Many people play on chess com, or lichess, just as many in apps and OTB. What my app does (differently I hope) is bring that data together.
You can import PGNs of your games, connect to chess com and lichess and sync your games over or play in the app. If you have a Chessnut electronic board, you can play IRL on that as well.
Every game, every move is then analysed by a series of on device detectors, and classifiers. And I'm not talking about"I run Stockfish 18 and get your move evals" like most tools do.... Theres a LOT more to it.
Happy to go into detail in the comments if anyones interested!
Then, it takes all that data (ON DEVICE - No ads, no trackers, no subscriptions, no data sharing unless you want to send it to someone) to create your playing profile, which you can see on a dashboard, or pdf export - its your coaching report - shows you where and how to improve.
Most apps will say Nd6 was a blunder. My app can tell you why. To that end, I created a coach, Nadia, who when enabled in a practice game, will look over you as you play, make proactive suggestions to improve, and talk you through the board positions - on device TTS and templates allow this, with a sprinkling of Apple foundation models.
My principle has always been data privacy, and no subscription.
In the latest version, there is a "Shadow" opponent - Literally play vs yourself - same openings, same weaknesses, same strategies.
Now, I have added (because Apple device restrictions mean running a bigger model on device is not practical right now... come on WWDC and gemini...) a 100% optional feature where you can add an API key for the service of your choice, and use a cloud LLM to help interpret your coaching data - full game reviews, individual position assessments, and coming soon opponent scouting reports that are literally based on how YOU would perform vs that opponent - no one does that, they all do "this person plays x". But - and I stress - this is optional, and uses the users own api key, so it's their data/choice. I see nothing, and it's a VERY structured payload sent to ensure there is zero scope for hallucination.
Happy to share samples if people want to see the output.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/notation-chess-coach/id6759826...
darrenc81•2d ago
TTS - I tried so many! Kokoro was great but memory was too high, Supertonic fits under 300mb ram, and is fine for my uses.
Theres always a second Stockfish analysis pipeline running alongside the game engine (Stockfish, Rodent IV or Fairy-stockfish) - that took some rework to make happen to not clash with the game engine!
Opening Identification Staleness - A position-hash index handles transpositions, and the detector reports honestly when a game has left theory. Lichess's explorer doesn't surface this, neither does ChessBase. Players know the feeling of "we're in theory, we're in theory, we're... wait, are we still in theory?" — the app answers that question explicitly.