Steam Chart Race

A desktop tool that generates animated line chart videos comparing Steam game player counts over time. Output is a 9:16 MP4 sized for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.

How it works

1. Type two to five Steam game names; an autocomplete picks the app ID from a local cache.
2. The tool fetches steamcharts.com/app/{appid} for each game and parses the monthly player count table.
3. An animated line chart renders to canvas, drawing left to right month by month, with a ranked label stack on the right.
4. Frames are written to disk and encoded to MP4 with a bundled ffmpeg.

Tech stack

Area	Technology
Shell	Electron
Frontend	Vanilla JavaScript, HTML, CSS (no build step)
Chart rendering	D3 scales on Canvas
Data fetching	Node.js fetch in main process, exposed via IPC
HTML parsing	cheerio
Steam app cache	better-sqlite3
Video export	ffmpeg-static + fluent-ffmpeg
Packaging	electron-builder

Project layout

main.js                 Electron main process entry
preload.js              contextBridge IPC exposure
/main
  steamcharts.js        HTTP fetch + cheerio parsing
  steam-apps.js         SQLite cache + autocomplete search
  ffmpeg-export.js      frame writing + ffmpeg invocation
/renderer
  index.html
  app.js                UI logic
  chart.js              drawFrame(progress)
  animation.js          preview loop
  export.js             frame capture orchestration
  style.css

Running locally

npm install
npm start

The postinstall hook rebuilds better-sqlite3 against Electron's Node version.

Output format

• 1080 × 1920, 30fps
• H.264, yuv420p, CRF 18
• +faststart metadata
• Silent audio track (TikTok/Instagram require an audio stream)

Data source etiquette

Steamcharts has no public API and is operated by one person. The fetcher caches results for 30 days per app, rate-limits to one request every two seconds, identifies itself in the User-Agent, and backs off exponentially on HTTP 429. See claude.md for the full rules.

Status

Pre-MVP. See the build order and MVP checklist in claude.md.

Licence

GPL v3. See LICENSE.

You're free to download, use, fork, and modify this software. If you redistribute it (modified or not), you must do so under GPL v3 and make the source available. This prevents closed-source commercial repackaging.