Connect 4

How to play

Classic Connect 4 — drop discs into a 7×6 grid and get four in a row (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) before your opponent does.

• Host a game. Enter a name, hit Create game, and share the short code with a friend.
• Join a game. Type someone else's code in. If both seats are full you can drop in as a spectator instead.
• Take your turn. Click any column when it's your turn. The disc falls to the lowest empty cell.
• Mind the clock. You have 30 seconds per move. Run out and you lose — there's no legal "pass" move in Connect 4.
• Win highlight. The four winning cells glow green. The board stays on the results screen so you can gloat or grimace.

Spectators & disconnects

• Anyone with the code can watch live as a spectator (up to 10 per game).
• If your opponent disappears for 30 seconds you'll see an "Opponent disconnected" notice.
• After 2 minutes of no-show you can claim the win.
• Resigning hands the win to your opponent immediately.

About the leaderboard

The leaderboard is for fun — please treat it that way.

Scores are keyed by whatever display name you type in. There are no accounts, no passwords, and nothing stopping you from playing as "Magnus Carlsen" against yourself in two browser tabs. So: it's trivially easy to fool, and that's fine — it's a demo, not a competitive ladder. Play nice.  ;-)

Why does this exist?

This whole app was built in under an hour as a live demo for a vibe coding introduction talk to developers — showing how far you can get with an AI pair-programmer in a single sitting: schema, API, polling game loop, PWA wiring, leaderboard and all.

It's not meant to be a serious product. It's meant to be a fun illustration of what a focused hour with the right tools looks like in 2026.