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The flow Pages Fixing the titles Statuses Keyboard Your data

The flow: shelves → collection

Six pipeline stages and two checkpoints that are yours. Stages run from the Pipeline page (or the CLI — both share all state and either can pick up where the other left off):

  1. extract — every photo goes to the vision model once (Claude by default; a local model works too — see the README); what it reads (titles plus edition cues: publisher, edition wording, year, language) lands on the Titles page. Boxes it can see but can't read become reshoot tickets on the Photos page.
  2. proofread (you, on Titles) — fix misread titles, add cues you know, split multi-box lines, remove non-games, details below. Worth doing before resolve: a fix made now is one BGG search done right; a fix made later sends the title back through resolve again.
  3. resolve — titles are matched to BoardGameGeek games and editions. Anything uncertain is flagged, never guessed. Without a BGG API token, titles wait as awaiting BGG and are picked up automatically once the token exists.
  4. review (you, on Review) — decide the flagged ones: which game, which edition, whether two reads are one box. Every decision saves immediately.
  5. diff — your existing BGG collection is fetched and compared, per copy. What's genuinely new lands in the Queue.
  6. upload — a real browser logs into BGG and adds each queued game, slowly and politely. Always dry-run first; the buttons enforce that order.
  7. enrich — full metadata (players, weight, rank, artwork) fills the Library.

It's a loop, not a line: new photos, edits, and splits feed both checkpoints again, and the sidebar badges show when a page has work for you. Every stage is resumable — stop anything mid-run and nothing is lost; re-runs skip work already done.

What each page is for

Pipeline — run stages one at a time and watch their live output. Shows what's blocking (missing keys, stub data) and the counts at every step.

Photos — drag photos in, drop them in the photos/ folder, or (on a paired phone) tap the drop zone and shoot straight from the camera; camera captures get unique shelf-… names so they can never overwrite each other. Each photo has its own page listing every title read from it and any reshoot tickets — boxes seen but not identified. Photograph those up close, drop the new shot in, and extract again. Re-uploading a photo under the same file name deliberately replaces it, and the next extract run re-reads it.

Titles — every read off your shelves, alphabetized, with its status and photos. This is the proofread checkpoint: edit, split, remove. Its badge counts shaky read lines — the model wasn't sure and nothing has verified them; filter to them, then press ✓ looks right or edit each one.

Review — the decisions only you can make: which game a title is, which edition a copy is, whether two same-game reads are really one box (merges show a veto), and whether an unmatched title is a real game BGG simply doesn't have (keep locally: it joins the Library, never uploads). Keyboard-first; see shortcuts.

Queue — exactly what upload will do (new entries and version upgrades) and the log of everything it has done. Nothing reaches BGG that isn't visible here first.

Library — your enriched collection: filter by board games or RPGs. RPG matches are identified and enriched but never uploaded — BGG collections can't hold them, so they stay local citizens.

Fixing the titles: edit, split, remove

Vision reads aren't perfect, and you know things the photos don't show. Every line on the Titles page has curation actions, and every one of them is durable: the decision is saved in a small committed file and replayed on every rebuild, so re-running extract or resolve can never undo it.

edit — fix a misread title or add cues you already know (publisher, edition, year, language). A corrected misspelling automatically merges with a correctly-read sighting of the same game from another photo. If the line already had a BGG match, saving re-queues it so resolve searches again with the corrected data.

split into copies — one line, several physical boxes? Splitting makes each photo its own copy, and each copy picks its own edition afterward. Appears on any line whose title was seen in more than one photo. Splitting one game never affects a same-named different edition.

pick edition — a matched game with no legible edition cues stays version-less by design (never guess) — but you know which printing your box is. This fetches the game's complete version list into a Review ballot; pick yours there.

wrong match (inside the edit panel) — an auto-match landed on the wrong game (same-name impostors happen). This clears the match, re-searches immediately, and returns the title to Review as a fresh ballot of candidates (including same-named sibling editions); manual-id entry is there too for games BGG's search can't find. Note BGG sometimes splits one game's lineage across entries — Wiz-War's early editions and its FFG remake are separate games — so a copy whose edition isn't on the ballot may belong to the sibling entry.

add a game (top of the Titles page) — a game no photo shows: an expansion stored inside a base box, a game away from the shelves. It joins the list like any read (BGG wants base game and expansion as separate collection entries, so boxes that hold both need this for the hidden half), and if a later photo shows it, the sighting merges instead of duplicating.

remove (inside the edit panel) — for lines that shouldn't exist at all: a book read as a game, box art misread as a title. The line and its matches are discarded and stay gone. This is different from reject on the Review page, which keeps the line visible as "no BGG match" — right for real games BGG doesn't know.

Undo: each decision is one record in data/title_edits.json, data/title_splits.json, or data/title_removals.json — delete the record and the next rebuild restores the old state.

What the status chips mean

awaiting resolve extracted (or re-queued by an edit) but not yet matched — run resolve from the Pipeline page.

auto matched confidently, no review needed. approved you picked the match yourself.

ambiguous several plausible games — needs your pick on Review. unmatched nothing plausible found — enter a BGG id or re-search on Review.

merged two reads judged to be the same physical box; the merge is veto-able on Review. copy one copy of a title you split.

local — not on BGG you ruled it's a real game BGG doesn't have: it joins the Library from its own photo reads, and never uploads.

rejected you ruled it's a bad read or not worth matching; it stays listed but goes no further.

shaky read the vision model wasn't sure of this transcription and nothing has verified it yet — these are what the Titles badge counts. Clear one by pressing its ✓ looks right (the read is fine as-is) or by editing it (you fixed it). A BGG match also clears it: a wrong read wouldn't have matched.

Keyboard shortcuts

Review: j/k move between cards · 19 pick a candidate · r reject · l keep local (not on BGG) · m manual BGG id · u edition unknown · v veto a merge.

Photo pages: / move between photos.

Your data, on disk

Everything lives in flat files under data/ — inspectable, hand-editable, and git-friendly. The pipeline artifacts: titles.json (what was read), matches.csv (what it matched), to_add.csv/to_update.csv (what upload will do), upload_log.csv (what it did), games.json (the library). Your curation: title_edits.json, title_splits.json, title_removals.json, unidentified_dismissed.json.

Credentials never live in files — only environment variables, set up by bggpipe init. The app serves localhost only, unless started with --lan — that opens it to your network behind an access key: scan the QR code the server prints (or open the printed link) once per device, and a year-long cookie keeps it paired. Delete data/.lan_key to revoke every device. No login beyond the key; trusted networks only.

More depth: the README covers setup and photo technique; docs/bgg-upload-flow.md documents the upload automation.

The piper

the bggpipe piper — a bagpiper whose bag is a board game box

Mascot art by Juniper, used with pride.