Hi everyone! I'm developing a desktop application and would love to get some feedback.

3rd Party Apps for OGS
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Hi everyone! I’m a bit of a Go aficionado, so I hope it’s okay to post this here.

For the past while, I’ve been working on a hobby project: Hoshi (星, “star”), a free and open-source desktop Go application. It’s heavily inspired by Sabaki, which I absolutely love, and it runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

I’m not a particularly strong player — I was definitely better back in the day XD — and I’m certainly not the world’s greatest developer either. So I’m sure there are plenty of rough edges and things I simply can’t see on my own.

That’s why I’m here. I’d be really grateful if some of you were willing to give Hoshi a try and let me know what feels wrong, confusing, unintuitive, or simply broken. Honest criticism is very welcome — even “I tried it and hated X” is useful feedback!

What it does so far

  • Local Go board and SGF editor, including variations, comments, and board marks

  • OGS integration with OAuth sign-in (Hoshi never sees or stores your password)

  • OGS challenges and live games with clock and chat

  • Review finished games with KataGo

  • Joseki trainer

  • Several board, stone, and UI themes

  • A few playful visual effects and music

About fair play

I know this is especially important for online Go, so I want to be very clear about how Hoshi handles it.

During live OGS games:

  • KataGo is completely disabled

  • Joseki hints are disabled

  • The trainer is disabled

  • Hoshi only creates unranked games

The AI and other analysis features only become available after the game has finished, for your own review.

A couple of honest warnings

  • It’s still early. Things will break, and online play has received considerably less testing than local play.

  • The builds aren’t code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen and macOS Gatekeeper will show a warning the first time you launch/install it.

Website & downloads:
Hoshi — a Go board that feels every move

Source code:
GitHub — BuddhaCodes/BadukDana

Any feedback is welcome, whether it’s about the UI, gameplay, OGS integration, performance, bugs, or just something that feels weird.

You can reply here or open an issue on GitHub, whichever is easier.

And if this isn’t the right place for a post like this, please let me know and I’ll happily move it.

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Desktop apps are so 2000’s

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What do you mean exactly? What is the today’s way ?

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Still websites & mobile apps

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Try posting on r/baduk

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Very nice. Compared to Sabaki, I like that you added the OGS connection and richer KataGo data. The planned GTP engine connection is a necessity for me, but as soon as that’s added it’s a very good all-in-one app.

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Maybe but being desktop allows some goodies, like sustained heavy compute. KataGo wants every core or the GPU for minutes at a time and I am working on making it flexible so you can use any model you want, I have also real native processes. Hoshi launches the official KataGo binary and talks to it directly, your game library, SGF collections and imported joseki lines are plain files you own. No storage eviction, no permission prompts, rendering and audio with no sandbox. Every goban, stone, crack, ember and shatter effect is drawn in code, and the adaptive lo-fi music is synthesised live. Native gives steady frame rates and no autoplay or audio-suspension fights. Also personally, desktop is a real platform :grin:

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Thanks, will do

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Will work on it, thanks for the feedback

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Done mate, I integrated.

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