A browser-based platform for playing paper Magic: The Gathering remotely with friends. Spell Coven enables MTG players to play their physical cards online through video chat, card recognition, and game management tools—all running in your browser with no downloads required.
License: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 (non-commercial use only)
This project is licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0.
You are free to use, modify, and distribute this software for non-commercial purposes only. Commercial use — including selling, paid hosting, offering it as a paid service, or bundling it into a commercial product — is prohibited without a separate commercial license from the copyright holder.
See LICENSE for full terms.
If you want to use this project commercially, contact the maintainer to obtain a commercial license.
- Open a GitHub issue labeled
commercial-license.
This is a hobby project. I'm a full-time web developer, and Spell Coven is my playground for exploring cutting-edge AI tools and staying in the loop with what's possible in modern web development. It's a passion project born from my love of Magic: The Gathering and curiosity about emerging technologies like browser-based machine learning, WebRTC, and computer vision.
Spell Coven aims to provide a comprehensive remote play experience for Magic: The Gathering players, competing with platforms like SpellTable by offering:
- Multi-party Video & Voice: Browser-based video chat optimized for overhead camera views of playmats (2-4 players per game)
- Intelligent Card Recognition: Computer vision powered by CLIP to identify cards in real-time and display rulings/details
- Game Management Tools: Life total tracking, commander damage tracking, and game timers
- Flexible Room System: Create or join private/public game rooms with format and power level metadata for better matchmaking
- Device Flexibility: Use standard webcams or mobile devices as overhead cameras without separate apps
- Fully Browser-Based: No installation required—works on modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari)
The following features are currently available and working:
- ✅ Room System: Create and join game rooms with real-time player presence
- ✅ Multi-party Video/Audio Chat: WebRTC-powered video and audio communication between players
- ✅ Webcam Integration: Use your webcam as an overhead camera for your playmat
- ✅ User Authentication: Sign in with Convex authentication
- ✅ Life Total Tracking: Keep track of life totals for all players
- ✅ Commander Damage Tracking: Track commander damage across multiple opponents
- ✅ Invite by URL: Share a link to invite friends to your game room
These features are actively being developed:
- 🚧 Card Recognition: Click-to-identify cards using CLIP-based visual search and Scryfall integration (in progress)
- 🚧 Card Boundary Detection: OpenCV.js for real-time card detection in video feeds (in progress)
- 🚧 Pre-computed Embeddings: Database of ~20k+ MTG card embeddings for fast similarity search (in progress)
Future enhancements on the roadmap:
- Public/Private Room Matchmaking: Find games with players of similar formats and power levels
- User Accounts and Game History: Track your play sessions over time
- Replay and Spectator Modes: Watch games or review past sessions
Spell Coven is designed for Magic: The Gathering players who want to play with their physical cards remotely against friends. The platform enables:
- Remote Play Sessions: Play paper MTG with friends across distances using video chat
- Casual & Competitive Play: Support for various formats (Commander, Modern, Standard, etc.) with power level indicators
- Card Identification: Quickly identify cards on camera for rules lookups and oracle text (coming soon)
- Game State Tracking: Keep track of life totals and commander damage
- Flexible Setup: Use any webcam or smartphone as an overhead camera—no special equipment needed
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Install dependencies:
bun install
-
Start the Convex development server:
bun run convex:dev
-
Start the Web development server:
bun run dev
-
Open the app: Navigate to https://localhost:1234 to get started.
Sentry is integrated across the Convex backend and web client. See
docs/sentry.md for configuration, CI setup, and verification
steps.
This Turborepo monorepo houses all applications and packages needed to drive the Spell Coven platform:
web: Main web application for remote MTG play (Vite + React + TanStack Router)- Room system with real-time player presence
- WebRTC video/audio chat
- Card recognition (in development)
@repo/mtg-image-db: Pre-generated CLIP embeddings and metadata for MTG card database- Python pipeline for downloading Scryfall data
- FAISS index builder for efficient similarity search
- Browser-optimized export (int8 quantization)
@repo/ui: Shared React component library@repo/eslint-config: Shared ESLint configurations@repo/typescript-config: Shared TypeScript configurations@repo/tailwind-config: Shared Tailwind CSS configuration@repo/prettier-config: Shared Prettier configuration
Each package/app is 100% TypeScript (Python for data pipeline).
Frontend:
- React 19, TanStack Router, Tailwind CSS
- Vite with TypeScript
- Convex for authentication
Real-time Communication:
- WebRTC for peer-to-peer video/audio
- Convex for real-time data sync and room management
Card Recognition (in development):
- CLIP (via @huggingface/transformers) for image feature extraction
- OpenCV.js for real-time card boundary detection
- FAISS for efficient similarity search
Infrastructure:
- Turborepo managed with Bun workspaces
- Python data pipeline with PyTorch, FAISS, Scryfall API
This Turborepo has some additional tools already setup for you:
- TypeScript for static type checking
- ESLint for code linting
- Prettier for code formatting
To build all apps and packages, run the following command:
cd spell-coven-mono
# With [global `turbo`](https://turborepo.com/docs/getting-started/installation#global-installation) installed (recommended)
turbo build
# Without [global `turbo`](https://turborepo.com/docs/getting-started/installation#global-installation), use your package manager
bunx turbo run build
You can build a specific package by using a filter:
# With [global `turbo`](https://turborepo.com/docs/getting-started/installation#global-installation) installed (recommended)
turbo build --filter=docs
# Without [global `turbo`](https://turborepo.com/docs/getting-started/installation#global-installation), use your package manager
bunx turbo run build --filter=docs
- Mana symbol vectors sourced from Mana & Card Icons made by Andrew Gioia.
This is an open-source project and contributions are welcome! Whether you're interested in:
- Adding new features (game tools, UI improvements)
- Improving card recognition accuracy
- Optimizing performance
- Writing documentation
- Reporting bugs
Please feel free to open issues or submit pull requests.
Learn more about the power of Turborepo: