Kickoff Companion 0.25.1 (preview)

The menu and sheets no longer jump back a page on Safari (iPhone and iPad). Choosing a page from the menu and opening the menu again, or closing a player card opened from that page, used to step the browser back to the Pre-Game Program. The page now stays where you are. Run with: uvx kickoff-companion@latest

Kickoff Companion 0.25.0 (preview)

The testers' build: three things that make the app easier to live with and to report on.

Behind the sun by the clock (Windows). The program now runs behind a tray icon instead of a window on the taskbar. Double-click the sun to open the app; its menu has the status page, the log and Quit, and Quit stops the server. The download's double-click, the Desktop icon and start at login all go there. Prefer the window? Settings, Server Settings, Tray mode, off. macOS and Linux are unchanged.

Send feedback, like a crash report. The last row of the menu: pick Bug, Enhancement or Feature and say what happened. With it go the device's last 15 minutes (the pages opened, what was tapped, any errors) and the app's log from the same time, saved on the computer that runs the app. Then Email it to the developer opens your own mail app with the report filled in, with home addresses, computer names and user names taken out first; Copy the report covers a device with no mail app, and the full report downloads to attach if you're asked for it. Nothing goes through any service. When a page can't load, its error box has Send a report with the error already in it. Profile, Feedback lists every report saved on this computer, each with its steps and its log; About and help and the status page have Download the logs and Copy the last 200 lines.

Its own icon. The program wears the Myers Labs sun, the same sun that turns while a page loads: in the browser tab of every page, in the tray, on the program and its shortcuts, and on a home screen before a team is picked. Your team's home-screen icon stays its football in your colors.

Kickoff Companion 0.24.0 (preview)

The layout pass: every screen and flyout redrawn as a board first, marked up, then built one at a time. Mostly things moving to where the eye looks for them, with less chrome and no wasted space.

In Game and the big screen. In Game is one screen. The score line sits at the bottom above the ticker, on one line, so every tablet and the big screen always see the score. The box score holds still (one passer, two rushers, three receivers), panels lose their title bars, the shot chart follows the offense on the field, and the trivia standings sit in the blank space of Score by quarter. The top bar has three tabs: Newspaper, Pre-Game Program, In Game.

The menu. One level at a time: search, six game-day tiles, then My Teams, This week's game, National, Stats, Advanced stats, Knowledge, Profile and New. A table picked from the menu opens by itself in a wide flyout, with the list one tap back and the next and previous tables beside it.

The Newspaper and the Top 25. The Newspaper reads as a front page, its stories even down the page. The Top 25 lists every game of the week in AP poll order, with more room on each card.

The To do. Reminders (not loaded yet, a new version, on this day, a guest's welcome) never sit over a page any more. The Menu button counts them and a To do row at the top of the menu opens them in their own flyout, with Clear the list. The trivia's join is a small popup in the corner.

Trivia at the breaks. During your game a question comes at the end of the 1st quarter, at halftime, at the end of the 3rd and at the end of the game. Not today now holds for the whole day even before anyone has joined.

Profile and Load data. Profile is a short page: who and what, the four game-day settings (spoiler delay, theme, screen on, text size) and ten tiles, each opening its section in the wide flyout; the CFBD key and plan are under About and help. Load data shows at a glance what is loaded, this week's notes first.

Preloaded season data. Every FBS team's coaching staff, its season load (staff moves, coaching changes, outlook, injuries) and, where reported, its rumored roster costs now ship with the app, checked October 2026. Load data marks them Preloaded with their date, in gold, until you load your own, which always wins.

Season with My Teams. The Season page and My Teams are one page. A window on top shows the team picked (record, AP, SP+, Elo, FPI, last and next game) and steps through your teams with ‹ and ›, home team first, then your other primary teams, then the secondary ones, with a chip for each. The page under it follows the team picked: its schedule, its conference's standings, its polls, ratings and trends. The College Football Playoff band shows only while the team is in the AP Top 25. Trends are one column a game, headed by the opponent's abbreviation in its colors, the value under each dot, a filled dot for a win. A free key follows the home team alone and says what a Tier 2 key adds.

Flush bands everywhere. Bands side by side now end on one line on every page, and a stack of bands ends level with the band beside it.

Kickoff Companion 0.23.0 (preview)

The trivia, talked through and drawn before it was built: a side game for the room, the way the announcers drop a question in.

Joining. On a game day every tablet is asked once when it connects: a team name and Join, or Not today. Names are case sensitive, so "Nana's Nachos" and "nana's nachos" are two teams. A tablet that said Not today sees nothing, no question, no standings, until it joins from the Trivia page. The host keeps the master file with every team and every answer, so a team that joins again in a later week gets its season score back: "Welcome back, Nana's Nachos: 14 of 22 this season before today."

The questions. From the first join until the host ends the day (or the room goes home: three questions in a row unanswered), three-choice questions built from the schools' facts pop up in the corner of whatever page is open: the stadium and the year it opened, the founding, the seats, the mascot's name, the fight song, a rivalry's trophy, a Heisman winner, a national title year, the winningest coach, the longest streak, the record crowd, a retired number, a dated event. The wrong choices are other schools' facts of the same kind, so they read as real. Before kickoff and after the final a question every 15 or 30 minutes about the teams in the games on, from the ticker; during your game one a quarter, after the eight-minute mark and never in a half's last two minutes. Forty seconds, then it closes. The answer never shows in the popup, only on the Trivia page. Between questions the standings sit in the corner: the room's teams, today and the season. The big screen shows both, larger, with no buttons.

The Trivia page, under Views in the menu: your team and the day, your score today, this season and your best day, the room's leaderboard, today's questions with the right answer, your pick and how many teams answered, the season table and the rules. "Wrong? Mark it" under an answer notes a doubtful fact until the school's facts are next loaded. The host ends the day from here.

Settings has a Trivia band: the trivia on or off, the leaderboard on or off, and the pace before and after your game (every 15 minutes, every 30, or only during the game). Off is off for every tablet. Guests can join and answer; nothing else changes for them.

The demo plays it too. The made-up league got a history of its own, so the demo and the simulator ask questions about their teams.

Archives for Windows, macOS (Apple silicon) and Linux are attached by the release workflow, with the wheel.

Kickoff Companion 0.22.0 (preview)

The data pre-loading asked for ahead of the trivia: every FBS school's history ships with the app.

The preloaded facts. Every FBS school of the 2026 season, all 138, arrives with the app: the founding, the stadium and its nickname, when it opened and how many it seats, the first season, the all-time record, the national and conference titles with their years, the Heisman winners, the bowl record, the rivalries with their trophies and series, the head coach's record, the winningest coach, the longest win streak, the record crowd, the retired numbers, the mascot and the colors and where they came from, the fight song, the traditions, the alumni in the NFL and ten dated events each, checked October 2026, with the pages they came from. They show on every team's History tab and side sheet with no prompt to run. Your own facts still come first: a paste or a run of the facts prompt overwrites a school's row, and the Load data page says which conferences are shipped and when they were checked. The schedule asks for a conference again after a year, so the file stays current without anyone loading it all the time. Where a fact could not be sourced it is left blank rather than guessed; all-time records are the best available and may differ by a game or two from a school's own count.

Small fix. A school founded before 1800 lost its founding year on the way into the facts; the seven colonial-era schools now keep theirs.

Archives for Windows, macOS (Apple silicon) and Linux are attached by the release workflow, with the wheel.

Kickoff Companion 0.21.0 (preview)

The first feature of the last plan, talked through and drawn before it was built.

What we need. The conference race, from the season's games alone and at no cost in calls, at the bottom of the Pre-Game Program: every team of your conference with its record, the games left and the best record it can still reach; who has clinched a spot in the title game and who is out; and for your team the lines a fan wants in words: win out, win all but one, what beating the next opponent does, and the clinch number. Where a finish comes down to a tiebreaker the app says "tiebreaker" and stops, since it does not pretend to know them. The week's games that help you come with whom to pull for and why; the same games wear a chip on the Top 25 page and a dot on the ticker, and the standings tables show each team's standing as a badge.

The Post-Game Program. A finished game's program now opens on two tabs. Pre-Game is the program exactly as it stood at kickoff, kept whole from now on: the ranks of that day, the line, the expectations, what you needed, the day's headlines. Post-Game is written once, the Sunday after the game when the new AP poll is out, and never rewritten: both teams' ranks the Sunday after beside their ranks at kickoff, the news articles about the game, the box score, and every band of the program doubled where it changed, its kickoff side on the left and its after side on the right. When you look back in December, the team you beat in October is still the No. 7 it was that day. This season's games already played are filled in from the cached polls and the archive over the first minutes after the update. The front page shows the finished game's program from the final until Monday morning, then next week's Pre-Game.

Small fix. The Tale of the tape's tags under the three biggest edges read "top 3", which read as a top-three rank; they now say the size of the gap, "by 39 ranks".

Archives for Windows, macOS (Apple silicon) and Linux are attached by the release workflow, with the wheel.

Kickoff Companion 0.20.0 (preview)

Three waves in one release: the design rules applied, the app made fast, and the package on PyPI prepared.

Run it with one line. With uv installed, uvx kickoff-companion starts the server with nothing cloned and nothing else installed, once the package is on PyPI (the publishing step is in this release's workflow and switches on shortly). Your files live in the app-data folder, as for the download.

Faster. The Pre-Game Program answers in about 25 ms instead of 240, every answer travels six to nine times smaller (gzip), and a first open sends a third of what it did and then nothing on later opens: the page's files are kept by the browser for a year and a new version names new ones. The server listens within 1.5 seconds of a start; the live state is built once per delay and shared by every viewer on it.

The design rules. The iPad held upright is the anchor and wide browsers get three or four columns; rates are whole numbers; two tables side by side end on one line; a player's name falls back to the number when nothing else fits; every open reminder is one item of one note with one close button; your team's name opens the Season page; a stat number with a national list behind it is a link, like its chip; a term in a small table wears a dotted underline and opens its card.

Other systems. The Linux program is built on Ubuntu 22.04 so it runs on older distributions; on Linux with systemd (the Steam Deck's desktop too) the server holds the computer awake during a game; macOS 15 Sequoia's Open Anyway steps are in the README and the setup guide. The Windows program will be signed through SignPath once the project is approved; the README carries the code signing policy.

Fixes. Claude Code on Windows: npm's claude.cmd shim is resolved to node and the script, and the prompt travels on stdin, so a long prompt no longer breaks the notes run. A damaged or rewritten season file is read again by its size as well as its time.

For developers. tools/perf_check.py measures the pages' speed against a running server; tools/page_check.py runs faster and in CI on the three systems; uv build makes the wheel.

Archives for Windows, macOS (Apple silicon) and Linux are attached by the release workflow, with the wheel.

Kickoff Companion 0.19.0 (preview)

The Pre-Game Program, rearranged from its owner's mock.

• The order. The cover; Program notes beside the team's headlines, as deep as the notes; Tale of the tape; Recruits on hand beside the Availability report; Leaders side by side; Talent and recruiting; Lineups; Advanced matchup; Tendencies; Play value; Common opponents over the Radio beside Last season; The two schools; Series across the whole bottom row. Two bands side by side share one row of the same height; a phone stacks them.
• Leaders side by side, on the pole. Each pair in the middle of the band: our leader's numbers at the left hand with his FBS and conference rank chips outside them, his face and name, the category over its stat names in the middle, their leader's face and name, his numbers at the right hand. The whole lines with ranks and the conference-game line arrive from the server.
• Lineups in formation. The starters' experience table across the band; then both matchups drawn on a field, the defense up top and the offense at the bottom, each starter at the spot his slot takes in the scheme's base look (the linemen tight on the center, the receivers spread, a pro-style offense under center, the front's numbers setting the down linemen and the linebackers, the corners wide, the nickel over the slot, the safeties deep). A man is a button to his card; a starter on the availability report wears a gold ring with his status. Then the starters beside the men they face, without the depth behind them.
• Tendencies. The opponent's passes by zone and runs by lane as the shot chart In Game draws, beside the down-and-distance table.
• The cover. The rivalry's trophy line sits under the date line; the foot is one line of items (the In Game button, the weather, the stadium's facts, the win probability bar).
• Gone. Players to watch, and Prior weeks' programs: the Season page's schedule opens any week's program (a finished game's carries the result, its box scores and the way to the Archive).
• The design rules of 2026-10-21 are written into the design doc.

Kickoff Companion 0.18.0 (preview)

Kickoff Companion 0.18.0 redraws In Game as one screen and makes the big screen that screen, mirrored.

In Game on one screen. On a tablet held sideways, nothing scrolls. The score strip carries the score, the clock, the down and distance, the win probability as a percentage (with the kickoff number small) and the last play. Under it the box score shows both teams side by side, each half stepping through its rows on its own when it is longer than its column. Then the last five plays, newest first; Score by quarter with the drive lines (drives, points per drive, scoring chances, three and outs); and the shot chart with the passes over the line of scrimmage and the runs by lane under it. The ticker runs along the bottom with no label, and one row of buttons holds the twelve panels and the five tools: Delay, Radio, Notes, Invite, Big screen.

Where the rest went. Team stats sits at the top of the Box score panel. The win probability chart, the last play's success and the fourth-down call sit in the Situation panel. The game line (venue, weather, the TV crew, the coaches) sits at the foot of the Notes sheet. Reminders never show on In Game. A phone, or a tablet held upright, gets the strip, the last play and the percentage large, the ticker, the buttons, then the same cells stacked.

The big screen mirrors the tablet. The Big screen button on In Game shows the same screen without the top bar and the buttons, scaled to fill whatever shows it: a 1080p set draws it a third bigger, a 4K set two and a half times. The radio, the delay line and the QR code run along its foot. Cast your tablet to the TV, or open the address in the TV's browser, and the picture is the same.

Your notes are part of the program notes. The My notes band is gone. The Pre-Game Program's notes open with your own lines, each "Note from" your name, and the box to add one; Settings, under Friends and the big screen, has a "Your name" field. In Game's Notes sheet shows your lines, the program notes, the schemes, then the game line.

The menu. Archive and Season in review are in Views. Server status is under App and opens in a new tab. Every team's side sheet has a Full page link. The paper's game boxes and the Top 25 cards have a Matchup button that opens the two teams side by side. The Setup page names the replay page and the design system.

Kickoff Companion 0.17.2 (preview)

Kickoff Companion 0.17.2 puts the data your prompts load on the screens where it belongs. Everything below shows only once the Load data page's loads and the week's notes are in; a team without them shows what it did before.

Coaches. The opponent's head coach and coordinators sit under the matchup card's name on the Pre-Game Program ("HC … · OC … · DC …"). Each lineup head, on the program and on In Game's Lineups sheet, names its unit's coordinator and scheme ("OC Name · Spread"); where the notes name no scheme, the chart's own heading stays. A team's side sheet carries the same staff line in its header.

The depth chart's own notes. A starter's note from the chart ("limited in practice") shows when the week's availability report says nothing about him.

Recruits on hand. A band at the bottom of the Pre-Game Program lists the visitors the notes name for each side, with the source and the date.

Costs beside the players. The Roster page and the team page's roster gain an "NIL (rumored)" column from the roster costs load, matched by name. The player card gains "Rumored value" and "Status": this week's availability row for him, else the preseason load's season-long entry.

The crew. Your game's announcers from the notes show beside the network on the Top 25 card and in the paper's game boxes.

Dated events. The school facts' dated events ride on the Season page: "On this day in 1996: …" under the schedule row that falls on the date, and a Dates row on the team page's School history.

Facts on the cover. Founded and the stadium with its opened year under each team block, and the rivalry's trophy line under the kicker when the facts name one.

Fixed. The Newspaper page failed to draw when the game's notes named a TV crew (a missing import). The page check now fails any page that shows the app's "could not be drawn" band, so that class of break cannot pass the sweep again.