Phaethon

news / / 2 min read

The fork goes its own way

It started as a staging copy for fixes meant to go back to OpenGOAL. By September 3rd nothing went back, Jak X was the mission, and the fork stood on its own.

Three stages in a row, a staging copy, the end of the link to upstream and the hard fork, the last one outlined in gold
From a staging copy to a hard fork in seven weeks.
on this page
  1. A staging copy
  2. Done with upstream
  3. The hard fork
  4. What came after

The project that became Phaethon did not split from OpenGOAL on one day. It came apart in stages over seven weeks, and each stage made the next one easier to see.

A staging copy

The repository was created on July 15th as a personal staging copy of OpenGOAL: a place to prepare fixes and send them upstream. Between July 17th and 23rd, eight went to OpenGOAL. Three were merged, one of them a fix for Jak X.

On July 22nd the work turned to Jak X itself, with a plan to send the bring-up upstream when it was ready. Drafting that plan turned up something unexpected. OpenGOAL had already merged a large Jak X commit back in December 2025, collecting other people's unfinished work so it would not be lost. It did not boot, and most of its files were placeholders, but it meant upstream's Jak X and this one were already two different things.

Done with upstream

On August 28th the GitHub fork was deleted, which closed the five fixes still waiting upstream, and the job that kept this repository's records in step with upstream's went with it. The repository became private and self-contained.

The hard fork

On September 3rd it became official. The README was rewritten from scratch, keeping OpenGOAL's ISC license and its credits. Three rules went in at the top:

  • Nothing goes upstream. Fixes stay here, made the way this project makes them.
  • Jak X is the primary mission. The trilogy comes along, but Jak X sets the pace.
  • One integration branch. All work lands on develop, through review.

The repository's description changed from a personal staging mirror to a hard fork. The issue templates, which had still pointed feature requests and support questions upstream, were rewritten for the fork.

The fork's issue templates, the last one reading that this is a hard fork of open-goal/jak-project, enlarged beside it
The issue templates, rewritten once the fork went its own way; the last one says in as many words that this is a hard fork.

What came after

Going it alone turned out to mean more than a new README. Without the need to stay close to upstream's code, the fork could fix causes instead of symptoms, take out upstream's workarounds, and hold the games to the console instead of to the PC version people knew. Seventeen days later it took a name of its own.

Alex (maintainer, and a mechanical engineer by trade)

Sep 3, 2026 · project · milestoneEvery post
Phaethon

Built with AI in the loop. Phaethon uses AI assistance for speed and accuracy, and holds it to the same bar as every other contribution: every change is read, tested and checked against the console before it lands.

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Phaethon is an unofficial fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or associated with Sony Interactive Entertainment, Naughty Dog or the OpenGOAL project. Jak and Daxter is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment. You need your own copy of each game. Icons from Lucide, ISC; JetBrains Mono under the SIL Open Font License.

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