About

A complete SwiftUI companion lives in the xcode folder. On your Mac, open the .xcodeproj, choose your Team under Signing & Capabilities, and run on iPhone, iPad, or Mac. iOS 17 or later.

The rating tracker uses a standard Elo update (higher K for the first twenty games). Opponent strengths are labeled Beginner ~500 through Master ~2000. This is a recreational estimate for Aldercot games only. It is not issued by FIDE, US Chess, Chess.com, Lichess, or any federation, and it must not be used for official pairings, titles, or norms.

Aldercot follows commonly accepted Laws of Chess: castling, en passant, promotion, check, checkmate, stalemate, threefold repetition, the fifty-move rule, and insufficient material. The rules of chess are in the public domain. Aldercot is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by FIDE, the United States Chess Federation, Chess.com, Lichess, the Play Magnus Group, or Apple.

© 2026 Aldercot. All rights reserved. The Aldercot name, interface, cut-paper piece drawings, rook mark, synthesized audio, and SwiftUI companion were drawn and written for this project. They are not copied from Wikimedia, Cburnett, Chess.com, Lichess, or any commercial set. Silhouettes follow the unprotectable Staunton idea (cross, mitre, merlons) using original geometry. Staunton as a style is not claimed as a trademark. Third-party names above belong to their owners and appear only for identification.

Move sounds are generated in real time (sine body plus filtered noise). No third-party sample libraries are used. Packs: Wood, Marble, Felt, Glass, or Silent. Unlock happens on your first tap so iPhone Safari will actually play audio.

Usage & diagnostics is on by default. When it is on, Aldercot records an anonymous device id, session length, screen views, game starts and results (mode, strength, time control, ply count), interface theme, language, timezone, and viewport size, plus whether a sponsored note was shown or opened. Events are stored with this app's database so we can improve the engine, boards, and ads. Guests are keyed by a local device id; signed-in players may be linked to their account id.

You can turn this off in Studio at any time. After about five minutes of play we show a one-time note on Home so you know that switch exists — it never covers the board or the result card. Opting out stops new collection and deletes events already queued or stored for this device (and your account, if signed in). Rated games you choose to save are separate from diagnostics and stay with your profile until you delete the account data. We do not sell personal information to data brokers. We do not collect your name, email, or board keystrokes beyond the move list of a rated game you finish.

Free play includes a single, labeled sponsored note on Home, Studio, Rating, and the game-over card. Ads never cover the board during a move, never autoplay sound or video, and never appear as full-screen interstitials. Sponsored copy in this preview is sample inventory. A published build can fill the same slot with a live campaign. Remove ads with Aldercot Plus ($2.99 / month) or a one-time Lifetime purchase ($19) from the Plus page. After about twenty-five minutes we may ask you to share the app; sharing unlocks the Solstice board and gilt piece set. Those notes only appear on Home, never over a game or the result card.

Plus is an auto-renewing subscription until cancelled. Lifetime is a one-time unlock. Friend promo codes (format AC-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) also grant Lifetime and can be used only once. This web preview grants paid entitlements on-device so you can try the ad-free state; payment is not charged here. The iOS project uses StoreKit 2 product IDs com.aldercot.plus.monthly and com.aldercot.plus.lifetime — configure those in App Store Connect, then Apple handles payment, tax, and cancellation. Restore by signing in. Purchases do not change engine strength or unlock pieces.

Aldercot stores only a SHA-256 hash of each code, redeems atomically, and rate-limits guesses. That is the right first-party design for this web app and for private friend drops. If you ship on the public App Store, Apple’s Guideline 3.1.1 expects paid unlocks to go through StoreKit. Use App Store Connect Offer Codes (or a StoreKit promotional offer) for public iOS distribution, and keep these friend codes for the web build and TestFlight. Do not publish the code list.

The computer is for practice, analysis at home, and casual pass-and-play. Do not use Aldercot (or any engine) to cheat in rated games on other platforms. That violates those services' terms and the spirit of the game.

Aldercot is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Engine strength is approximate. Time-forfeits, draws by repetition, and evaluation are best-effort implementations of published rules.

Rules validation uses chess.js (BSD-2-Clause, © Jeff Hlywa and contributors). The web app is built with React, TanStack, Vite, Tailwind CSS, Radix UI, Zustand, Recharts, Lucide, and Better Auth — each under its respective MIT, Apache, or ISC license. Type is system UI and Georgia. The native iOS target is original Swift. Open-source licenses are permissions to use those libraries, not ownership of them.

Questions about this build? Use the project chat. Version 1.0 · 2026. Made for a new Mac and an iPhone already in your pocket.