Greetings HN! OP here. This is a project I've been working on for about six weeks now. On the one hand it's an experiment to see whether a chess site not based on the usual one-on-one gameplay can garner any interest. On the other hand, it's an experiment in building a reasonably interactive game on the capital-W Web without resorting to JavaScript. (I've been on an anti-framework kick for a while now.) There's not a single script tag here, just the server and your browser having a friendly chat with HTML and CSS.
This is the first project I've ever released publicly, so even if it flops it's already a personal victory just to get something off my local disk and out in front of the world. I'd love to take your feedback and suggestions and to answer any questions you might have.