Pokescope

I liked the lookup commands in Pokemon Showdown's chat and wanted them in my terminal, mainly for using while I play PokeMMO.

It's made in TypeScript because it uses the @pkmn/sim npm package directly, all the data (type charts, learnsets, tier info, move descriptions) comes from there, so updating the dependency is enough to get new Pokemon, tier changes, etc that pokemon showdown might add in the future.

Why not Go, Rust, Gleam, etc.? Because pokemon showdown isn't just data on pokemon, moves, items, etc., there's also a lot of logic (learnset validation, format rules, type effectiveness with abilities and items, etc.), and reimplementing all that and keeping it in sync with every Showdown update is way more work than just letting bun update handle it.

Runs on Bun, which executes TypeScript directly with no build step. The Nix package ships the source and a small wrapper that invokes bun run.

It uses @pkmn/sim from Modular Pokémon Showdown, a slimmer extraction of pokemon showdown's data, simulator, and team validator. Nix builds go through bun2nix for per-package reproducibility.

@pkmn/sim is also published much more often than the pokemon-showdown npm package (every couple of weeks vs years between releases), so competitive users get tier moves, format changes, and item description updates pretty quickly.

Also thanks to my fren William for helping me choose the name. :)

Install

Works on Linux and macOS (x86_64 and aarch64).

From source:

git clone https://github.com/luvcie/pokescope
cd pokescope
bun install
bun link

Nix:

Run temporarily, without installing:

nix run github:luvcie/pokescope

To install permanently:

nix profile add github:luvcie/pokescope

Or add to your flake:

inputs.pokescope.url = "github:luvcie/pokescope";

# then in environment.systemPackages / home.packages:
inputs.pokescope.packages.${system}.default

Usage

Interactive REPL:

pokescope

Or directly:

pokescope weakness charizard
pokescope dexsearch fire, ou

Commands

command	description
weakness	weaknesses, resistances, and immunities for a Pokemon or type combo
eff	type effectiveness of a move or type against a target
coverage	best type coverage for up to 4 moves
data	Pokedex entry for a Pokemon, move, item, ability, or nature
learn	check if a Pokemon can learn a move (or combo), and how
dexsearch	search Pokemon by type, tier, stats, ability, moves, egg group, and more
movesearch	search moves by type, category, BP, flags, boosts, and more
itemsearch	search items by description keywords
statcalc	calculate a final stat value from base stat, EVs, IVs, nature, and modifier
randompokemon	random Pokemon, optionally filtered by dexsearch criteria
randommove	random move, optionally filtered by movesearch criteria
randomquote	a random Pokemon quote (not from Showdown, just something I added)

All commands support a [gen] prefix (e.g. gen4, adv, bw) to query older generations. Type help inside the REPL for full usage and examples.

Might add more commands in the future, like the randomquote one which is not from pokemon showdown.

Updating @pkmn/sim

Note to future me:

bun update @pkmn/sim
bunx bun2nix -o bun.nix
git add package.json bun.lock bun.nix && git commit -m "chore: bump @pkmn/sim"