ASO Rankings Check (krankie)

Pull keyword rankings with krankie instead of Astro MCP, compare against the previous check, and save a dated rankings file to the Obsidian vault.

This is the no-subscription replacement for asc-aso-rankings. krankie is MIT-licensed, stores history in local SQLite, and reads ranks from the public App Store search API. The trade-off vs Astro: krankie reports rank position only - no popularity or difficulty scores, and tracks the top 200 (Astro tracked top 250).

Architecture: VPS is the source of truth

• VPS (lobster@openclawtail) runs krankie under a daily cron (krankie cron), so the SQLite DB there holds the continuous day-over-day history. This is canonical.
• MacBook also has krankie installed for ad-hoc local peeks, but its DB only has data from whenever it was last run - do not use it for the historical comparison.
• The vault is bidirectionally synced between the VPS (/home/lobster/vault) and the MacBook (/Users/antonnovoselov/Documents/Vault), so a report written on either side appears on both.

Because the VPS holds the history and the previous_rank/rank_change columns krankie computes between checks, run the check + report on the VPS.

Tracked set (the documented strategy)

Track the 41 canonical keywords from the ASO strategy (see app-store-keywords.md change log) plus the brand term vivadicta, for the app 6758147238, on stores us, gb, ca, au. The same 41 keywords are tracked for 3 competitors on us only:

• Otter 1276437113
• Wispr Flow 6497229487
• Whisper Transcription 1668083311

The keyword list and competitor set live in ~/.krankie/ setup on the VPS; the report generator is ~/.krankie/kr_report.mjs.

Steps

1. Run a fresh check + generate the report (VPS)

ssh lobster@openclawtail 'export PATH="$HOME/.bun/bin:$PATH"; \
  krankie check run --force >/dev/null 2>&1; \
  REPORT_VERSION="<live-version>" bun ~/.krankie/kr_report.mjs'

• krankie check run --force re-checks every tracked keyword now (ignores the 24h throttle).
• kr_report.mjs reads krankie rankings --json, writes rankings/rankings-YYYY-MM-DD.md to the vault, and appends a row to the app-store-keywords.md index. Pass REPORT_VERSION to stamp the live metadata version (default 3.7.0).
• The generator prints the output path and a one-line summary.

2. Read the produced report

The file syncs to the MacBook at:

/Users/antonnovoselov/Documents/Vault/Projects/VivaDicta/ASO/rankings/rankings-YYYY-MM-DD.md

If sync lag is a problem, scp it back: scp lobster@openclawtail:/home/lobster/vault/Projects/VivaDicta/ASO/rankings/rankings-YYYY-MM-DD.md /tmp/.

3. Compare against the previous check

The report's Change column already reflects krankie's previous_rank (the prior check, i.e. yesterday under cron). For a longer-horizon comparison, read the previous dated rankings-*.md and diff:

• Improved: rank moved closer to #1 (or entered top 200 = NEW)
• Declined: rank moved away from #1 (or fell out of top 200 = DROPPED)
• Stable: unchanged or +/- a few positions

4. Present the comparison report

### Rankings Check: YYYY-MM-DD (krankie) (vs previous: YYYY-MM-DD)

**Overall:** X/41 ranked (was A/41)
**Improved:** keywords that moved up
**Declined:** keywords that moved down
**New rankings:** keywords that entered top 200
**Best performer:** "{keyword}" at #{rank}
**Biggest gain:** "{keyword}" +{positions}

### vs Competitors (US)
| Keyword | VivaDicta | Otter | Wispr Flow | Whisper Trans. |
...

### Gap opportunities (competitors rank, we don't)
- keywords where a competitor is top-50 and VivaDicta is unranked

Report format

kr_report.mjs emits three sections:

1. VivaDicta Rankings (US store) - | Keyword | Rank | Prev | Change |, sorted ranked-first then unranked by best-competitor-rank (gap priority).
2. Competitors (US store) - | Keyword | VivaDicta | Otter | Wispr Flow | Whisper Trans. |.
3. International reach - VivaDicta US/GB/CA/AU for any keyword ranked in any store.

No frontmatter (raw reference file), matching the existing rankings-*.md convention.

Fallback: MacBook-local (VPS unreachable / Tailscale down)

krankie is also installed on the MacBook (~/.bun/bin/krankie). You can run an ad-hoc check locally, but it lacks the VPS's day-over-day history, so Change will be empty/NEW:

krankie check run --force
krankie rankings --json

Then hand-build the report in the April format.

Notes

• Rankings take 1-2 weeks to settle after a metadata change.
• krankie ranks 1-200; blank = not in top 200. Lower is better.
• Recommended cadence: the VPS cron checks daily; generate a vault report weekly, or on demand right after a metadata change.
• No popularity/difficulty - prioritize gaps by competitor rank (a keyword Otter/Wispr win and we don't) instead of by Astro popularity.
• Related: krankie-audit (offline metadata checks + competitor rank-gap analysis).