PgnTools

PgnTools is a high-performance WinUI 3 desktop application for large PGN workflows on Windows. It emphasizes streaming I/O and a tool-based UI for downloading, filtering, tagging, and analyzing chess games.

Highlights

• Streaming PGN reader/writer that processes games without loading entire files into memory.
• Tool-based UI with dedicated pages for each workflow.
• Self-contained Windows x64 builds via GitHub Actions.
• Modern stack: .NET 10, C# 14, WinUI 3, CommunityToolkit.Mvvm, Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection.

Tool Suite

• Downloaders: Chess.com, Lichess (user + monthly DB), Lc0 matches, PGN Mentor, TWIC, Tablebases.
• Processing: Filter (Elo/ply/checkmate/annotations), Deduplicator, Splitter, Merger, Sorter, Tour Breaker.
• Tagging: Category Tagger, ECO Tagger, Elo Adder, Ply Count Adder.
• Analysis: Chess Analyzer (UCI/Stockfish), PGN Info, Stockfish Normalizer.
• Experimental/Hidden: Chess Unannotator, Checkmate Filter, Elegance scoring.

Assets The app expects the following files under PgnTools/Assets (they are copied on publish). These enable specific tools:

• Assets/eco.pgn for ECO tagging.
• Assets/ratings.bin.zst for Elo Adder.
• Assets/elegance-distributions.json and Assets/elegance-goldens.json for Elegance scoring/validation.
• Assets/Tablebases/download.txt for tablebase URL lists.

Optional:

• Any UCI engine (Stockfish recommended). The app can download the latest Stockfish build.
• Syzygy tablebases for analysis (choose a folder at runtime).

Build And Run Requirements:

• Windows 10 1809+ (x64).
• .NET 10 SDK (preview).
• Windows App SDK 1.8 (restored via NuGet).
• Visual Studio 2022 17.10+ recommended for WinUI development.

Build and run:

dotnet restore PgnTools/PgnTools.csproj
dotnet build PgnTools/PgnTools.csproj -c Release
dotnet run --project PgnTools/PgnTools.csproj

Publish (matches CI):

dotnet publish PgnTools/PgnTools.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true `
  -p:PublishSingleFile=true `
  -p:EnableCompressionInSingleFile=true `
  -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true `
  -o .\publish_output

Prebuilt Builds

• GitHub Actions workflow Build PgnTools publishes a self-contained single-file executable as an artifact.

Repo Layout

• PgnTools/ WinUI 3 app source.
• Docs/ tool documentation and design notes.
• generate_codebase_dump.ps1 codebase snapshot generator for LLM handoff.

Project Note

• This repository was built with significant AI assistance; the owner provided direction and requirements.

License See LICENSE.