots.txt compliance raise at startup if either is switched off.
Every response body and header carries the notice, and the banner has no dismiss control.
A Supporter extra never reaches the game: no module that grants units, prices a game, records a pick or ranks a table may read it, and a test fails if one does.
The board covers this week and next for everyone. A game further out shows no model line and cannot be picked, by anyone, until its week comes up; Season Outlook is for reading only.
The weekly contest has no prize of any kind: there is no column that could hold one.
Credible threats are reported to local law enforcement, and child sexual abuse material to the NCMEC CyberTipline.
Units never move from one account to another. Side calls are for players 18 and older, at even terms, and are scored on their own table; a test fails if a settled call credits one player with what another lost.
Every account confirms at sign-up which of three age groups its holder is in; nobody under 13 can open one, the server refuses an account that has not agreed to the terms, and one that skipped the age question is treated as under 18.

Data access

Public pages, reviewed submissions, and synthetic data only.

robots.txt is consulted before every request, and a disallow is final.
An unreadable robots.txt is treated as a disallow, never as permission.
One honest, contactable user agent. No rotation, no browser impersonation.
A 401, 403 or 429 means the content is not public. The client stops there.
Gated sources are read only from a snapshot you downloaded yourself.

Allowed source kinds: public_web, user_upload, synthetic