Games Dash

A personal, self-hosted tracker for Nintendo Switch / Switch 2 and Steam games. Mark what you own and want, know each Nintendo physical release's cart type (full cartridge, Switch 2 Game‑Key Card, or digital), sync your whole Steam library + wishlist, and plan what to play next with a backlog completion planner. New releases, review scores, and cover art are pulled in and kept up‑to‑date automatically every week.

Live: https://gamesdash.vercel.app (password protected)

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Features

• Libraries & tabs — All · Switch · Switch 2 · Steam · Planner. Work on each library separately or all together.
• Owned / Wanted tracking per game, saved to the database (not browser cache).
• Steam sync — your owned library (→ owned) and wishlist (→ wanted), one‑way, with playtime and store links.
• Steam prices & sales — a daily price refresh with on‑sale badges (discount % and the original price struck through), an On sale stat card and filter, and a Discount % sort to jump straight to current deals.
• Physical format tracking (Nintendo) — Full Cart · Key Card · Digital Only · Unknown — editable, with a badge showing how it was determined.
• Automatic cart‑type detection for new games (see Detection pipeline).
• Backlog completion planner — a prioritized, ordered list across all libraries with drag‑and‑drop (and up/down) reordering, completion tracking, and progress.
• IGDB critic scores and official cover art across the catalog; covers link to the IGDB / Steam store page.
• Weekly auto‑sync (Sundays, 5 AM Eastern): discovers new Switch/Switch 2 releases, refreshes scores/dates/covers, and re‑syncs Steam.
• Search, filter and sort (including sorting Steam games by discount); clickable stat cards (Total, Owned, Wanted, Released, Upcoming, Needs review, On sale) as one‑click filters.
• Grid and Table views.
• Hide games you'll never want (excluded by default, with a "Show hidden" toggle).
• Manually add any game via built-in IGDB or Steam search (or an IGDB link).
• Password protection for the whole site and API (single shared password via APP_PASSWORD).

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Tech stack

• Next.js 16 (App Router, TypeScript, React 19)
• Vercel Postgres (Neon) with Drizzle ORM
• Vercel Cron for the weekly catalog sync and the daily Steam price refresh
• Next.js middleware for password (Basic Auth)
• External data: IGDB (via Twitch app), Steam Web API + storefront, Brave Search API, and an optional OpenAI‑compatible LLM — this deployment uses Vercel AI Gateway (openai/gpt-5-nano)

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Detection pipeline

Physical format is genuinely hard data — no single API provides it — so new games are classified best‑effort, and anything uncertain is left "needs review" for you to confirm. For each new game:

1. Nintendo first‑party prior — Nintendo never ships its own games as Game‑Key Cards, so a Nintendo‑published title is marked Full Cart (high confidence).
2. Brave Search retrieves web results for the title.
3. LLM snippet reader (if configured) reads those results and classifies the format (handles "is not a game‑key card" vs. generic mentions). Falls back to a regex heuristic if no LLM is configured. The request prefers JSON‑object mode but automatically retries without it for models that don't support it (e.g. gpt-5-nano).
4. Confidence gating: high → applied and confirmed; medium → applied but flagged for review; otherwise left Unknown / needs review.

Each game records its format_source: seed · nintendo · brave · llm · manual.

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Data model (games table)

Key columns:

Column	Notes
title	game title
library	nintendo · steam
igdb_id / igdb_url	IGDB id + page link (Nintendo)
steam_app_id / store_url	Steam AppID + store link (Steam)
release_date, released	refreshed weekly
platform	Switch 2 · Switch · Both · Steam
genre	jsonb array
physical_format	Full Cart · Key Card · Digital Only · Unknown
format_source	how the format was set
metacritic_score, opencritic_score, igdb_rating	review scores
cover_image_url	cover art (IGDB or Steam)
playtime_minutes	from Steam
price_usd	list price (USD), where known
steam_price_cents, steam_initial_cents, steam_discount_pct	current Steam price, original price, and discount % — refreshed daily
price_updated_at	last Steam price refresh
status	owned · wanted · null
hidden	excluded from the default view
backlog_order	position in the backlog planner (null = not in backlog)
completed, completed_at	backlog completion
needs_review	unconfirmed auto‑detected data
source	curated · igdb · steam

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API

Route	Method	Purpose
/api/games	GET	List all games
/api/games/:id	PATCH	Update status, physicalFormat, needsReview, or hidden
/api/games/add	POST	Add a game by IGDB (igdbId/url) or Steam (steamAppId); runs format detection
/api/igdb/search	GET	Search IGDB for Switch/Switch 2 games (?q=)
/api/steam/search	GET	Search Steam games (?q=)
/api/steam/sync	GET/POST	Sync Steam owned library + wishlist
/api/steam/prices	GET/POST	Refresh Steam prices + sale info (daily cron; guarded by CRON_SECRET)
/api/backlog	POST	Backlog actions: add/remove/up/down/complete/uncomplete/reorder
/api/sync	GET/POST	Run the weekly sync incl. Steam (guarded by CRON_SECRET)

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Environment variables

Variable	Required	Purpose
POSTGRES_URL / DATABASE_URL	✅	Postgres connection (Neon integration may prefix it, e.g. SGT_POSTGRES_URL — auto‑detected)
IGDB_CLIENT_ID / IGDB_CLIENT_SECRET	✅	Twitch app creds for IGDB (games, scores, covers)
STEAM_API_KEY / STEAM_ID	for Steam	Steam Web API key + your SteamID64 (owned library + wishlist)
CRON_SECRET	✅	Protects /api/sync; sent automatically by Vercel Cron
BRAVE_API_KEY	optional	Enables web search for format detection
LLM_API_KEY	optional	Enables the LLM snippet reader
LLM_BASE_URL	optional	OpenAI‑compatible base URL (code default https://api.openai.com/v1; this deployment uses Vercel AI Gateway: https://ai-gateway.vercel.sh/v1)
LLM_MODEL	optional	Model name (code default gpt-4o-mini; this deployment uses openai/gpt-5-nano)
APP_PASSWORD	optional	Shared password gate for the whole site/API; unset = open
SYNC_MAX_FORMAT_LOOKUPS	optional	Max Brave/LLM lookups per sync run (default 15)
SYNC_MIN_HYPES / SYNC_MIN_RATINGS	optional	Popularity thresholds for importing new games (default 5 / 8)

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Local development

npm install
cp .env.example .env.local     # fill in values (POSTGRES_URL points at a local Postgres)
npm run db:push                # create tables
npm run db:seed                # load initial catalog from data/games-data.json
npm run dev

Scripts

Command	What it does
npm run db:push	Apply the Drizzle schema to the database
npm run db:seed	Seed from data/games-data.json (upserts by title)
npx tsx scripts/backfill-formats.ts	Detect physical format for unconfirmed games
npx tsx scripts/backfill-scores.ts	Backfill IGDB critic ratings
npx tsx scripts/backfill-igdb-urls.ts	Backfill IGDB page URLs
npx tsx scripts/fix-covers.ts [--apply]	Replace local covers with IGDB art
npx tsx scripts/sync-once.ts	Run the discovery sync locally

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Deploying on Vercel

1. Import the repo into Vercel (framework auto‑detected as Next.js).
2. Storage → Create Database → Postgres (Neon) and connect it (sets the DB URL).
3. Add env vars: IGDB_CLIENT_ID, IGDB_CLIENT_SECRET, CRON_SECRET, and optionally BRAVE_API_KEY, LLM_*, and APP_PASSWORD.
4. Push the schema and seed once (from a machine with the DB URL set): npm run db:push && npm run db:seed.
5. The crons in vercel.json run /api/sync every Sunday at 05:00 America/New_York (0 10 * * 0 UTC) and /api/steam/prices daily at 10:00 Eastern (0 15 * * * UTC).

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Libraries, tabs & the backlog planner

• Tabs (All / Switch / Switch 2 / Steam / Planner) scope the stats, filters, search, and views to one library at a time — or everything under All.
• Steam games are digital, so the cart‑format UI is hidden; they show playtime and link to their Steam store page.
• Planner is a prioritized backlog across every library. Add games with the ★ Backlog button; on the Planner tab, drag rows (or use ▲/▼) to reorder, mark ✓ Done, and watch the progress bar.

Steam sync

One‑way Steam → app. Owned games become owned; wishlist items become wanted. It never deletes games or overwrites your manual edits. Triggered by the Sync Steam button (Steam tab) and folded into the weekly cron. Requires STEAM_API_KEY + STEAM_ID, and a public Steam profile (profile + game details + wishlist).

Steam prices and sales refresh automatically once a day via /api/steam/prices (and are also folded into the weekly sync). On‑sale titles show a discount badge with the struck‑through original price, and the On sale stat card / Discount % sort surface the current deals.

Adding games

• Automatically: the weekly sync discovers new Switch 2 / cross‑gen releases above a popularity threshold, and re‑syncs your Steam library.
• Manually: click "+ Add game", choose Nintendo or Steam, search, and click Add. Nintendo adds run format detection; Steam adds go in as wanted. (Pasting an IGDB link still works too.)

Notes & caveats

• Metacritic/OpenCritic and physical format are not available from any single API, which is why detection is best‑effort and confirmable. IGDB's igdb_rating is a critic aggregate (its own number), not a specific Metacritic/OpenCritic value.
• New games are imported only above a popularity threshold to avoid shovelware.
• The weekly refresh never overwrites your personal fields (owned/wanted, format, backlog) or an existing cover. Steam sync is one‑way and non‑destructive.