Programming Team Building web app with AI

[markymark9]

Hey everyone! I’m new to this community and to the world of competitive Pokémon, I’ve been a casual fan since Yellow all the way through to Scarlet/Violet. The closest I got to competitive was EV training for battles with friends back in the day haha

I’ve recently gotten into team building for Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet, and started experimenting with different large language models (LLMs) to see what kinds of teams the AI would create. That led me to build my own custom GPT about a year ago, called Poké Team Builder. After seeing some positive feedback, I decided to turn it into a full web app:
https://poketeambuilder.app/

If you’re interested, feel free to check it out and let me know what you think!
I’m a software engineer and have always wanted to make something Pokémon-related since discovering PokeAPI a few years ago. Hoping this can grow into something useful for others like it has been for me. Sort of a repository of generated teams that I tweak, saved in a database instead of on paper or in local storage on Showdown, with sprites and info sourced from PokeAPI. I also added export to Showdown and PokePaste links for teams.
This project has been a fun way to combine programming with Pokémon, and to dip my toes into the competitive scene and team building in Showdown.
Looking forward to Champions as well and learning more through this community!

Suggestions and feedback are always welcome—thanks for reading!

 

[markymark9]

Update: I've now added export to Showdown and PokePaste directly to the team builder, instead of having to save a team to export it. Thanks for all the feedback so far!

 

[toshimelonhead]

Why is this requiring a login and a signup?

 

[markymark9]

Why is this requiring a login and a signup?

Hey, great question!

Login is currently required so I can:

• Save teams to the user ID
• Prevent bots from hammering the AI API I’m using (which cost money)

I’ve scoped out building a guest mode or demo version that would let people try it without logging in. It’s definitely on my development list of to-do’s.. just needs some backend work to do it right without risking abuse from bots.

Definitely want to make this as user friendly as possible!

 

[toshimelonhead]

Fair enough -- bot abuse is definitely a thing. I signed up this morning to play around with it. Feedback coming soon.

It's a good start and there's a lot of potential here. My concern is mostly around monetizing too soon when there's no need to go that route yet. This still feels like it's in development and has some features that I would use a ton, but the biggest missing feature I would need is the ability to import teams and get AI feedback. Adding sets is still clunky or impossible.

 

[markymark9]

Nice thanks for the feedback so far! Definitely helps a lot with fleshing this out. I was thinking an import would be cool but wasn’t sure until I had actual users playing around with it. Something I can definitely prioritize alongside the manual building if that is feeling clunky.

And regarding monetization, so far I have been topping up users with team generations when they get low, but any purchases for more team generations feeds back into development costs as it scales (API calls to the AI, server and domain costs, etc.)

One user asked for a way to buy more as they were burning through the generations (which is awesome!) but yeah just trying to find a balance to help mitigate personal cost to keep this app running.

Thanks again!

 

[markymark9]

Managed to get Imports working! Revised the team builder a bit to support imports and just general improvements to user experience. Let me know if you experience any issues with these changes!

Have a few more features and improvements in mind, and I'll post the options in a poll in a couple of days to see what folks are interested in. Feel free to DM me or post here if you have any feedback or suggestions as well.

Going to be hopping into some of the new Elden Ring lol, I'll try to work on it some more this weekend if anything comes up. I've been having fun building this out, hope everyone is liking it.

 

[markymark9]

Hey all, put up the poll for requested features for the app. If there is anything not listed feel free to choose other and comment in the thread or DM me! Once results are in I'll start working on it and provide further updates.

Thanks everyone, and glad folks are loving it so far!

 

[Xuwu]

I just tried it out and it feels pretty good. I want to know what happens if I run out of my 15 free trials?

 

[markymark9]

I just tried it out and it feels pretty good. I want to know what happens if I run out of my 15 free trials?

Hey thanks for trying it! I’ve been adding more generations for users who run out specifically in this community, as I’ve received awesome feedback from a lot of people here!

Feel free to DM me or send an email and I’ll take care of it for you :)

I also provide an option to buy more as this will help offset personals costs to keep this up and running in the long term, especially as it scales with users! Thanks again

 

[Xuwu]

Hey thanks for trying it! I’ve been adding more generations for users who run out specifically in this community, as I’ve received awesome feedback from a lot of people here!

Feel free to DM me or send an email and I’ll take care of it for you :)

I also provide an option to buy more as this will help offset personals costs to keep this up and running in the long term, especially as it scales with users! Thanks again

Thanks! This is a team I created using your website https://pokepast.es/4c9ddbf2938f93c2, and I think it has decent potential, though there are still some issues—for example, the Hydreigon is holding Choice Specs while also knowing Nasty Plot. I’d like to ask for your advice on how to better utilize your website, such as what specific prompts I should input to get more reliable results.

 

[markymark9]

Thanks! This is a team I created using your website https://pokepast.es/4c9ddbf2938f93c2, and I think it has decent potential, though there are still some issues—for example, the Hydreigon is holding Choice Specs while also knowing Nasty Plot. I’d like to ask for your advice on how to better utilize your website, such as what specific prompts I should input to get more reliable results.

I’ve been trying to find the balance between prompt engineering in the backend versus encouraging users to be more specific for better outputs. I can take a look at making some fixes on the backend to reduce contradictory sets or just overall redundancy. (when I was first developing it also decided to give like 3 Pokémon leftovers for my Crystal team lol)

What I have been doing is saving the initial generated team and iterating in the AI input. Like saying “Hydreigons set is contradictory or just doesn’t make sense” or tweaking it in Showdown.

This convo has given me some ideas though so will have to test some things out in regarding prompting that will yield better results more consistently. Sometimes it gives me a totally valid set for Showdown and doesn’t require tweaks, sometimes it needs some hand holding lol

 

[Xuwu]

I’ve been trying to find the balance between prompt engineering in the backend versus encouraging users to be more specific for better outputs. I can take a look at making some fixes on the backend to reduce contradictory sets or just overall redundancy. (when I was first developing it also decided to give like 3 Pokémon leftovers for my Crystal team lol)

What I have been doing is saving the initial generated team and iterating in the AI input. Like saying “Hydreigons set is contradictory or just doesn’t make sense” or tweaking it in Showdown.

This convo has given me some ideas though so will have to test some things out in regarding prompting that will yield better results more consistently. Sometimes it gives me a totally valid set for Showdown and doesn’t require tweaks, sometimes it needs some hand holding lol

Yes, what I want to know is, after the team is generated, is there a way for me to have a conversation with the AI to better improve the team composition, as well as understand the core logic behind its team-building decisions.

 

[markymark9]

Yes, what I want to know is, after the team is generated, is there a way for me to have a conversation with the AI to better improve the team composition, as well as understand the core logic behind its team-building decisions.

Ahh I see, there is no conversation functionality yet, although that does sound interesting and something I could build into the site.

So far, there is an expandable "AI insights" panel above the generated team, an overall team strategy description, and individual strategy for each Pokemon when clicking into their respective modals. There is some flexibility with what it outputs for these, so if asked, the reasoning behind the decisions will render in those sections.

I also refined the input prompt to avoid contradictory sets. Thanks for bringing that up!

 

[markymark9]

Just wanted to let everyone know I added some new features to the site:

• Dark mode
• AI chat feature to chat about the current team. Let me know what you all think!

Hope everyones enjoying the Switch 2 if you got your hands on it lol want to hop into S/V to play that DLC.

 

[Furret4ssb]

Great app! Ive been enjoying using it so far, although there have been a few issues, for example https://pokepast.es/9ec70f43faf23858 this team has 2 stealth rocks setters. Also the ai seems to really enjoy using excadrill, but excadrill is not good at all in natdex. It also is adding dragapult to teams despite the fact that dragapult has been banned in natdex for quite a while. Overall though, this is great, and I can tell the teams are better than a few weeks ago even!

 

[markymark9]

Great app! Ive been enjoying using it so far, although there have been a few issues, for example https://pokepast.es/9ec70f43faf23858 this team has 2 stealth rocks setters. Also the ai seems to really enjoy using excadrill, but excadrill is not good at all in natdex. It also is adding dragapult to teams despite the fact that dragapult has been banned in natdex for quite a while. Overall though, this is great, and I can tell the teams are better than a few weeks ago even!

Thanks! I’m really excited that folks are finding this useful. But yeah I can work on tightening the prompts some more

I’m new to making competitive sets so this feedback is super helpful. Will work on improving the team output!