Skip to content

Missions, hints, and progress

Every mission gives you a disposable environment and two pieces of direction:

  • Incident: the fictional operational situation.
  • Objective: the result the environment must show when you are done.

OpsQuest validates outcomes, not a prescribed command history. If two supported approaches leave the environment in the same correct state, both can pass.

Explore, act, observe

After each successful command, the game checks command output and environment state. Partial progress is reported without revealing one mandatory solution.

Inside a mission:

Control Purpose
objective Repeat the objective and suggested tool names
status Show satisfied and missing observable outcomes
hint Reveal the next progressive hint and reduce available XP
restart Rebuild the disposable environment from its original setup
help List teaching-shell commands
help COMMAND Show focused syntax and examples
? Show the mission and terminal-control guide
quit Leave the current attempt

The command guide, objective reminder, and help COMMAND are free. Progressive hints trade some XP for increasingly specific guidance. Hint progress remains recorded while a mission is incomplete, so quitting cannot erase the cost.

Choose a route

  • Bare opsquest play resumes the first incomplete Linux mission.
  • opsquest play --track docker selects the first incomplete Docker mission.
  • opsquest play --world N stays within one Linux world.
  • A global mission number or stable ID begins there and follows that track.
  • --once returns after one completed mission.
  • --web moves mission guidance and live outcome progress into a local browser companion while commands remain in the terminal.
  • Completed missions remain replayable and never award duplicate XP.

Inside a mission, play N means Stage N of the current world. A stable ID from map --ids can jump across worlds. next, previous, map, list, and world N navigate without returning to the top-level shell.

Listing progress preserves the active attempt. Switching missions or worlds starts fresh disposable state while retaining saved profile progress.

Completion and rewards

When every observable condition passes, OpsQuest closes the active environment before recording completion. The first completion awards hint-adjusted XP, records practiced commands, and may unlock achievements. Replays retain the original completion and reward.

The displayed level is derived from total XP. Ranks progress through:

  1. Intern
  2. Operator
  3. Junior Sysadmin
  4. Sysadmin
  5. SRE
  6. Senior SRE

Achievements recognize the first fix, a three-command pipeline, ten practiced commands, five hint-free completions, an advanced incident, and completion of the Linux track.

What persists

The local profile stores XP, ranks, completions, practiced commands, incomplete hint progress, onboarding state, and achievements. Virtual files, directories, processes, archives, environment variables, command history, and working directory belong only to one attempt.

Completions use stable mission IDs rather than display positions. The mission map can therefore grow without invalidating existing completions, provided those IDs remain compatible.

See Profiles and compatibility for storage and migration behavior.