The Slate
A college football ratings, edges, pick'em, and bet-tracking site for the crew. Full product spec — including the prediction model, league rules, and the honesty layer — lives in docs/SPEC.md.
Stack: Next.js (App Router) on Vercel · Supabase (Postgres, Auth, pg_cron + Edge Functions) · CollegeFootballData API · Open-Meteo · Anthropic API.
Setup
- Copy
.env.example to .env.local and fill in keys:
- CFBD: register at collegefootballdata.com/key. Tier 1+ is required, because the scoreboard and weather endpoints are entitlements the free tier does not grant. It is not about call volume — a full cold 2023–25 backtest backfill is 16 calls. We run Tier 2 (30,000/mo) against ~10,000 of expected use.
- Supabase: create a project, then apply every file in
supabase/migrations/ in order (via supabase db push or the SQL editor). Applying only 0001 leaves the integrity lockdown, groups and per-group picks out — the app will not work.
- Anthropic: for the LLM layer (team verdicts, three questions, scoped news scan).
npm installnpm run dev
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|
npm run dev | Dev server |
npm run build | Production build |
npm test | Model and app unit tests (vitest) |
npm run db:test | Applies every migration to a throwaway Postgres and asserts the RLS policies, grants and security-definer guards (needs local Postgres binaries) |
npm run backtest | Point-in-time backtest over 2023–2025 (needs CFBD_API_KEY; add -- --cached to reuse fetched data, -- --tune to grid-search parameters) |
npm run probe:cfbd | What the CFBD key's tier grants, endpoint by endpoint (11 calls, read-only). Distinguishes DENIED (buy a tier) from EMPTY (wait for CFBD to publish) — a distinction build-preseason.ts --check cannot make, because the tier-gated endpoints are the ones the preseason build never touches. Also runs as the cfbd-probe Actions task, and alongside the daily August preseason-refresh. |
Repo layout
docs/SPEC.md the build spec (v2, amended + verified)
supabase/migrations/ schema + RLS (picks hidden until kickoff, append-only ledger)
src/lib/cfbd.ts the ONLY module that talks to CFBD
src/lib/supabase/ server/browser Supabase clients
src/model/ratings.ts prediction model (pure functions, versioned params)
scripts/backtest.ts lookahead-guarded replay + calibration report
Principles (short version)
- Predictions are frozen and timestamped; the Receipts page is a feature.
- The ledger is append-only and unhideable by design.
- CLV — measured against our own captured closing lines — is the arbiter of whether anyone's edge is real.
- ATS trends are shown for fun and never fed to the model.
