Building Pickmaster: Making Fantasy Drafts Less Stressful - Max Avedisian

I was in the middle of a fantasy football draft, 30 seconds on the clock, five players I was still debating. That’s when I decided to just build something. Meet Pickmaster, a real-time draft assistant that keeps you on your board when things get chaotic.

The Problem

Live drafts on Sleeper move fast. The chat’s flying, picks are flying, and you’re juggling gut feelings with last-minute research tabs. I wanted my own board, one that didn’t rely on whatever default rankings the platform feeds everyone else.

What It Does

Built with Astro and vanilla JavaScript, Pickmaster connects directly to Sleeper’s WebSocket API to track picks as they happen in real time. You bring your own custom ADP rankings, and the app cross-references them against the live draft feed to surface who’s still available and flag position needs as your roster takes shape. Position filtering, live pick tracking, and a responsive layout that works on mobile when you’re drafting from the couch.

Custom Rankings: Import your own ADP list or start from a preset
Live Draft Tracking: Connects to Sleeper via WebSocket, picks update instantly
Position Filtering: Filter available players by QB, RB, WR, TE, K, or DEF

Pickmaster in Action

Pickmaster setup screen showing custom player rankings input

Pickmaster settings screen with draft type, league size, and scoring options

Pickmaster draft interface with player recommendations and live draft tracking

Try It Out

Open source and easy to set up. Grab it at the GitHub repo and let me know what you think. More platform support is on the way.