o7 Debrief
The reasoning
Why this exists
Elite Dangerous keeps the most honest record a game could keep and then says nothing about it. The Player Journal logs every jump, scan, bounty and sale as it happens; the game presents none of it back. A three-hour exploration run ends and the only evidence it happened is a long run of JSON lines in a folder you never open. The work is real, complete and unreadable.
o7 Debrief reads that log and hands the session back as one self-contained debrief: the credits, jumps and scans across exploration, combat, trade, mining, missions and exobiology, a session log you can tab through by activity and your rank progress across the run, rendered as a file any browser opens plus a text version ready for Discord. It models the session the way you remember it (by what you were doing) rather than the way the game stores it (a flat stream of events).
The design rule underneath is provenance. Every figure in a report is a claim and every claim needs a source, so nothing is estimated, inferred or padded: a number either traces to a real journal entry or it does not appear. The same rule produces the honest rank reporting, which admits what the source cannot yet know: tier-ups show at once while fractional percentages settle at the next launch, because the journal only snapshots progress at startup. A debrief that flatters you is worth less than no debrief at all.
It runs the way a companion tool should: quietly, from the system tray, writing the debrief when you close the game or running cold after the fact on your last session or your whole history, with both paths driving the same reducer so the answer never depends on how you asked. Local-first throughout: your journal never leaves your machine, there is no cloud, account or telemetry and the one network call (Check for updates) is an anonymous ask to GitHub for the latest published version, carrying nothing about you. Nothing is downloaded or run unless you choose it.
Common questions
What is o7 Debrief?
o7 Debrief is a free, local-first app for Windows and Linux that turns your Elite Dangerous Player Journal into a self-contained Commander Mission Debrief you can read in any browser or share as text.
Is o7 Debrief free and open source?
Yes. o7 Debrief is free and released under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence v3.0, with the full source on GitHub.
Does o7 Debrief upload my journal or data anywhere?
No. It is local-first with no cloud, no account and no telemetry. Your Player Journal never leaves your machine and the app needs no administrator rights to install.
What does an Elite Dangerous debrief track?
Credits, jumps, distance travelled by your ship and your fleet carrier, scans across exploration, mining, trading, bounty hunting and exobiology, outfitting and shipyard trade (modules and ships bought, sold and transferred, each side priced separately), engineering split between grade rolls and experimental effects, plus missions and Operations (naming each mission and the Merc Coins an Operation pays, kept separate from your credits), deaths (who died, in what, at whose hands and what the rebuy cost) and Commander rank progress, with every figure traced to a real journal entry. Where the journal states nothing, the report says so rather than printing a zero you would read as a real figure.
Do I need to keep o7 Debrief running while I play?
No. The background watcher can generate a debrief automatically when you close the game; one-shot mode can also report your last session or your whole history to date after the fact.
Does o7 Debrief record ship changes?
Yes. Swapping ship is logged as a session event naming the ship you moved from and the one you boarded; buying, selling or transferring a ship is logged naming the ship and its price. The header also names your current ship and its type.
Does o7 Debrief check for updates?
Yes. Shortly after launch and once a day while running, the app asks GitHub anonymously whether a newer published release exists; the home screen and the tray menu both carry a Check for updates button that does the same on demand. If one is found you choose Download, Skip this version or Later; a skipped version never prompts again. This anonymous ask is the only network call the app makes and nothing is ever downloaded or installed without you choosing it.
Which Windows versions does o7 Debrief support?
Windows 10 and Windows 11. It runs quietly from the system tray and reads the Player Journal that Elite Dangerous writes on your PC.
Does o7 Debrief run on Linux?
Yes. Every release publishes a Flatpak. On Ubuntu with Elite Dangerous under Proton it has been left watching through a real session: it read the journal from inside the prefix, produced the debrief when the game closed and opened that report in a browser on the host. The parts that matter most are therefore proven rather than intended. Starting it at sign-in has been confirmed on a real reboot. The earliest Flatpak releases wrote that entry inside the sandbox where no session reads it, so if you switched it on under one of those, tick it off and on again. A Flatpak install can never arrive with that setting already on, so switching it on is one trip into Settings after installing. What has not been exercised is narrower: launching it again to summon the window inside the sandbox and the case where Steam itself is installed as a Flatpak. The repository records exactly what has and has not been verified. Windows is the platform every release is built and tested on.
How do I install or upgrade o7 Debrief?
Run the setup program. It installs for your user account only, so it never asks for administrator rights. It names the phase it is in and shows its progress as it works. Upgrading over a copy that is still running in the tray is handled for you: setup offers to close it and carry on. The same program repairs and uninstalls.