SNOBOL4 died in 1967. Tonight, on Halloween, I brought it back.
Séance: Dead Tongues is a browser séance where the ghost of SNOBOL4 answers your questions — offline, no server, no API key, pure WebGPU.
What it does
- Ask questions → get answers in SNOBOL4's voice
- Cast 7 actual SNOBOL4 "spells" that execute real code in a WASM interpreter
- Works offline after first load (PWA)
- 100% free, runs in Chrome with WebGPU
The stack
- WebLLM — Gemma 3 1B running via WebGPU in your browser
- BM25 retrieval — finds relevant SNOBOL4 knowledge before prompting
- snoflake WASM — real SNOBOL4 interpreter, not simulated
- Vite PWA — offline-first service worker
The weird part
SNOBOL4's entire soul is pattern matching. I built a BM25 retriever over 30 knowledge notes about SNOBOL4, so the ghost actually knows what it's talking about — not hallucinating.
Try it
👉 https://shreshthabagohil.github.io/seance-dead-tongues/
Source: https://github.com/shreshthabagohil/seance-dead-tongues
Built for Hacktoberfest 2026 DEV Week 4.
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