I've spent the last few months building an FPL tool, and the design decision I keep going back and forth on has nothing to do with football.
Every recommendation product I've used is structurally incapable of saying "nothing here is worth doing". Streaming services always have something to watch. Trading apps always have a trade. It makes sense: the metric is engagement, and silence doesn't move it.
But in fantasy football the correct answer is genuinely "do nothing" most weeks, especially early in a season when you're looking at one or two games of data and mistaking noise for form. So I built the engine to say that. It scores every option, and if nothing clears a threshold over just leaving your team alone, the top card reads "Hold. Nothing here is worth your transfer" with the reasoning attached.
It felt wrong to ship. A tool that tells you to close it is a tool you might not reopen.
Every Fantasy Premier League tool shows the same league-wide stats to
eleven million people. Knowing Haaland is in form is worthless when
everyone else knows it too.
Oracle reads your specific squad against the managers ranked just above
you. Which of your players are quietly protecting your rank. Which ones
you don't own are costing it. Whether this week is worth a transfer at
all.
Every call comes with a confidence score and the reasoning, including
the reasons against it.
