🎨 Credits & Data Asset Pipelines

ChoiceBuds is built on top of incredible open-source datasets, asset pipelines, and community-driven tools. I want to extend our immense gratitude to the creators and maintainers of the following resources that make this VGC teambuilder possible:

📊 Data & Legality Engines

• PokeAPI Data Hub - The ultimate open-source RESTful API for Pokémon data. Powers our core species data hooks, ability descriptions, and move-set structures.
• @smogon/calc (damage-calc) - MIT-licensed damage calculation engine (published as the @smogon/calc npm package) powering our entire damage calculator's underlying math.
• Pokémon Showdown Repository - The structural backbone for competitive text serialization formats (PokePaste) and move formatting standards.
• Pokepast.es - Fetched live (via its own /<id>/json endpoint, never scraped) when a user pastes a pokepast.es link into the team importer, to pull the paste's own team name, author, and Showdown-format text directly.
• Play! Pokémon Video Game Team List PDF - The official tournament team-registration form, bundled as a static asset (public/vg-team-list-template.pdf) and auto-filled with a saved team's Pokémon plus the player's own profile via the Team Sheet PDF export (Teams page, per-team export button) - the document's own layout is untouched, values are overlaid on top of it.
• Serebii.net - Used two ways: (1) hotlinked directly for item sprites and Move Category badges (Physical/Special/Status) that PokeAPI doesn't cleanly provide, and (2) read manually as a reference during development to hand-compile our VGC-legal item list, Regulation M-A/M-B legality tables, Mega Stone mappings, and Pokemon Champions' balance-patch changes (updated move stats, retiered PP, changed abilities/status conditions), where no other source had the information.
• Bulbapedia - Read manually as a reference during development to cross-verify Pokemon Champions' balance-patch changes (move/ability/status-condition differences from mainline Scarlet/Violet) and identify per-species movepool additions Champions has made.
• "Data Comparative Champions" - A community-maintained spreadsheet by RoiDadadou, cross-referencing datamined values from Kaphotics and Anubis plus battle-mechanics research from DaWoblefet. Relayed to us directly by the user (never fetched live) to hand-verify move balance changes, PP retiering exceptions, and misc. mechanic differences from mainline.
• Pokemon Champions Battle Data - A fan-made ranked-ladder usage stats site, fetched live via its own public /api/* JSON endpoints (never scraped) to power stat-inference: per-species move/item/ability/nature/EV-spread/teammate usage rankings straight from real Champions ranked play.

🖼️ Visual Assets & Sprites

• PokeAPI/sprites - The actual hotlink source for every pixel-art Pokémon sprite in the app (normal and shiny). This repo's own README credits the Smogon community for permission to serve their modern (Gen 6+) sprite set through it.
• msikma / PokéSprite Repository - MIT-licensed. Powers our clean, compact Shiny star indicator badges and interactive gender symbols.

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