fm-open-scout

Open-source scouting for your own Football Manager saves. Ask your AI assistant "find me a DM better than mine for under £25m" and get an answer from your actual save.

Independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Sports Interactive or SEGA. Football Manager is a trademark of Sports Interactive. fm-open-scout only reads save files on your own machine; it does not modify saves, the game, or any game data.

What it does

• Reads .fm saves from FM24, FM26 and FM27, including FM24 careers re-saved by FM27. Other versions are read with a statistical layout probe and clearly marked as unverified.

• Every player in the database: CA and PA, all 54 attributes (including hidden ones), personality, positions, club, contract, wage, value and last transfer fee.

• Scouting tools for AI assistants through an MCP server:

  Tool	What it answers
  list_saves / load_save	Which saves you have; loads the newest by default and warns when a newer one appears
  search_players	Filter by role, position, CA, PA, age, value, wage, club, nation, free agents; sort by CA, PA, role fit, price or "bargain" (cheap for their CA)
  player	Full profile, including hidden attributes and personality
  squad / compare_squads	Your squad, best XI by slot, and where it falls short of your rivals
  similar_players	Players like X, by CA/PA/age or by playing style
  project_player	Estimate of how a player's attributes may develop (realistic and ceiling)

• A skill (skills/fm-scout) that teaches the assistant a good scouting workflow: newest save first, find weaknesses, search with several lenses (ready now, role fit, undervalued, potential, free agents) and check determination before trusting a PA.

• A command-line parser (Rust) that exports a save to JSON, and a small JavaScript reader.

Related MCP server: MCP Eleven

Quick start

Requirements: Node.js 20+.

git clone https://github.com/YanivGabay/fm-open-scout.git && cd fm-open-scout
npm install

Then get the save parser, either:

• Download it: from the latest release, take the file for your system and save it as bin/fm_save_parser (bin\fm_save_parser.exe on Windows; on macOS and Linux run chmod +x bin/fm_save_parser), or

• Build it with Rust: (cd fm_save_parser && cargo build --release).

Use it from Claude Code

claude mcp add fm-open-scout -- node /path/to/fm-open-scout/mcp/server.js

Optional: copy the skill so Claude follows the scouting workflow.

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r skills/fm-scout ~/.claude/skills/

Then ask: "load my newest FM save and tell me what my squad lacks".

Use it from Claude Desktop or other MCP clients

Add to the client's MCP configuration (for Claude Desktop: claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fm-open-scout": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/fm-open-scout/mcp/server.js"]
    }
  }
}

Settings (environment variables)

Command line

fm_save_parser/target/release/fm_save_parser info "My Save.fm"
fm_save_parser/target/release/fm_save_parser players "My Save.fm" --top 30 --json players.json

Troubleshooting

How accurate is it?

• The save format, the evidence for every field and its confidence level are documented in FORMAT.md. Fields are checked against known real players and statistics over the whole database; scripts/verify_fields.js reproduces the statistics.

• Values are the save's own stored estimate, not the asking price a club will want.

• Role scores are weighted attribute averages (1-20) chosen by this project, a guide rather than the game's rating.

• project_player is an estimate. FM does not store future attributes; it develops players while you play. The estimate uses how each attribute rises with CA across all players of the same position, scaled by age, determination and professionalism.

Privacy

Everything runs locally. Saves are only read, never modified or uploaded. Parsed data is cached in your user folder. Please don't publish exported player databases.

Contributing

New FM release? The parser's probe usually reads it on day one. To verify a version, see FORMAT.md §9: one new-game save and one save a few months in, plus screenshots of a couple of player profiles, are enough to register a verified layout.

Run the tests with npm test. The Rust integration tests read your own saves from the git-ignored saves/ folder (fm24.fm, fm26.fm, fm27.fm, fm27_resaved.fm, fm26/), or from FM24_SAVE, FM26_SAVE, FM27_SAVE, FM27_RESAVED, FM26_SAVE_DIR; tests without a save are skipped.

Support the project

fm-open-scout is free and will stay free, with every feature open. If it helped your save, you can buy me a coffee.

License

MIT