Wager Book
A desktop book for wagers placed on Kalshi and Polymarket US: every open position and every
closed one, with the stake, the market-implied chance, the most it can pay, and what it
actually paid. PySide6, one JSON file, nothing sent anywhere.
What it does
- Active tab: open wagers with platform, category, title, side, stake, odds,
max win, profit and return if won, fees, current price and mark value, placed and close dates
- History tab: closed wagers with the result, payout, realised P&L and return
- Add / Edit dialog that works the contracts, max win and profit out as you type
- Update Prices (F5) fetches what each open wager could be sold for now - the best bid for
the side held - from Kalshi's and Polymarket's public market data (Polymarket US first,
polymarket.com for its own ids), off the interface thread;
paste a market's web address into Ticker and the app reads the id and the platform from it
- Settle dialog that fills in the usual payout for Won, Lost, Sold or Voided and lets you
correct it; Reopen for a settlement made by mistake
- Totals under each table: open exposure and max win; closed count, win rate and net P&L
- File > Import CSV reads a Kalshi download, a Polymarket activity export or this app's
own CSV, previews what it will add, skips rows already in the book, and lists rows it
could not read with the reason
- Sorting on real values, File > Export CSV, light/dark theme, user manual on F1
- The window reopens where it was last closed, at the same size; the Active / History tabs are
large and the open one is underlined in the accent colour, as in the group's other apps
Website: https://charette-ai-group.github.io/wagerBook/ — screenshots, the full manual and
the downloads, built from docs/.
The user manual is in docs/manual/README.md, with the arithmetic.
Download
Users do not need Python. Releases
carry a Windows installer, a Windows portable zip and a macOS app bundle:
| File | For |
|---|
wagerBookSetup-<version>.exe | Windows. Per-user install, no administrator rights; adds a Start menu entry |
WagerBook-<version>-portable.zip | Windows, without installing: unzip anywhere and run WagerBook.exe |
WagerBook-<version>-macos.zip | macOS: unzip and drag WagerBook.app to Applications |
Your book stays in %APPDATA%\Wager Book (on macOS, the user's application data folder), not
in the install folder, so upgrading or uninstalling never touches your wagers.
One-time setup
cd W:\projects\26wagerBook
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -e ".[dev]"
Daily workflow
cd W:\projects\26wagerBook
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
wager-book
Or without the script entry point:
python -m wagerBook.main
Or just double-click runApp.cmd in the project folder (needs the one-time setup done first).
Tests and lint
pytest
ruff check src tests
Where the data lives
%APPDATA%\Wager Book\wagers.json — every wager, open or closed. Rewritten whole on each
change through a temporary file, so a crash mid-write leaves the previous book intact.
settings.ini beside it holds the theme choice and the window's last position and size.
Standalone builds and releases
The release files are built by .github/workflows/build.yml, the
same pipeline as 26FRWB: every push runs the tests on Windows and macOS and builds both; pushing
a version tag also publishes a GitHub Release with the builds attached.
To build them yourself:
pip install -e ".[build]"
python tools\buildExe.py
python tools\buildInstaller.py
| Step | Produces | Notes |
|---|
tools/buildExe.py on Windows | dist\WagerBook\ | One-folder PyInstaller bundle, about 120 MB |
tools/buildExe.py on macOS | dist/WagerBook.app | Application bundle, from the same spec |
tools\buildInstaller.py | dist\wagerBookSetup-<version>.exe | Inno Setup 6, about 33 MB. Needs winget install JRSoftware.InnoSetup. Windows only |
tools/buildExe.py inventories what landed in the bundle - the icon, the manual, certifi's
certificate list - checks on Windows that WagerBook.exe carries the app's version in its
Properties > Details (stamped from appConfig by tools/windowsVersionInfo.py), and then runs the built app's --selftest report.txt, which also builds the
window offscreen against a scratch book. A windowed build has no console, so asking it is the
only proof it starts; the script refuses to call a bundle shippable until it answers.
The certificate list matters for Update Prices: a standalone macOS build often finds no system
list, and every https request would then fail as if the price sites were down.
services/httpsService.py uses certifi's list everywhere, so the answer is the same from
source and from every build.
A note for macOS users
The app bundle is not code-signed or notarised, so Gatekeeper will refuse it on first open
with a message about an unidentified developer. Right-click the app and choose Open, which
offers a button the plain double-click does not, or clear the quarantine flag:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine WagerBook.app
Signing needs a paid Apple Developer account, which this project does not have.
Publishing a release
Tag a commit whose appConfig.appVersion matches. The workflow refuses a tag that disagrees,
because a release named after a version the app does not report leaves a bug report
unanswerable.
git tag -a v0.8.4 -m "What changed in this release" ; git push origin v0.8.4
The tag's message becomes the release notes. git tag deletes lines starting with # by
default, so if the notes use Markdown headings, write them to a file and tag with
--cleanup=whitespace instead:
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
