Troubleshooting

Installing and starting

The AppImage exits at once, mentioning libfuse.so.2

It needs FUSE 2, which Ubuntu 22.04 and later do not install by default: sudo apt install libfuse2t64 (24.04 and later) or sudo apt install libfuse2 (22.04).

On Ubuntu 24.04 the AppImage exits: The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly

Ubuntu 24.04 lets a program use the user namespaces Chromium's sandbox needs only if an AppArmor profile says so, and an AppImage cannot install one. Use the .deb, which installs the profile, or start the AppImage with --no-sandbox.

Windows says Windows protected your PC

The installer is not code-signed yet. Click More info, then Run anyway. Check the file's SHA-256 against the release notes first if you like.

macOS says the app cannot be opened or is damaged

It is not notarised yet. Run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Community Lab IDE.app" once, or use System Settings › Privacy & Security › Open Anyway. There is no build for Intel Macs.

The launch screen shows a red message

The engine did not start. The message says why and the end of its log is beneath it; Help › Show Logs has the whole of it. See First launch. There is no retry button: quit and start the app again. If it persists, reinstall.

The app was already open, and launching it again did nothing

Only one copy runs at a time; a second launch brings the first window to the front.

The province

Nothing moves

The province starts paused. Press Space.

People are not walking, or there are no conversations

At speeds above an hour a second the province is a time-lapse: people are shown where their plan puts them, and conversations and intruders happen only in the animated day. Press 5 or slower.

The speed shown in the corner is lower than the speed I chose

The corner shows the speed actually achieved. At a year a second a slow machine may fall short; the simulation is the same, it just takes longer.

The 3D close-up never appears

Check the 3D button in the zoom column is on. The close-up needs WebGL 2; on a machine without it the map stays flat (the developer tools' console says 3D view unavailable). The first time, the 3D people take a moment to load.

The 3D close-up stutters

It draws the 140 nearest people at full detail near the camera. A local language model and the close-up compete for the GPU's memory: a 20b model holds about 7 GB once a conversation has loaded it. Close other GPU-heavy programs, or choose a smaller model.

My province is gone after restarting the app

The app keeps the basis you built, not the running province: each launch starts it afresh at day 0, on the same seed and basis, so the same history follows. To keep a scenario, save it as a province file (File › New › The Province on Screen, as a File).

Conversations and models

The model chip says no model

No provider is available. Start Ollama and pull a model (ollama pull gpt-oss:20b), then open Settings and press refresh (the app looks for Ollama when it starts, and again when you ask); or add a key for a hosted provider and press save.

A conversation says model failed — showing chatter

The model could not be reached or did not answer; the map's corner shows the reason. The conversation carries on with procedural lines. The engine runs at most two conversations at a time through a model; try again in a moment.

Ollama runs on another machine or port

Set OLLAMA_HOST (with http://) in the environment the app starts from, for instance OLLAMA_HOST=http://192.168.1.20:11434.

The workbench

… changed on disk since it was opened

Another program changed the file after you opened it. Reload from disk takes theirs; Keep mine and overwrite saves yours over it.

A basis value was left out

The engine does not take that value (an unknown name, or a value outside the range a file may set); the rest of the file was applied. Basis parameters lists every name and range.

An experiment is refused: … province-years … at most 800

Seeds × years × (arms + 1) must be 800 or less. Use fewer seeds, fewer years or fewer arms.

My unsaved edits disappeared when I opened another folder

Opening a different workspace replaces the open tabs without asking. Save first (Ctrl+Shift+S).

Getting help

Help › Report an Issue opens the project's issue tracker. Reports you would rather keep private go to bugs@scelo.ai; security issues, as SECURITY.md in the repository says. Include the version (Help › About, or the app menu on a Mac) and the logs (Help › Show Logs).