Understanding the business

Knightly Knowledge is an analytics-focused platform designed to help chess players improve their game through personalised insights. By allowing users to upload their game files (PGN), the platform analyses performance, identifies errors, and provides actionable feedback.

The goal was to make advanced chess analysis more accessible, enabling players—from beginners to enthusiasts—to learn efficiently without needing deep technical understanding.

The challenge: Making complex analysis feel simple

As the platform evolved, several challenges began to surface—primarily around usability, integration, and scalability.

• Complex user experience:
  The analysis process, while powerful, wasn’t intuitive for users unfamiliar with technical chess data.
• Integration limitations:
  Key features like PGN-based puzzles required third-party libraries that were primarily built for React, creating compatibility issues with the existing tech stack.
• Inconsistent interaction flow:
  The journey from uploading a game to receiving insights lacked smooth transitions, affecting engagement.
• Scalability concerns:
  As more features were planned, the current structure posed limitations in expanding efficiently.

These challenges highlighted the need for a more structured and scalable approach.
 

Our approach: Bridging strategy, technology, and experience

Digging deeper: What we found

• Users needed simplified, guided interactions rather than raw data outputs
• The existing frontend approach limited advanced feature integrations
• Performance and scalability required a more structured backend approach

Defining the right path forward

• Simplifying the user journey from upload → analysis → insights
• Building a system that supports third-party integrations effectively
• Ensuring the platform remains scalable for future enhancements

Bringing it to life

UX & interface design

• Designed cleaner, more intuitive flows for uploading and analysing games
• Improved visual hierarchy to make insights easier to understand
• Used Bootstrap and Tailwind to ensure responsive, consistent UI

Full-stack development

• Built a robust backend using Django and Python to handle game analysis logic
• Structured frontend using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for performance and clarity

Integrations

• Integrated third-party APIs to enhance analytical capabilities
• Enabled secure payments using Stripe for premium features

DevOps & deployment

• Deployed on AWS Beanstalk for scalability and reliability
• Structured database management using MySQL for efficient data handling

The impact: A more usable and scalable platform

The improvements led to meaningful changes in how users interacted with the platform:

• Smoother and more intuitive game analysis flow
• Reduced friction in understanding complex chess insights
• Improved system reliability and performance
• Strong foundation for integrating advanced features in the future

Overall, the platform became significantly more user-friendly and technically scalable.

What this means for businesses like yours

This project demonstrates how combining UX thinking, strong development, and scalable architecture can transform complex platforms into intuitive user experiences.

At Codigo Mantra, we don’t just build features, we create systems that are designed to grow, adapt, and deliver long-term value.