A notation book
In 2026, Plyfolio's maker joined a chess club for the first time. On the first night they were handed a notation book and asked to write every move down. It was harder than it looked: a move in the wrong column, a capture missed in time trouble, a page that made no sense the next morning.
So they started making the scoresheet they wished they had. Big keys for piece, file and rank. A keypad that knows the rules, so a move that cannot be played cannot go in by mistake. Nothing that helps you play, because that is not what a scoresheet is for.
After the game
The best part of club night is often afterwards. Players gather round a board and go back over what happened: where it turned, what else was possible. Most of those games were still on paper, and getting one into anything you could step through took longer than the conversation lasted.
Plyfolio is made for that moment too. A game recorded in the app is ready to review the second it ends. A game played on paper can be typed in quickly afterwards, and we are working on scanning a paper scoresheet straight in, part by part. That is coming later, once it works on real phones with real handwriting.
Made by a club player, for the love of the game.
What we left out on purpose
A board while you record. The recording screen shows notation and nothing else: no board, no evaluation, no hints. Its keypad knows the position, so keys that cannot make a legal move dim and a mistyped move cannot go in; it never suggests what to play. It is the one decision that makes Plyfolio something you might be allowed to use at a club, and we will not trade it for convenience. Even so, the arbiter decides; we say so everywhere.
An account. There is nothing to sign up for. Your games live on your phone, and in your own Google Drive or iCloud if you want a copy. We have no server to keep them on, so we cannot lose them, sell them or be asked for them.
A subscription. Plyfolio is £9.99, once. Every feature, every update. Chess players have been paying once for good tools for a long time, and we think that is a fair way to do it.
Promises about the camera. Reading a game from a photo of a scoresheet is the feature everyone asks about. It is hard to do well, and a scanner that is wrong one move in twenty makes more work, not less. It will arrive in a free update when it works on real phones with real handwriting, and not before.
How it is made
We wanted Plyfolio to feel like a well-made book: black and white, one ribbon to mark your place, pieces that glide when you step through a game, and haptics you can feel when a move is accepted. Calm enough to use under a clock. The last move is set as large as the screen allows, so you can check it from across the table.
What is next
The roadmap says it honestly: scoresheet photos once they work, fetching your online games by username, and an optional ECF rating lookup. No dates, because dates are promises we might miss. Until then, if you have a drawer of scoresheets, Plyfolio will happily take them, one game at a time.
If you try it, tell us what to change. We read every message.
Written by Remiam. More from Remiam