Recommended workflow

What you’ll accomplish

By the end of this page you have a clear mental model of the Pegasus loop and a weekly cadence you can actually maintain. Pegasus is most useful when it’s used as a cycle — inventory → decks → analysis → acquisition → reconcile → repeat — not as a one-time import tool.

Before you start

This is the orientation page. If you’re brand new, read Core concepts first; otherwise just keep reading.

The loop

1. Add or reconcile inventory

   Cards in, cards out, location changes, commitment changes. This step is the foundation — every readiness, analysis, and acquisition recommendation downstream is calibrated against the inventory state. Stale inventory poisons everything that follows. See Organize inventory and Add and maintain cards.

   Screenshot pending /img/docs/loop/loop-dashboard.png

   The dashboard loop tile shows where you are in the cycle. Start where the dashboard tells you to start.

2. Save or revise target decks

   Decide which decks are active. Save new versions when a change is meaningful enough to compare. See Build decks and Manage deck versions.

3. Analyze

   Run Quick Analysis on changed decks. Read coverage, simulation, and risks together — no single layer tells the whole story. See Analyze decks and scores.

4. Acquire

   Generate the acquisition plan after inventory and decks are current. Acquisition off stale data ranks the wrong cards as priority. See Readiness and acquisition.

   Screenshot pending /img/docs/loop/loop-overlay-diagram.png

   The arrows aren't decorative — running the steps out of order produces confidently wrong recommendations.

5. Reconcile and repeat

   Cards arrived → add to inventory → re-run readiness → the loop closes. Schedule a short weekly maintenance pass (see below) to keep the loop alive.

   Screenshot pending /img/docs/loop/loop-weekly-checklist.png

   The checklist is short on purpose. Long checklists go untouched.

Weekly maintenance

A 10-minute pass keeps the data honest:

• Add new cards to inventory
• Move cards from inbox or unsorted into their real locations
• Mark cards committed to active decks
• Archive or deprioritize decks you’re no longer trying to build
• Regenerate acquisition plans only after the physical state is current

If you skip the maintenance pass for two weeks, the next session is mostly cleanup, not progress. The cadence is the system.

Before buying cards

A short pre-flight before a purchase:

1. Check readiness across all target decks.
2. Review which shortages block multiple decks (multi-deck shortages > single-deck shortages).
3. Look for cheap wins that unlock a deck or reduce a common bottleneck.
4. Confirm price confidence on expensive cards — verify at checkout.
5. Decide whether to buy now, wait, trade, or change the target deck.

Before changing a deck

A short pre-flight before edits:

1. Save the current list as a version (intent label, not just test).
2. Make changes in a new version, never directly on the live one.
3. Run Quick Analysis on both versions.
4. Compare the versions strategically (takeaways first, diff second).
5. Check whether the new version creates inventory conflicts you didn’t anticipate.

This gives you a record of why a change happened and whether it improved the deck — see Manage deck versions.

What success looks like

Pegasus is part of your weekly TCG rhythm rather than a tool you re-discover every few months. The dashboard’s “last reconciled” indicator is always within the last 7 days. Acquisition recommendations match what you actually intend to buy because the data they’re based on is current.

Common pitfalls

• Running steps out of order. Acquisition before inventory reconciliation, analysis before saving a deck version — every out-of-order run produces noise that you then have to mentally filter.
• Skipping the weekly pass. A skipped week is a week. Two skipped weeks is a cleanup session.
• Treating analysis as a single number. “My deck scored 3.4/4” is a fact about a model. “My deck has weak answer density and risk of going-second fragility” is information you can act on.
• Buying off stale data. Re-run readiness BEFORE generating the buy list, not after.

The 6-step loop in one place

1. Organize inventory Locations, commitment, cross-deck conflicts.

2. Add and maintain cards Search, bulk-paste, inbox triage.

3. Build decks Target decks, readiness layers, format gate.

4. Analyze decks and scores Coverage, simulation, risks — together.

5. Readiness and acquisition Shortages → buy plan ranked by unlock value.

6. Compare and improve decks Compare versions or benchmarks, save with intent.

Going deeper

The scoring model is the math behind the loop — coverage weights, simulation methodology, priority calculations. Core concepts explains why the loop is shaped the way it is. Manage deck versions is the orthogonal workflow that supports the whole loop — version anywhere, compare anywhere.

For the field-by-field reference of the dashboard surface — loop tile, KPI cards, maintenance checklist — see Dashboard (reference). The full Feature map lists every surface’s reference page.