Where this is going, and what we are doing about it today.

1 Get a stranger from download to their first evening

People download Homie and do not come out the other side as a working box in a living room. Nothing on this list matters next to that. A new Homie now reports, once, that it started, so the gap stops being a guess — and the install is being walked start to finish on a clean Mac.Done when: Downloads and first starts can be compared, and most of the gap between them is gone.

2 The camera, in a room you share

Your Homie puts its own camera onto the picture your room is sharing, switched on from a phone, so everybody is on video around whatever is on the television. The watching half is live; the half that runs on your box is not.Done when: The host half ships in a box release, verified on the real lens before anybody is told it works.

3 Know whether today was better than yesterday

Plays and players were lifetime totals with no day attached, so this house could not tell whether its own product was being used more than last week. A play now belongs to the day it started on — no hour, no minute, no zone.Done when: A day of real play can be read and set beside the day before it.

4 Health checks that pass

The box checks its own health and too many of those checks come back failed. Whatever a stranger hits on their first evening, this house is hitting too.Done when: The share of healthy checks stays above eight in ten for three days running.

5 Somebody outside this house hears it exists

There is no marketing and the waitlist is flat. That is on purpose at this size: more people arriving to hit the same wall is worth less than removing the wall. This goes to the top once a stranger can reliably get it running.Done when: People nobody here invited are asking for it.

Real work, decided and written down, that nothing above is waiting on. The order here is not a queue.

Houses trade what they make

A shelf of games, songs and films that another Homie can install, change, and send the change back. One house can share a link today; houses cannot yet keep each other supplied.

Games that use the whole room

The lights, the camera and standing up off the couch, available to anything Homie builds — not a handful of demos that had to be wired by hand.

Sticks, d-pads and tilt reach the game

A phone's thumbstick, d-pad and tilt do not drive a game on the television yet. Buttons do. Anything that wants steering is waiting on this.

Lights that survive the router

When the router hands the light bridge a new address, Homie keeps talking to the old one and says the lights are not wired up. It should find the bridge again by itself.

A shared link that keeps all of its own files

Some shared links served games with pieces missing. The repair is in; the work left is making it impossible rather than fixed.

The first stranger's install, recorded end to end

Somebody who has never seen Homie, their own Mac, their own television, nothing edited out. It cannot be made until the first item above lands.

How this pays for itself

The paid part is the plumbing a house cannot run for itself, and a cut of what creators sell. Local play stays free. The price is not decided and nothing is charged in beta.