`salary-cap-draft`¶

Interactive salary-cap (auction) draft cockpit (V2). Loads your league from Yahoo or Sleeper, or synthesizes a fully mock league with no real platform (--platform generic, the default), builds a board with VORP-driven dollar values + market inflation, and presents a snake-parity REPL: nomination drain-score, hypothetical bid analysis, per-team budget tracking, and an auto-pilot mock simulator. Persists pick history to a CSV so you can pause and resume.

Usage¶

salary-cap-draft --team "My Team" [options]

The first time it asks whether you want to use your Yahoo/Sleeper team names or customize them (skipped for --platform generic, which has no real team names to offer); subsequent resumes pick up team names from the in-progress CSV.

Common recipes¶

# Live mock auction from scratch, default $200 cap (--platform generic,
# 12 teams, PPR scoring -- prompts for both if not passed)
salary-cap-draft --team "My Team"

# Custom cap and minimum bid
salary-cap-draft --team "My Team" --salary-cap 300 --min-bid 2

# Mock auction with a specific team count and scoring system
salary-cap-draft --team "My Team" --num-teams 10 --mock-scoring half_ppr

# Draft against your real Yahoo league instead of a mock
salary-cap-draft --team "My Team" --platform yahoo

# Pre-draft for an upcoming season (--platform yahoo)
salary-cap-draft --team "My Team" --platform yahoo --season 2026

# Draft against a Sleeper league instead
salary-cap-draft --team "My Team" --platform sleeper --sleeper-league-id 123456789

# Mock-draft against a Sleeper league that's already mid-season (its real
# rosters would otherwise look like keepers)
salary-cap-draft --team "My Team" --platform sleeper --sleeper-league-id 123456789 --fresh-draft

# Keeper league: CSV with name,fantasy_team,salary (last year's price)
# Final keeper price = salary + --keeper-surcharge (default $5)
salary-cap-draft --team "My Team" --keepers keepers.csv

# Resume a paused draft
salary-cap-draft --team "My Team" --inprogress DraftProgressSalaryCap.csv

Required flags¶

Flag	Meaning
`--team`	Team to draft for — Yahoo team name (`--platform yahoo`), the Sleeper team/manager display name (`--platform sleeper`), or whatever you want to call your team (`--platform generic`)

Common flags¶

Flag	Default	Meaning
`--salary-cap`	200	Per-team auction cap
`--min-bid`	1	Minimum bid per player
`--season`	most recent completed	Yahoo season year. Pass explicitly before the season starts (e.g. `--season 2026` in May 2026). Ignored with `--platform sleeper`/`generic` — neither is tied to a real, season-scoped league
`--platform`	`generic`	Fantasy platform backend: `yahoo`, `sleeper`, or `generic` (fully synthetic mock draft, no real league — see issue #47)
`--sleeper-league-id`	—	Numeric Sleeper league ID (from the league URL). Required with `--platform sleeper`
`--num-teams`	12	Number of teams for a `--platform generic` mock draft. Prompted for interactively if not given
`--mock-scoring`	`ppr`	Scoring system for a `--platform generic` mock draft: `standard`, `half_ppr`, or `ppr`. Prompted for interactively if not given
`--roster-spots`	fixed default shape	Custom roster shape for a `--platform generic` mock draft, as comma-separated `POSITION=COUNT` pairs, e.g. `QB=1,RB=2,WR=2,TE=1,W/R/T=1,K=1,DEF=1,BN=7` (flex codes: `W/T`, `W/R/T`, `Q/W/R/T` for superflex). Prompted for interactively if not given
`--fresh-draft`	off	Ignore each team's current roster and treat every player as available, instead of preserving it as a keeper — useful for mock-drafting a Sleeper league that already has real, mid-season rosters
`--keepers`	—	Path to keepers CSV. Columns: `name`, `fantasy_team`, `salary` (last year's winning price)
`--keeper-surcharge`	5	Dollars added to each keeper's last-year salary. Set to `0` to treat the CSV `salary` as the final keeper price
`--exclude`	—	Comma-separated player names to filter out of views
`--inprogress`	—	Path to a `DraftProgressSalaryCap.csv` from a paused draft. Also accepts the legacy V1 format (`salary` column)
`--output`	`DraftProgressSalaryCap.csv` (or `--inprogress` path)	Where to save the running pick log
`--payouts`	—	Comma-separated 1st/2nd/3rd payouts
`--refresh-cache`	off	Bypass the local nflreadpy cache and force a fresh download of stats/schedule/roster data for this run (see caching)

View tuning¶

Flag	Default	Meaning
`--limit-per-position`	5	Rows per position in the `best` view
`--nominate-limit`	10	Rows in the `nominate` drain-score view
`--simadd-limit`	3	Default players per position simulated by `simadd` (also prompted per-run)

Interactive commands¶

Once running, the prompt accepts:

Command	What it does
`<player name>`	Tab-completes; starts a real nomination — prompts for winning team and bid
`best`	Top-N per position by need-adjusted VORP, with `salary_value`, `inflated_value`, and `max_my_bid`
`nominate`	Drain-score ranking: high market value, low fit for you (nominate these to drain opponents' budgets)
`whatif`	Re-rank `best` after a hypothetical bid on a given player
`lookup`	Detailed view of one player (drafted or available)
`roster`	My Team's picks with bids paid
`budgets`	Per-team budget status — remaining $, slots filled, max bid
`exclude`	Add a player to the per-session exclude list
`sim`	Run a full season simulation with current rosters
`simadd`	Sim top-N available per position, each at its `max_my_bid`; ranks by win/playoff/earnings delta from baseline
`random`	Auto-simulate one nomination + bidding round (Vickrey-style)
`random til full`	Auto-simulate the rest of the draft to completion
`go back`	Revert the previous pick
`help`	Full command list
`exit`	Quit (progress is already saved on every pick)

Tab completion is on for player names and team names where applicable.

Keeper CSV format¶

name,fantasy_team,salary
Christian McCaffrey,My Team,45
Justin Jefferson,The Algorithm,50

salary is last year's winning price. The actual keeper cost charged against the team's cap is salary + --keeper-surcharge (default +$5).
fantasy_team accepts your original Yahoo team name as an alias for My Team (the CLI renames your team during setup).
Cap validation fires at startup: if a team's total keeper spend would leave fewer dollars than they need to fill remaining slots at --min-bid, the CLI hard-errors with a fix-up message before the draft begins.

Output¶

DraftProgressSalaryCap.csv is rewritten on every pick (columns: name, fantasy_team, winning_bid). To resume after a crash, pass it via --inprogress. The format is stable; rotating between machines mid-draft works as long as you keep the file in sync.

Legacy V1 progress files (with salary instead of winning_bid) are accepted automatically — the column is renamed transparently on load.

salary-cap-draft¶