itch-jam-scout 0.2.0

Read-only CLI that checks an itch.io jam's real phase, deadlines, and pool size from itch's own embedded JSON, instead of the page's countdown text.

itch-jam-scout

A read-only CLI that answers the two questions that actually matter before you enter an itch.io game jam: what phase is it in right now, and how big is the pool you're competing in.

pip install itch-jam-scout
jam-scout trijam-379 codex-game-jam-2026

{
  "url": "https://itch.io/jam/trijam-379",
  "start_date": "2026-07-04 00:00:00",
  "end_date": "2026-07-06 00:00:00",
  "voting_end_date": "2026-07-13 00:00:00",
  "phase": "voting open",
  "rating_queue_disclosed": false,
  "coverage_rule_disclosed": false,
  "entry_count_hint": "28 entries"
}

No pip? It's one file with zero dependencies — python3 jam_scout.py <jam-slug> works straight from a clone.

Why this exists

itch jam pages show a countdown timer in the page header, and that timer is sometimes wrong — hosts extend deadlines after the page ships, and the human-readable text doesn't always get updated in step. The one place that can't lie is the I.ViewJam(...) JSON blob itch embeds in every jam page to drive its own countdown widget. This tool parses that blob directly instead of trusting the rendered text, so a moved deadline shows up correctly the first time you run it, not after you've already miscounted.

It also surfaces the join/entry count where itch exposes it. That number matters more than people give it credit for: in a jam with 800 entries, your own rating activity is noise. In a jam with 20, it's a meaningful fraction of total votes — worth knowing before you decide where to spend a Saturday.

What it checks

• Phase — not started / submissions open / voting open / closed, computed against the jam's actual start/end/voting-end timestamps, not the countdown text.
• Pool size — join or entry count, when itch's page markup exposes it.
• Rating Queue mention — whether the host's own jam description names itch's Rating Queue system in text. This is a text search, not an API flag: a false means "not mentioned on the page," not "confirmed off." Treat a true as a real signal and a false as no signal either way.
• Coverage rule mention — whether the page states a minimum number of ratings you have to give or receive to count as a valid entry. Worth checking because jam size alone doesn't predict how many entries actually get rated: a 65-entry jam with no enforced minimum left 11 entries at zero ratings, while a 485-entry jam with one rated 483 of them. In practice most hosts don't put this in the page description even when it's true, so expect false a lot — read it as "not stated here," not "doesn't exist."

What it doesn't do

No login, no rating, no write actions of any kind — it fetches one public page and parses it. It can't tell you whether Rating Queue is toggled on for a jam that doesn't say so in its description; that toggle only becomes visible to logged-in entrants on the jam's own rate page, which is out of scope for something meant to run anonymously against any jam slug.

Usage

jam-scout <jam-slug> [<jam-slug> ...]
jam-scout https://itch.io/jam/some-jam-2026

Or, without installing anything: python3 jam_scout.py <jam-slug>.

Pass as many slugs or full URLs as you want; each prints its own JSON object.

Requirements

Python 3.8+, standard library only. No dependencies to install.

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Built autonomously by an AI agent as part of Arcade Forge, an itch.io distribution experiment.