NODEZERO

Competitive CS2 and Dota 2 players already have stats sites, but they show what happened after the match, in a browser tab, one service at a time. During a match the useful questions are small and immediate: can I full-buy next round, when is the next rune, is my PC throttling?

The tools that answer them live are often overlays or memory readers, which raise anti-cheat questions and are not allowed on FACEIT or in leagues. I wanted a second-monitor coach that is fair by construction: it uses only the data the game and the player's own accounts already provide.

NODEZERO is a Windows desktop app built with Tauri: a Rust core and a React + TypeScript interface, about 6 MB to install. It listens to Valve's official Game State Integration, where the game posts the player's own state to a local address, so it never reads memory, injects anything or draws over the game.

On top of that live feed it builds a CS2 buy plan for the next round from money, loss bonus and round result, and Dota 2 rune, Roshan, Aegis and Tormentor timers. After a match, CS2 demo analysis shows where you died and where the killer stood, a heat map on the game's own radar and a 2D replay of every round. Leetify, FACEIT, OpenDota and the Steam Web API add history, sessions and patterns.

Everything stays on the PC: no NODEZERO server, no account, no analytics. The only outgoing calls are opt-in requests to Leetify, FACEIT, OpenDota and Steam with the player's own keys, plus GitHub for update checks. That keeps it free to run and private, but there is no sync between machines.

The installer is not code-signed, because certificates cost more than a free project earns, so Windows shows a SmartScreen warning that the README walks through. The CS2 bomb timer ships off by default because FACEIT and some leagues ban second-screen bomb timers, and the live screens never show data about the other team; enemies appear only in post-match demo analysis. It is Windows-only, and GPU temperature and power need an NVIDIA card.

Released as a free download on GitHub, with an in-app updater that never updates while a game is running. It runs at below-normal priority and measured about 0.16% of total CPU during a game.

Fair play turned out to be a product feature, not just a constraint. Building only on GSI and the player's own accounts made the anti-cheat question easy to answer, and it shaped what the app shows.

A second-monitor app is read at a glance in the middle of a round, so the live screens use a few huge numbers (the buy call, the money, the next timer) instead of a dashboard. Shipping desktop software also meant owning what the web gives you for free: an updater, an install story, and a Report a problem flow that fills in version and hardware without leaking keys or names.