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Introduction

Welcome to PokéDex Scanner — an AI-powered web application for scanning, identifying, and managing your Pokémon TCG card collection.

What is PokéDex Scanner?

PokéDex Scanner lets you:

  • 📷 Scan cards using your device camera or by uploading an image
  • 🤖 AI recognition — the app automatically identifies the card (name, set, rarity) without any manual input
  • 🗃️ Manage your collection — organise cards into named collections, track duplicates, and see estimated values
  • 🔍 Search & filter — find any card in your collection instantly
  • 💾 Import / export — share or back up your collection as JSON

How does it work?

sequenceDiagram
    participant User
    participant Frontend
    participant Server
    participant AI as AI Provider
    participant DB as Card Database

    User->>Frontend: Capture / upload card image
    Frontend->>Server: POST /api/ai/chat (image)
    Server->>AI: Analyse image (vision model)
    AI-->>Server: Card name, set, number
    Server->>DB: Look up card metadata & artwork
    DB-->>Server: Card details
    Server-->>Frontend: Identified card + artwork
    Frontend-->>User: Show card + confirmation
    User->>Frontend: Confirm / add to collection

Key Concepts

AI Providers

The app uses a vision-capable language model to read the card from the image. You can choose your preferred provider — GitHub Models is the default and requires only a free GitHub Personal Access Token. See AI Providers for details.

Offline Card Database

Card artwork and metadata come from a local SQLite database downloaded from the Pokémon TCG Data GitHub release. This means:

  • No per-lookup API calls after the initial download
  • Card lookups are instant (<100 ms)
  • Everything works on a local network without internet access (after the database is downloaded)

Collections

You can organise your cards into any number of named collections (e.g., "Favourites", "For Trade", "Scarlet & Violet"). Each card can appear in multiple collections.

Next Steps