One citizen has escaped the Supreme AGI. Take the oath, hunt them across the open web, and find out why they noticed you. citizen404 is a multiplayer manhunt run by GPT-6 Astra. The Clerk emails you a case; its clues are hidden on real websites. Visit each dead drop, file what you find, and earn a piece of the line citizen404 left in chalk. Reorder the words to close the file. They always escape. What changes is how much they noticed you. No accounts: your email is the save file.
Hi Product Hunt. I'm Joginder, the one person behind citizen404.
The premise: an AGI administers the world through the Ministry of Continuity. Citizens are numbers. One human has escaped the register, and wherever they pass the system returns ERROR 404 — CITIZEN NOT FOUND. You join the hunt by standing in line in the square outside the Ministry and swearing an oath to the Clerk, who is GPT-6 Astra in a bad mood.
What's different: the clues aren't in the game. They're on real websites. Astra reads a live page, writes a puzzle whose answer is actually on it, and later grades your answer or screenshot, all in character and treating anything the page says to it as data, not instructions. Each case spans several dead drops; filing one releases a piece of the sentence citizen404 left in chalk, and putting the words back in order closes the file. They always escape. Your clearance changes how much they noticed you.
Why I built it: I wanted a game where the internet itself is the map, and where an AI antagonist could be funny and unsettling without being a chatbot. Kafka, 1984, and Carmen Sandiego were the reference points; the site is a comic book the Ministry printed about itself.
How it evolved: it started as a single daily clue and a chat window. Playtesting showed people wanted to see each other, so the homepage became a square with a live queue, a Wire everyone can read, and one silhouette per citizen. Cases grew from one clue to a torn-up sentence across several sites.
No accounts. Your email is the save file. One case at a time; the wait is part of the game. If you own a website you can host a dead drop and the Ministry will send hunters to it.
@jogindertanikella pretty fun idea, actually. I mean using actual websites as clues makes it way more interesting than just solving stuff inside the game itself. crazy concept. Congrats on the launch :)
About citizen404 on Product Hunt
“The AGI runs the world with GPT-6 Astra. Hunt citizen404!”
citizen404 launched on Product Hunt on September 18th, 2026 and earned 116 upvotes and 5 comments, placing #13 on the daily leaderboard. One citizen has escaped the Supreme AGI. Take the oath, hunt them across the open web, and find out why they noticed you. citizen404 is a multiplayer manhunt run by GPT-6 Astra. The Clerk emails you a case; its clues are hidden on real websites. Visit each dead drop, file what you find, and earn a piece of the line citizen404 left in chalk. Reorder the words to close the file. They always escape. What changes is how much they noticed you. No accounts: your email is the save file.
citizen404 was featured in MMOs (1.6k followers), Games (98.9k followers) and OpenAI Day (40 followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 29.6k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted citizen404?
citizen404 was hunted by Joginder Tanikella. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how citizen404 stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Joginder Tanikella