Manaless

A try-before-you-buy funnel for paper Magic: the Gathering Commander. Browse real curated decklists, substitute cards with live win-condition + bracket feedback, export to XMage to play vs AI and learn — then (rarely) buy the cards you fell for.

The loop: pick a commander → start from a real published decklist → swap cards freely while a live panel shows win conditions, combo completeness, and an inferred power bracket (1–5) → export an XMage .dck to practice vs AI → and, only once you love a deck, diff it against your collection and buy the gaps. XMage is the demo environment; buying is the rare, deliberate exit, not the main loop.

The project bible lives in docs/CLAUDE.md. Companion docs: architecture, win-conditions, bracket-evaluator, buy-pipeline, and HANDOFF — the live "where we are".

Run the web builder

One command — it creates .venv, installs deps on first run, then serves the builder and opens a browser tab:

./run.ps1              # Windows / PowerShell  (http://127.0.0.1:8000)

./run.sh               # Linux, macOS, or Git Bash on Windows

Options: ./run.ps1 -Port 9000 -Reload -NoBrowser (PowerShell) or PORT=9000 ./run.sh --reload (bash). Under the hood both run python -m manaless.web; first run does pip install -e ".[web]", warm runs launch instantly.

What it does

The full funnel is live in the FastAPI + HTMX web app (manaless.web):

• Browse commanders — fuzzy search, or a "popular" list ranked by EDHREC deck count (with a Scryfall fallback if EDHREC is momentarily down).
• Pick a real deck — the curated deck picker for that commander, sortable by newest/oldest, price, EDHREC bracket, or saltiness (top 100 of up to ~42k rows).
• Build & substitute — swap any card via a modal offering category-matched suggestions (Ramp / Removal / Draw / Board Wipe / Counterspell, inferred from card text) alongside a fuzzy card search; add from a most-played palette; each card shows its EDHREC inclusion rate.
• Live readouts — win conditions (combos present, "one swap from a wincon", alt-wins, non-combo plan) and an inferred bracket 1–5, recomputed on every edit. Cards in a combo get colour-coded outlines matching the combo panel.
• Export to XMage — one-click .dck download to play vs AI and learn the rules.
• Buy (the rare exit) — a per-card TCGplayer link, or diff the deck against an imported collection and buy only the missing cards via TCGplayer Mass Entry.

Data sources

EDHREC (deck tables, decklists, per-commander card popularity), Scryfall (card enrichment), and Commander Spellbook (combos + bracket estimate) — all free community APIs, rate-limited and disk-cached per CLAUDE.md §4. The one fragile point (EDHREC's Next.js build id) is isolated in edhrec_client.py with a self-healing refresh on a 404.

Layout

src/manaless/
  http/              # shared substrate — per-host rate limiter + disk cache + JSON client
  edhrec_client.py   # spine — build-id + deck table/list + commander card stats
  scryfall_client.py # card enrichment (batched cards/collection), DFC fallback, cached
  deck_model.py      # immutable Card + DeckModel, type-categorized
  deck_builder.py    # build_deck: commander -> enriched DeckModel; substitute / add
  spellbook_client.py# find-my-combos + estimate-bracket (cached by decklist hash)
  win_conditions.py  # three-source win-condition merge
  bracket.py         # inferred bracket 1–5 (Game Changers + fast-mana layer)
  card_category.py   # functional-category classifier (swap suggestions)
  dck_export.py      # XMage .dck writer
  buy.py             # TCGplayer Mass Entry URLs (single card + deck diff)
  collection.py      # owned-cards file (Collectr CSV / JSON import)
  web/               # FastAPI + HTMX + Jinja app — routes, templates, static

Develop

python -m venv .venv && . .venv/Scripts/activate    # or: source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev,web]"
pytest

Headless CLI

The pipeline runs without the web UI — handy for spot checks:

python -m manaless.deck_builder   "Atraxa, Praetors' Voice"   # build + enrich a deck
python -m manaless.win_conditions "Atraxa, Praetors' Voice"   # win-condition readout
python -m manaless.bracket        "Atraxa, Praetors' Voice"   # inferred bracket 1–5
python -m manaless.spike          "Atraxa, Praetors' Voice"   # prove the EDHREC spine live