Getting started¶

A fresh installation asks you to choose the owner's password. There is one owner and one password. From then on the sign-in page wants only that password, and the session stays in the browser until you sign out. If nothing is running yet, start with Install.

Find your way around¶

The rail down the left side is the app. At the top are the name (and, on the public demo, a Demo tint that leads to blunderbase.org) and Search everything, which opens the command palette, as ⌘K does anywhere. Under it come the pages, and under Collections the collections you pinned. The one row with a pale grey pill and blue text is where you are. When that is a page inside an entry, such as Import under Library, the entry above it stays plain, and pointing at a row only brightens its text. ⌘1 to ⌘6 open the first pages; a row's tooltip names its key. The button at the end of the name row folds the rail to icons; folded, pointing at the logo turns it into the button that unfolds it.

The foot of the rail lists your engines, one per line, each with a dot: green when it is enabled, grey when it is not. Any of them leads to Compute › Engines. With correspondence on and a search running, a Correspondence line under them shows the searches in use out of the slots (1/2), and pointing at it lists the rest. Last comes Settings, which opens the settings menu upwards, and the connection dot: green while the app is live, orange while it connects, red while it is offline.

The bar across the top belongs to the page. It shows the page's title, with the places above it as links (Library › Import), then the page's own buttons on the right, then the analysis queue (Idle 0/0, or a spinner and a meter while it works, with Pause and Clear beside it while there is something to pause or clear), and last the Hide engine switch (Hide the engine). On a phone the rail is behind the ☰ and slides in with the same contents. A page opened from a list, such as a game, shows ‹ Games instead of the ☰ to take you back. The page's buttons move to a row under the bar.

Register your engines¶

Open Compute › Engines and add Stockfish, and Maia if you want human-move predictions. Give each job an engine. Nothing is analysed until you do. Where the binaries come from is in Engines.

Import games¶

Open Library › Import, type your username into the Lichess, chess.com or FICS box and press Connect. Or drop a PGN file anywhere in the window. Both are covered in Library.

What happens automatically¶

Every game that arrives is queued for a Stockfish pass, so evaluations fill in behind a sync. The Dashboard shows what is waiting and what is running.

Where to find help¶

A five-step tour runs the first time the app is opened; Show the tour again in the settings menu replays it. Manual for this page, in the same menu, opens this manual at the chapter for the screen you are on. The ? key, or Keyboard shortcuts in the settings menu, lists the keys that work there. The menu ends with the version, a link to what changed in it, and the source on GitHub.