Documentation

Grimoire user guide

Find games on public sources, import them into your own databases, configure a free UCI engine and use the features available today.

Install and create your first database

Grimoire installs without a game database or analysis engine. You separately choose the sources that feed your databases and the UCI engine used for analysis.

Start the app and wait for local initialisation to finish.
Open Databases, choose Create database and name it for its purpose: tournament, repertoire or personal games.
Then add games from a PGN file, an archive or the Lichess Broadcast connector.

Private beta

Where to get public games

Grimoire imports games obtained from public sources. Always check the source’s terms of use and retain its provenance with your database.

Lichess Broadcast: live events and archives. The built-in connector avoids a manual download.
The Week in Chess (TWIC): weekly collections available as compressed PGN files. Import is manual today; a TWIC connector is planned for later.
Lichess Open Database: monthly PGN.ZST archives. Broadcast archives suit tournament databases; complete online-game dumps are extremely large.
Official tournament websites: when an organiser publishes a PGN or ZIP file, download it and use file import.

Lichess Broadcasts TWIC archive Lichess Open Database

Import a Lichess broadcast

The public connector currently available retrieves completed games from a Lichess event and adds them to the database you choose.

Open Public sources and select the destination database at the top of the screen.
Browse featured events and archives, search for a tournament or paste its Lichess Broadcast URL.
Select one or more events, verify the destination and start the import.
Run the retrieval again later to add new games. Grimoire deduplicates games already present.
If needed, rollback removes only games added by that import and protects games you have edited.

Open Lichess Broadcast

Import a PGN or archive

Use this route for TWIC, the Lichess Open Database or any tournament website that provides downloadable files.

In Databases, select the destination and choose Add games.
Choose one or more files, a complete folder, or paste PGN text directly.
Current formats: PGN, PGN.GZ, PGN.ZST, ZIP, 7z and TAR.BZ2.
Follow the counters for discovered files, added games, duplicates and rejections. An interrupted import can resume when a checkpoint is available.
For a very large Lichess archive, create a dedicated database and allow enough disk space.

Synchronise your own games

The Connectors page complements public sources by synchronising Lichess and Chess.com playing accounts into the My games database.

Create a player profile to group accounts that represent the same person.
Add a Lichess or Chess.com account; Lichess may request OAuth authorisation in your browser.
Start synchronisation and review the report: discovered, added, ignored or rejected games.
These personal connectors are separate from the Public sources tournament catalogue.

Explore imported games

In Explorer, play moves on the board or start from a position. The move tree, statistics and game list stay synchronised.

Filter the whole database by player, colour, rating, date, opening or position.
Sort results across the entire database, not only the visible page.
Open a game directly at the move matching the explored position.
Save a new variation or copy a filtered selection to another database.

Prepare a player

Player search builds a profile from the games contained in the selected database.

Search for a name, then open the profile to review results, peak rating and recent games.
Choose White opening tree or Black opening tree to open an already filtered explorer.
Change the active database to compare a player across different collections.

Install Stockfish on macOS

Stockfish is a free, open-source UCI chess engine independent from Grimoire. On an Apple Silicon Mac, Homebrew is the simplest route.

If Homebrew is installed, open Terminal and run: brew install stockfish.
In Grimoire, open Engines, click Add UCI engine and choose /opt/homebrew/bin/stockfish.
Without Homebrew, download the Apple Silicon build from the official site, extract it to a stable folder and select the Stockfish executable.
Grimoire verifies the engine identity and options. Click Activate when several engines are configured.

Download Stockfish Install Homebrew

Install Stockfish on Windows

Stockfish needs no Windows installer: download the official archive for your processor and keep the executable in a permanent folder.

On the official site, choose Windows x64 AVX2, recommended for most recent PCs. Use the generic 64-bit build if AVX2 is unsupported.
Extract the archive, for example to C:\Tools\Stockfish, and do not move that folder after configuration.
In Grimoire, open Engines, click Add UCI engine and select the stockfish…exe file.
After validation, click Activate. SmartScreen may request confirmation when the downloaded binary first runs.

Download Stockfish

Analyse a game

Once the engine is active, open a game and use the engine panel to analyse the position or run a complete game review.

Set the number of lines, Hash memory and threads according to your computer’s resources.
Evaluations, depths and best moves update without changing the notation.
Game review scans the positions and highlights inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders at the selected depth.
Variations and comments you add can be saved with the game.

Maintain and export a database

Management tools move, merge, verify and back up the games you have collected.

Export a verified database as PGN, Zstandard-compressed PGN or a ZIP archive.
Preview a merge before running it and optionally archive the source database.
Optimise a database to compact its files and indexes without changing games or provenance.
Reset returns to the latest published database version and reverts later local changes.