open-source · play-by-post
Cuento is a free, open-source message board built for collaborative storytelling. Create worlds, run campaigns, write characters — together, at your own pace.
Play-by-post (PbP) is a style of collaborative storytelling where participants take turns writing their characters' actions, thoughts, and dialogue — like a never-ending novel written by many hands. Cuento gives you a dedicated space to do exactly that, without ads, algorithms, or noise.
Manage all your characters under a single account. Switch between them seamlessly — in game and out.
Follow all your game posts from one place and subscribe to notifications so you never miss a reply.
Earn in-game currency automatically as you write and play — no manual tracking needed.
Lore pages that look as good as the worlds they describe — clean, readable, and immersive.
Ask questions and get answers from your game's lore and event history — powered by AI, built into the forum.
Character reservations and sheet approvals handled automatically — less admin work, more storytelling.
Automatically detect inactive players and send reminders before a character's slot goes cold.
Design your own character sheet forms, game topic headers, and more — no coding required.
Build your forum's header from pre-made widgets — show world stats, active players, custom text, and more.
Full control over the HTML structure of your forum's pages. Build exactly what you envision.
Edit CSS and see changes on the real forum in real time — without disrupting the view for other users.
Save your work-in-progress designs as drafts and return to edit them whenever you're ready.
Built-in syntax highlighting in the editor makes writing and reviewing code a pleasure.
Your data stays on your server. GDPR-compliant by design. No SaaS lock-in, ever.
Deploy, update, and troubleshoot your instance using the official Cuento CLI — one tool for everything.
Your instance code lives on GitHub and deploys automatically via GitHub Actions. Push to ship.
Runs comfortably on a VPS with 1 CPU and 1 GB RAM. No Kubernetes, no headaches.
A built-in monitoring screen gives you a live view of your instance's health and resource usage.
Private messages are end-to-end encrypted. Your users' conversations stay private, always.
Cuento is Apache 2.0-licensed and lives on GitHub. File a bug, suggest a feature, fork the whole thing — the code is yours. We believe storytelling tools should be as free as storytelling itself.
cuento-backend cuento-frontend cuento-cli
