EDEXO

Companion app for Elite Dangerous that predicts the exobiology on a planet from an FSS scan alone.

It reads your local journal folder, merges every Journal.*.log into one picture of the galaxy you have visited, and — for any body with a biological signal — narrows the codex down to the species that can actually live there, with payout ranges, first-footfall tracking, a system map and a species encyclopedia.

Since 1.3.0 it also does colonisation: Colonize follows your construction sites from the journal and plans the hauling (where to buy, trip by trip), with a HUD section and a read-only phone view. The app was called EDEXO-Compare until 1.3.0; "Compare" is now its exobiology half.

Made by Bahuckel (CMDR FALrenica). Not affiliated with Frontier Developments.

Download

Windows x64, no installer. Nothing is written to Program Files and nothing is registered with Windows; everything the app saves lives in %LOCALAPPDATA%\ED Exo Compare\.

Portable — one file	Download and run. Unpacks itself somewhere temporary each time.
Program folder — .zip	Extract and keep. Starts faster, and includes the two console builds.

Both are the same version and the same code — all releases.

The galaxy map's data is a separate download, offered by the map the first time you open it and left in place by updates: the index (every system with recorded biology, from EDAstro's codex data, about 260 MB), the stations (15.6 MB), the neutron stars for the route planner (40 MB) and the galaxy's richest Laboratory bodies (jumponium and AFM refill materials, 55 MB), with one button that fetches whatever is missing or newer. The colonisation candidate search has its own (150 MB), fetched from inside its tab.

Windows will say the publisher is unrecognised: the executable is not code-signed, so SmartScreen does not know it. "More info" → "Run anyway". GitHub shows each release file's SHA-256 digest, to check a download against.

Linux —

The AppImage has been tested on Ubuntu under WSL: the launcher, the update check and the app window run, it finds a Proton journal folder and serves the app on Ubuntu 24.04. It has not been tried on a Linux desktop of its own with the game running, so the HUD windows have not been seen over the game yet. If you try it, an issue saying what worked and what did not — distro, desktop, X11 or Wayland — is the most useful thing you can send.

AppImage — launcher + HUD	The same app as on Windows: launcher window, tray, HUD overlays. One file, x86_64.
Browser build — .tar.gz	No Electron. The app and the HUD pages open in your browser. For anything the AppImage cannot run on.

AppImage: chmod +x EDExoCompare-1.3.8-x86_64.AppImage, then run it. It needs FUSE 2:

Distro	Command
Ubuntu 24.04+, Mint 22+, Debian 13+	sudo apt install libfuse2t64
Ubuntu 22.04, Mint 21, Pop!_OS 22.04, Debian 12	sudo apt install libfuse2
Fedora, Nobara	sudo dnf install fuse-libs
Bazzite, Silverblue (read-only)	rpm-ostree install fuse-libs, reboot
openSUSE	sudo zypper install libfuse2
Arch, CachyOS, Manjaro	sudo pacman -S --needed fuse2

Without FUSE, ./EDExoCompare-1.3.8-x86_64.AppImage --appimage-extract-and-run works too.

On start the launcher checks your desktop and lists anything the HUD needs that is missing, with the install command for your distro: XWayland on a Wayland session, a compositor on a bare window manager (the HUD is see-through only with one), the AppIndicator extension for the tray on GNOME.

If the AppImage closes at start (seen on Wayland with a hybrid NVIDIA laptop: the graphics process crashes, exit code 139): from 1.3.0 the app notices, turns Hardware acceleration off in the launcher and starts again by itself; tick it to try the graphics card again later. If it still closes, start it once with the graphics card off:

./EDExoCompare-1.3.8-x86_64.AppImage --disable-gpu --disable-gpu-sandbox

or set EDEXO_SAFE_GRAPHICS=1 to keep it off. Without the graphics card the 3D galaxy map draws in software (slower); the Classic map is unaffected.

Browser build: tar xzf EDExoCompare-1.3.8-linux-x64.tar.gz, then ./edexo-client.sh in the folder it makes. Its README.txt has the rest.

Both: the journals are found inside the game's Proton or Wine prefix — every Steam library (native, Flatpak, Snap), Heroic and Lutris. Settings live in ~/.config/edexo-compare. Run Elite in Borderless: nothing can draw over an exclusive fullscreen game.

Steam Deck: in Gaming Mode the Deck's compositor (gamescope) shows one window, the game, so the HUD windows cannot appear over it. Open the HUD in a browser on a phone or a second screen instead: start the app in server mode (./edexo-server.sh in the browser build) and open /hud-overlay.html at the address the launcher lists under Network settings → LAN. In Desktop Mode it behaves like any Linux desktop.

What it tells you

Which body to fly to. Worth the trip? ranks every body in the system by expected value — Σ chance × payout × first-footfall multiplier — alongside how many minutes on the ground it will cost. Both timings are measured from your own journal, not guessed: approach and landing, and one sampling run per genus.

How likely each species is. Chance here is a calibrated probability, not a resemblance score. It is built from how often a species has actually been recorded at this gravity, temperature, pressure, planet class, atmosphere and host star, weighted by how common it is, and normalised across the body's candidates, then weighed against how often each genus turns up on bodies like this one. Checked on 14,560 bodies other commanders logged on EDDN, where every species on the body is known: rows it calls 90–100 % turn up 98.9 % of the time, rows under 10 % 6.0 %.

Which species, once you have mapped it. After a DSS names the genus, the same posterior renormalises inside that genus to say which of its species you are looking at.

What you have not logged before. A badge marks species new to your codex.

What is left to find. Achievements count every colour variant you have sampled, galaxy-wide and region by region, with Bronze, Silver and Gold steps — plus stars, worlds and points of interest to visit in each region. Track one and its plants are marked in the app and in the HUD.

Where to go next. The galaxy map (the galaxy icon in the top bar) draws all 5.4 million systems with recorded biology in 3D, grouped by region, sector and neighbourhood, with your own systems on top. Set a floor — Worth ≥ 50 M, say — and Next target flies to the nearest system above it that you have not mapped or sampled, and copies its name to paste into the game's galaxy map; Plan picks up to 20 more, each the nearest to the last, and visits them in the shortest order it finds — back to where you started, if you tick Back to start. NavRoute lists every system on the routes you plot in the game with its star class, to find neutron stars, Wolf-Rayets or black holes along the way and check which EDSM does not know. Values there are the recorded species at 1×: those systems come from other commanders' records, so first footfall is most likely gone. Without WebGL the 2D Classic map opens instead.

Where it was wrong. Every species you find that the app failed to offer is written to a local miss log, and that log is read, not just recorded: it is how most gates were corrected. On the developer's own 764 confirmed finds the panel now lists every one before a DSS.

On a second screen. Open ?screen=triage on a phone or tablet for a read-only triage view that updates as you jump. In the desktop app, turn on LAN access in Network settings first.

Backups. The launcher's Backups tile zips your journals, the app's own data (settings, on-foot scans, surface marks, the miss log) and your exomastery and codex downloads — when you leave the game, on a timer, or when you ask. Every backup is complete; unchanged files are copied from the one before, so it stays quick. Saved browser passwords stay out (they can be read on this PC only). Choose a folder on another drive, a USB drive or a synced folder: the launcher warns in red when the folder shares a partition with your journals, and in yellow when it shares the physical drive. A restore never overwrites: app data goes back at the next start with the replaced files set aside, and journals go into a folder you pick.

Everything in it

A map of the app, screen by screen. Most of it is on by default; anything that sends data anywhere is off until you turn it on.

The main screen

• Header: the system you are in and its region, whether you honked, whether you are the first to visit, its star types, what your unsold exploration and exobiology data is worth (as Universal Cartographics pays it: the honk, +30 % for mapped bodies, the gas giant classes, an optional fleet carrier sale at -25 % or -15 % on your own, and the Pranav Antal bonus), and whether every body is FSS'd.
• Route line: jumps before you must refuel and the light years left on the plot, with fuel costed by your drive's own law (learned from your jumps) and a bar for how long the tank lasts. The route strip shows one refuel pump: yellow on the last system the tank reaches when it is scoopable, blinking red on the last scoopable star before it when it is not (skip that one and the tank runs dry with nowhere to scoop), a red "!" when none is in reach.
• Next boxel: the best unflown boxel within 500 ly by first-footfall credits per jump, asked again on every jump; a click opens it in the galaxy map.
• Neutron route card while you fly one, and a red ⚠ FSD card when the drive is under 80 %.
• Body tabs: every body with biological signals, switched when you target one in the game, plus AutoScanned bodies that still want an FSS. Marks for a species missing from your codex (CX) and a first codex entry for the region (FCX).
• Body facts: class, atmosphere and pressure, gravity, temperature, distance from arrival, volcanism and its geological signal count, and the jumponium and AFM refill materials in its crust.
• Payout: the least and most the body should pay, the x5 first-footfall bonus, and what you have already confirmed on foot or by composition scan. Beside it, the body's expected value (each listed species' chance x its price, one species per genus), with a DSS first tag when most of it rests on one unlikely species a DSS would settle; the body tabs can be ordered by it.
• Candidates: each species with its chance, payout, rarity and codex marks; Why this chance says what the percentage is made of and how often rows at that chance came true on a year of EDDN finds; an Unknown plant row when a signal is left unfilled; Thargoid sites with their Vista prices; [CODEX FIRST] for a colour nobody has logged in the region; [RARE] (and a notice) for a colour logged in 10 systems or fewer galaxy-wide (EDAstro's codex); a worth sampling marker where the data needs more finds.

Screens

They open as tabs (Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+W, drag a tab out into its own window, Shift+F1 / Shift+F2 from the game) or as pop-ups if Tab view is off.

• My discoveries: every species, body, system and star in your journals, sortable and filterable (body features such as small bodies, fast orbits, shepherd moons), as a list or cards, with CSV export.
• Unfinished business: the biology you left behind and what it was worth.
• System map: every body by class with orbits, rings and moons, terraformables, the biology worth chasing, and a GGG ladder drawer for where a gas giant stands on the cloud ladder.
• Encyclopedia: every species' conditions checked against the body you are at, each card coloured by the same check the body tab runs; gravity, temperature and pressure bands per atmosphere, measured on a year of finds. Also online as the species guide.
• Boxels: every system in your saved boxels, flown or not, with stars, notable bodies and biology; one field to add a boxel from any of its systems, each boxel's actions behind ⋯ (Fetch from Spansh, run, check the end); flown by number or in the shortest order from where you are (positions from your plotted routes and Spansh); a Flying strip with the next system, the order and the run, which copies the next system after every jump (F6 copy, F7 start or stop, F8 / F9 previous and next); what each mass code holds across the galaxy; golden boxels where a genus is many times more common; To fly / Done / Flown through.
• Scan route: each system of your route from above at true scale (or Compact), the shortest way over the planets worth mapping and the biology worth sampling, the system's values and CODEX ×N, bodies others discovered from EDSM and Spansh; names for all bodies, the route's or the next planet's only; your ship at the body you are at, following the next stop as you fly, a dotted line to a target off the route. Optional live position from the game's network log, and (experimental) the target's distance read off the HUD four times a second while the tab shows, so the ship travels to it in supercruise.
• Statistics: how you made your credits, a forecast for your next exobiologist and explorer rank, your records against the galactic ones, your carrier's upkeep, and How good are my predictions: every species you confirmed against what the app had listed.
• Achievements: quest-style goals by colour variant, region and rarity, with Bronze, Silver and Gold steps and a notice when you reach one; track one on the HUD.
• Carriers & Stations and Points of interest: EDAstro's lists, downloaded when you ask, searchable by distance and service; carriers can refresh themselves every 12 hours and stations every 24 (or 6, 48, off). The Stations tab finds the nearest station with the services you pick (refuel, repair, Universal Cartographics, Vista Genomics, Interstellar Factors, material traders, technology brokers and more), by pad size and distance from arrival. Find Tritium asks Spansh for the nearest rings with Tritium hotspots and the stations and carriers that sold it in the last 30 days.
• Browser (desktop app only; "+" → Browser): a private browser in a tab. Nothing a site stores outlives the app unless you mark the site Remember; ads, trackers, cookie notices and YouTube ads are blocked (EasyList, EasyPrivacy and uBlock Origin's lists, fetched from their publishers when you first open it); every permission but fullscreen is denied. Optional, in its Privacy & Security menu, off by default: Keep page cache (faster revisits), Remember passwords (encrypted by the operating system, filled in on the site it was saved for, with an optional master password asked once per start). A start page with EDSM, EDAstro, Spansh, ED GGG, ED-DSN, Inara and your own links.
• Bookmarks with tags, notes and distances; Green gas giants by CMDR Arcanic's cloud ladder; Data feeder for your own Spansh Exomastery dumps (Options → Developer tools, off by default); a Session log.

Galaxy map

• All 5.4 million systems with recorded biology in 3D, by region, sector and neighbourhood, with your own route on top; game-style controls (W A S D, Q E, R F) or a mouse; it runs on a phone.
• Find (species, systems and station names) and filters by species, genus, star or planet type; layers for points of interest, Notable Stellar Phenomena, carriers, bookmarks, green gas giants, the 18 helium gas giants on record, 385 Guardian and 417 Thargoid site systems (what each site gives) and 800,709 stations (names on hover, pads by type); your own carrier and colonies marked, your stations in gold; your codex by region, with the biology others have logged in a region that is not in your codex yet, rarest first — a click flies to the nearest system in that same region that has it.
• Carriers & Stations drawer: the same three tabs, measured from the system you picked, else from your ship.
• Laboratory tab, with a Jumponium, an AFM Refill and a Guardian tab inside: the materials you hold (from your journals) and how many FSD injections or AFM refills of each tier they make, whether an AFMU is fitted, then the nearest landable bodies rich in the elements you pick — any or all of them, rich or the top 1 %, by gravity and distance from arrival — from your own scans and the galaxy's top 1 % of landable bodies for each of thirteen elements. The Guardian tab joins the 29 Guardian technology broker unlocks to the materials they take, what you hold and what one more lacks, where each material comes from and the nearest Guardian sites.
• Colonisation candidate search tab: the systems within 15 to 150 ly of your colonies, of a system you pick or of every colonised system, by what their bodies are — at least so many Earth-like, water or ammonia worlds, gas giants of each class, rocky or icy bodies, ringed, landable (with or without atmosphere) or terraformable bodies, bodies with biology or geology signals — and by the main star or a black hole, neutron star, white dwarf or giant in it. Systems already colonised or claimed are left out; nearest first or most bodies first. Its data is a download of its own: the 6.7 million systems within 150 ly of inhabited space, from Spansh's dump. Round one system it answers at once, round all 132,580 colonised systems in a few seconds, in a thread of its own.
• Neutron tab: a route through two or more stops by supercharged jumps from neutron star to neutron star, with refuel stops at a scoopable star near one, the order optimised if you want, and FSD wear per hop learned for each ship. The supercharge is read from your ship's drive: ×6 with the Mk II SCO drive (the Caspian Explorer's, which other ships with a size 8 slot can fit), ×4 with any other. Fly this route puts the next stop on the clipboard after each jump and plots again from your ship if you leave the route; Stop clears it everywhere. The route you fly has one banner in both route tabs, its stops ahead listed, progress as "jump 37 of 112 · destination 1 of 2".
• Spansh route tab: paste a Spansh results link (exobiology, road to riches and its variants, neutron, galaxy plotter, fleet carrier) or import its result JSON or CSV file, and the route is drawn on the map and kept; exobiology and riches stops show Spansh's value beside EDEXO's (drop the ones EDEXO values under a floor), neutron and plotter routes are compared with EDEXO's own plan (jumps, supercharges, refuel stops). Fly this route works as in the Neutron tab; a fleet carrier route can follow your carrier, the next stop copied when it arrives at one, aboard or not. Open in Neutron tab hands a route's ends to EDEXO's planner; a kept route still flies after Spansh deleted its result.
• Next target and Plan: the nearest system above a value you set, and up to 20 more in the shortest order. NavRoute keeps every route you plot with each system's star class.
• Expedition: every boxel round you, or along a route to any system you name (or one of eight suggestions round you), ranked by the first-footfall credits its unflown systems should pay per jump, or by the bodies, star type or system worth you are looking for. Systems you visited, systems in the galaxy index and the 4.2 million flown since 2025 without biology are taken off. A boxel's card lists the system names nobody has recorded, ready to copy; a plan puts up to 20 boxels in flying order; a species lights only the boxels its position rule allows.
• The galaxy index, the stations and the neutron stars are one download from inside the map; its update button says how many systems it adds.

Colonize

• Your sites: every construction site in your journals (read once from your whole history), in your colony or one you are helping, each as a card with what is left, in your hold and still to buy; delivered materials last and green; a site's own rules (pad, distance from the star, planetary ports, other carriers, systems per material); Credits by week per system, paid and spent.
• Haul plan: which station to buy what at, in as few trips of your hold's size as the sellers allow; the next trip stop by stop, the rest as cards. Nothing to tick: a purchase is done when the cargo is aboard, a trip when the site records the delivery. Docked at a site it shows what to unload; at a seller, what to buy.
• Search from the markets in your journal first, then Spansh and Inara (read in the app's own Browser tab when you press Read); Sources: your fleet carrier, a trade party's carriers, stations to avoid; Wing: who hauls what.
• A read-only view for your phone, and a streamer view, from the launcher's Colonize menu.

Overlay (HUD)

Click-through panels over the game, each on or off: the exo-distance tracker (a radar with each sample ringed at its genus's distance, your ship, your SRV and the plants your composition scanner named, placed where two scans' heading lines cross, other species' scans in yellow, your samples numbered, the next plant to sample, a heading guide, and the payout; optionally on whenever you are near a planet), discovery scan count, candidates for the targeted body (scanned ones in order, on top or hidden, how many shown, the one you sample on top), unsold data value, the next jumps with their star class and whether EDSM knows them, the Next boxel line (or, on a neutron route, where to scoop and supercharge and the FSD's health), notable bodies, notices (F5 clears them), a tracked achievement, Colonize (the haul plan's next stop and the site you are working on, with bars that fill as you buy and deliver, and this week's credits), Carrier (your carrier's jump countdown, lockdown and cooldown, with a tone; also a tile in the main window) and Ship (an outline of your ship with each part coloured by its health, the damaged parts worst first). Stacked, merged into one panel, or combined into panels of your choosing (two that touch get a Combine button), and placed anywhere, one by one, on any screen; in the original look, a title bar or an Elite-style frame angled toward the middle of the screen; any colour, 50–200 % scale, 10–100 % background, hidden when the game is not in front. Experimental, off by default: a screen marker over the game for each scanned plant, with an optional reader of the game's own HUD pitch and heading, and a reader of the target's distance for the Scan route (on your PC only, nothing kept or sent).

Launcher and options

• Open Compare and Open Colonize, each in the app window or your browser, with a view for a phone or tablet and a Streamer view for OBS.
• Network settings: this PC, your LAN (with an access key in the link) and your public address, each one can be hidden or turned off.
• Backups of your journals and the app's data, with warnings when the folder shares a drive with them.
• Notify me: your own body rules (a name and up to six conditions on a scan: class, atmosphere, gravity, temperature, distance, ...), notices for notable bodies, Notable Stellar Phenomena, nearby carriers with the services you pick, achievements, a scanned body rich in a Laboratory material you are short of, and a new Community Goal (where to sign up, the objective, when it ends and the rewards), with or without sound.
• Colour scheme for the app and the HUD (a dark colour is lightened until it reads, and the text can take a colour of its own); key binds in one place (one clears the current planet's radar marks), live only while Elite or the app is in front; snapshot images that render what you see without taking a screenshot of your screen; About this install for a bug report with paths masked.
• Opt-ins, each off by default: EDSM look-ups and journal upload (your own API key), Canonn, EDDN.
• Import visited systems: the game's own list of every system your account visited, for journals you no longer have; they count as visited on the map, in Find and in the planner.
• Motion: Full, Reduced or Off for every animation, and at Full six effects with a switch each (button press, opening explanations, rolling numbers, a loaded tick, drag to reorder, pull to refresh); Old copies lists the one-off backup copies in the data folder and removes them on a second click.
• Close to tray, Hardware acceleration (see Linux above), and What's new once after each update.

Where the predictions come from

The project started from Spansh's Exomastery dumps, and it still works the same way: rules say where a species can grow, and records of where it has grown decide.

• The species rules in data/species/ — planet class, atmosphere, temperature, gravity, pressure, volcanism, star — were written for this app and are corrected by what has actually been found. Where a rule and the records disagree on a species seen often enough, observation wins.
• The species profiles (how often each species is found at each temperature, gravity, pressure and so on) are built from Spansh's Exomastery exports, hydrated with EDSM's body records.
• How often each genus is on a body like this one — by planet type, signal count, atmosphere, temperature, pressure, gravity, star and volcanism — comes from the 2.8 million bodies with a DSS genus list in Spansh's galaxy dump.
• A year of other commanders' finds on EDDN (342,000 bodies, each species logged on the exact body, from the EDGalaxyData archive) sets the measured limits — the temperatures a species really reaches, the colour stars it never grows under, the places it is never found — and holds back the test sets every change is judged on: no change ships if it hides a species those finds confirm.
• Your own journals are the final check: the app's miss log, and the accuracy probes below.

No number reaches the screen as a percentage unless it has been checked against real finds.

The 1 % chance floor

Every candidate carries a Chance here figure — how often a species with this profile turns out to actually be on a body like this one. It is the one percentage in the app that has been calibrated against real outcomes: on 14,560 EDDN bodies where every species is known, the 90-100 % band comes in at 98.9 % and the 0-10 % band at 6.0 %.

Candidates below 1 % are moved behind show unlikely rather than listed. The rule is no misses first: a list of three where one is right beats a list of one that is wrong. The floor was 5 % until 1.2.11; measured over 2,960 bodies of every genus, 5 % hid the right species on 25 of them, 1 % on 4, for one wrong row more on 2.5 % of the bodies.

The floor never empties a panel — if nothing clears it, the single best candidate stays — never touches a row the model has no opinion about, and never argues with a species you have scanned on foot yourself. A row it hid comes back when nothing else of its genus is listed and bodies like this one carry that genus at least 80 % of the time. Checked against other commanders' finds on EDDN: after a DSS, 31,985 of 31,987 confirmed species were listed.

To change it, edit PRESENCE_FLOOR_PCT in src/server/presenceFloors.ts and rebuild.

EDSM

The app can look a system up on EDSM so a system already in the community database can be triaged before you arrive.

This is off by default, and it stays off until you enter your own EDSM API key from edsm.net/en/settings/api in Options. Turning it on sends the name of each system you jump to to EDSM, at most once per system — asked the moment the FSD starts its countdown, so the answer is waiting when you drop out of witchspace rather than arriving after you have already read an empty panel. The key is stored on your machine in its own file beside your settings, never in the settings file, and Forget key deletes it and switches auto-fetch off.

Canonn

The app can send your discoveries to Canonn Research, the community science archive. The project is not affiliated with Canonn and its data does not come from there; the switch is there for commanders who want to help their research.

This is off by default. Turning it on sends organic scans, the sales that date them, codex entries and whatever else Canonn is currently asking for — with your CMDR name attached, because their archive is keyed on it, and with the journal line exactly as the game wrote it. There is no anonymous form of it. Only live events go: switching it on never uploads journals you already have.

There is no telemetry and no analytics. These requests run without you pressing anything, and none carries anything about you:

• the update check — each time the launcher opens, at most once an hour, GitHub is asked for this project's releases (the app's version is in the user agent);
• the game server status — Frontier's status page, or EDSM's if that does not answer, about once a minute while the app's window is open;
• EDSM's answer to which systems on your plotted route it already knows (the system names only);
• whether a newer galaxy index, station list or neutron list is out — the sizes and versions of the files on this project's galaxy-index release, when the galaxy map asks;
• Frontier's public list of Community Goals, once an hour, for the notice when a new one starts (switch it off in Notify me → Community goals).

The browser fetches its filter lists from their publishers once you open it (weekly, YouTube's daily). Every request is listed in the privacy policy, which ships with the app.

Running it

The packaged app is a small launcher window; the app itself opens in your browser.

npm install
npm run dev            # Vite (5173) + API/WS (7111)
npm run electron:dev   # build, bundle and launch the Electron launcher
npm run dist:win       # portable .exe + CLI build into dist/

Point it at your journal folder from the launcher (Journal folder) if it is not in the default Saved Games\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous.

Ports and network modes

	Binds	Who can reach it
npm run start:client	127.0.0.1:7111	this PC only
npm run start:server	0.0.0.0:7111	this PC and every device on your network
desktop app	127.0.0.1:7111	this PC; with LAN access on, 0.0.0.0:7111 and your network too

The desktop app (.exe, AppImage) has a LAN access switch in the launcher's Network settings: off for a new install, so only this PC can open it; on for an install that already had it. It applies after a restart.

Server mode exists so you can put the app on a second monitor, a tablet or a phone. It also means the mutating endpoints (settings, exobiology reset, which system you are viewing) are reachable from the LAN, so every non-loopback client must present an access key:

• the key is minted on first server-mode launch and stored beside your user settings (%LOCALAPPDATA%\ED Exo Compare\edexo-compare-lan-key.txt);
• the launcher's Network settings → LAN links already carry it as ?k=…; open one on a device and it stays paired for a year via a cookie;
• requests from this PC never need it, so nothing about the local experience changes;
• delete the key file to un-pair every device.

Pass --local (or --host 127.0.0.1) to bind to this PC only, and no key is used at all.

Development

npm test               # vitest over the pure logic (matching, payouts, layout, cache encoding)
npm run lint
npm run typecheck      # client + shared
npm run typecheck:server
npm run typecheck:tests
npm run format

Measuring it

Accuracy is a measurement, not an opinion. The probes run against your own journal cache and the species database, and print both scenarios — FSS-only and post-DSS — because a number for one of them alone does not count.

npm run probe          # recall, ambiguity, precision, decidability, missing gate
npm run rank-probe     # mean rank, top-1, top-3, calibration buckets
npm run fixture        # regenerate the 20-body golden candidate fixture

missing gate is the one to watch: bodies where the app offers fewer candidates than the game itself reports signals. It needs no ground truth to prove, and it should stay at zero.

The feeder

The species profiles the model reads are built from a local corpus of Spansh exports hydrated against EDSM. That corpus is a build input and is not in this repository.

npm run feeder -- status              # what the corpus holds vs what the app ships
npm run feeder -- import <file.csv>   # the one manual step
npm run feeder -- run [species...]    # hydrate, analyse, install
npm run feeder -- rebuild [species...] # rebuild profiles from packs on disk, no network
npm run feeder -- pack [species...]   # fold loose sample files into per-species archives

EDEXO_PERF=1 turns on the server-side performance log — timers, counters and payload sizes reported every 30 s. It is a no-op otherwise, so it stays compiled in permanently: npm run dev:perf or npm run start:client:perf.

Layout

src/server/     journal merge, species matching, the ranking model, HTTP + WS
src/client/     the React app, and the second screen
src/shared/     types and pure helpers used by both
src/feeder/     corpus → shipped species profiles
scripts/        the feeder CLI and the accuracy probes
data/species/   the species database, one folder per genus
public/         launcher, the transparent HUD overlays, and the privacy policy and terms (legal/)
electron/       launcher window
src/cli/        the console build's commands
tests/          vitest suites
e2e/            Playwright tests against the dev server
docs/           internal notes and research — not tracked, see .gitignore

Credits

Built on these communities' work, none of them affiliated with this project:

• Spansh — where this project started: its Exomastery dumps, the species profiles built from them, the galaxy dump behind the genus chances, and the stations and neutron stars on the galaxy map.
• EDSM — body records, system coordinates and the codex dump behind the rarity tiers.
• ED-DSN — the species photographs.
• EDDN (Elite Dangerous Data Network) — other commanders' live scans, the test set every prediction is checked against.
• EDGalaxyData by CMDR Bravada Cadelanne — EDDN's messages kept day by day since 2017, for checking against past finds.
• EDAstro — the codex sightings behind the galaxy map's index and the region tables, the nebula and Guardian-site coordinates, carriers, points of interest and galactic records.
• Canonn Research Group — the optional upload of your discoveries. Its Bioforge figures and codex reference were used later to check one rule (Bacterium tela) and the colour variants' names; the project did not start from Canonn, and its rules do not come from there.
• Ghostery's adblocker (MPL-2.0), with the EasyList and uBlock Origin filter lists — the browser's blocking.

Full attribution in NOTICE.md.

Inara helper for Colonize (Chrome, optional)

Colonize finds sellers through Spansh on its own. To add Inara's buy searches too, load the helper in chrome-extension/: Chrome → chrome://extensions → Developer mode → Load unpacked → that folder. On an Inara buy search (Colonize's Inara button opens one), use EDEXO Colonize: → Scrape info in Inara's top bar; the result lands in Downloads\EdexoColonize\inara, which Colonize reads by itself.

Support

EDEXO is free and stays free. If it helps you, you can buy me a coffee — entirely optional; nothing in the app is behind it.

Licence

Three parts, three licences:

• Code — PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0, since 1.3.0. Use it, change it, fork it, make your own builds — for anything non-commercial — and keep the Required Notice line from LICENSE with every copy. Selling it, or any part of it, or using it to make money is not allowed. Two additional permissions, in LICENSE: streamers and video makers may show the app and its HUD in monetised content with no licence step and no credit needed, and a non-commercial fork may take donations as long as nothing is put behind a payment. Releases up to and including 1.2.20 were MIT, and copies of them stay MIT.
• Data — CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. The data/ folder and the data tables generated into the code: credit the sources, no commercial use, share alike. Part of it is derived from EDAstro's content, which carries this licence, so the data carries it too. Details, and the EDAstro-derived files, in data/LICENSE-DATA.txt. Releases 1.1.0–1.2.7 shipped those files under the MIT notice by mistake; the notice applies to them as well.
• Photographs — Frontier's. They are screenshots of Elite Dangerous; the game and its artwork belong to Frontier Developments and are under Frontier's terms, not either licence here.

If you build on the code, the Required Notice line is part of the licence; a link back as well — "based on EDEXO by Bahuckel, https://bahuckel.com/projects/edexo-compare" — is appreciated. For the data, credit is part of the licence too.

Every photograph in the app is labelled with where it came from, and the label is the answer:

• Photo by Bahuckel — CMDR <name> — contributed. That commander took it themselves and gave it to this project knowingly: either the project owner's own, or a commander who photographed a species for the project or offered an existing shot in support of it. These are listed by file in data/species/photo-credits.json.
• Photo from: https://ed-dsn.net/ and its respective owner — sourced from the ED-DSN community. Here with ED-DSN's agreement while replacements are photographed, and the standing credit for anything not named in that manifest.

So a named commander under an image means its author agreed to it being here; the ED-DSN line is the default, which is why an image can never quietly pass as contributed. Any rights holder who would prefer theirs removed can ask and it will be, with no justification needed — see NOTICE.md.

Elite Dangerous, its artwork and game content remain the property of Frontier Developments; see the terms.