(formerly ED Engineering Companion / EDEC)
Turn the Elite Dangerous Journal into a live operations, engineering and Commander workspace.
ED-Frame is a free, open-source Windows companion for Elite Dangerous — Fleet, Routes, Analytics, Materials and Engineering in one place. It reads your local Journal and turns it into one coherent cockpit for engineering, unlocks, materials, mining, state hunting, Powerplay, Commander finances, fleet management, exploration and exobiology.
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- One next action — ED-Frame turns every tracked build, missing material, route and unlock into a clear answer to “what now?”
- Your ships, your slots — engineer the exact physical Core Internal, Optional Internal, Hardpoint and Utility slots of every known hull.
- Journal-confirmed progress — installed modules, grades, experimental effects, credits, fleet movements, scans and unlock evidence update automatically.
- Engineer and Tech Broker guides — searchable capabilities, prerequisite chains and one-time Human and Guardian unlock tracking.
- Field tools — Material routes, Mining Finder, State Finds, live HGE assistance, a Biological Survey workspace and surface waypoint navigation.
- Commander intelligence — live credit ticker, assets, average CR/h, ranks, reputation, fleet and a searchable flight record.
- Offline-first and private — the core works from local files; Frontier CAPI, INARA, EDDN and Spansh remain explicit, controlled additions.
Most build tools model a type of ship. ED-Frame models your ship — the specific hull with its ShipID, physical module slots and current Loadout. Then it connects that ship to the rest of your Commander state: materials, Engineer access, routes, credits, fleet, signals and scans.
That precision is the whole point:
- A plan stays attached to the slot, so two identical Multi-cannons never get confused.
- ED-Frame separates observed facts, planned work and predictions instead of presenting guesses as certainty.
- The Operations page joins the individual tools into a route: collect, trade, travel, unlock, install and craft.
- You can plan for a ship parked across the bubble without switching to it in-game.
Everything is derived from local files. Nothing is invented to fill a gap.
The default sidebar follows the same journey described below. Its entries can also be rearranged to match the way you play.
Commander Operations is the mission-control view for the selected wishlist ship. It keeps the next best action prominent, shows material readiness and explains both why the action comes next and what follows after it. Switch between a planned ship and the current ship without changing ships in Elite.
Engineer and trader routes sit beside the active work. Copy a system name, open the relevant workspace, review missing materials, follow unlock prerequisites and watch Journal-confirmed crafts or trades advance the plan automatically. Live HGE targets and route activity remain visible without turning the page into a wall of diagnostics.
Pick any ship ED-Frame has seen and work on its actual Core Internal, Optional Internal, Hardpoint and Utility slots. The ship panel shows speed, boost, jump range, mass, cargo capacity and how many modules can be engineered. Each slot distinguishes the installed module, current engineering and planned target.
The Power Plant panel compares Now with the selected ship's Plan, including raw MW draw, capacity and reserve before any priority shutdown. The plan projects desired module swaps and bound wishlist engineering for that same ship; unbound plans, missing power catalog entries, stock-value assumptions for replacements without a planned engineering grade, and currently switched-off modules are called out rather than treated as confirmed. It uses catalog grade effects, not exact engineering rolls, and is not a live hardpoint-deployment meter.
Search the blueprint catalog, choose grade-only, experimental-only or combined planning, and compare the benefits and trade-offs of experimental effects. The install guard stops an empty or wrong slot from looking craft-ready. Import ED-Frame, EDSY/SLEF and Coriolis builds through exact hull-slot validation, or export the selected ship's outfitting with its slot identities intact.
The Wishlist rolls every pinned module into build progress, material readiness and a physical-slot checklist. Follow the current ship or choose another fleet hull; edit, duplicate, track or move plans without losing their slot bindings.
Each job shows grade progress, experimental status, missing materials and Journal-confirmed crafts. Conflicting, unrelated or unmatched craft events are surfaced for review instead of silently changing the wrong module. Completed engineering leaves the active workload and remains available as history.
Search the Engineer index by name, system, module or blueprint. Cards combine access state, rank, distance, capabilities and maximum grade, with one-click system copying for navigation.
The Unlock Guide turns a locked Engineer into an ordered chain of prerequisites, reputation or permit requirements, invitation and first visit. Journal evidence ticks off confirmed steps; gaps in older history remain visibly unknown rather than guessed.
The Tech Brokers tab covers one-time Human and Guardian technology unlocks for modules, weapons and fighters. Track a selected unlock, see its prerequisites and next step, compare required inventory with what you own, and jump directly to farming guidance for anything missing. Broker systems can be copied without leaving the workflow.
Raw, Manufactured and Encoded inventory comes directly from the Journal, with grade caps, stock bars and surplus flags. Filter to all, missing, ready, surplus or tradeable materials. ED-Frame protects stock reserved by tracked builds, so a suggested trade never spends something the plan still needs.
Missing-material guidance lists acquisition routes, source systems and coordinates where available. Trader selection can prefer the nearest known location or one your own Journal has confirmed.
Find rings and planetary deposits by commodity, mining method, distance, reserve quality and evidence level. ED-Frame checks the active ship for the required mining equipment, ranks results by evidence and distance, and separates confirmed hotspot or surface signals from older observations that should be rechecked.
Each result shows the body, ring type, hotspot or signal evidence, last confirmation, arrival distance and a copyable system. Live Journal observations combine with optional Spansh catalog data and bundled offline fallbacks.
Search for High Grade Emissions, Conflict Zones and Seeking Meds or Foods within a chosen range. Filter live reports and predictions by signal type, state or allegiance, then compare freshness, distance, remaining lifetime, faction and intensity.
HGE rows include the materials expected from the observed system state. ED-Frame labels local Journal evidence, EDDN sightings and BGS predictions distinctly, and puts the best-supported nearby candidates first.
ED-Frame identifies your pledged leader and presents an offline profile and portrait alongside the values Elite has actually reported: rank, merits, pledge duration, salary and recent Powerplay cargo. In the current system it tracks controlling power, control progress and the undermining-versus-reinforcement tug of war without inventing unavailable rewards or numbers.
The CMDR workspace has three focused views.
Ranks and progress, major- and minor-faction reputation, financial snapshots, current ship and squadron are laid out as cards you can rearrange.
The balance behaves like a ticker: earnings turn green, spending turns red and total assets remain visible as a separate line. Choose the current session, 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days or all recorded history. ED-Frame shows net change, average credits per hour and exact timestamped values on hover; it never fabricates points inside an unobserved gap.
Every known ship shows its value, rebuy and location — current, transferring, stored or remote. Add your own screenshot to a ship card or keep ED-Frame's silhouette. This is the same fleet used by Engineering, so a parked hull can be planned without switching to it in-game.
The profile-isolated Logbook summarizes jumps, distance, dockings, crafts and trades for the current and recent sessions. Search the newest-first timeline by system, station, blueprint, material or ship, filter event types and keep local notes beside the record.
Exobiology turns FSS, DSS and organic-scan events into survey targets for the current system or every recently observed system. Confirmed genera rank ahead of candidates inferred from planetary conditions, while possible first-footfall bonuses are clearly marked as possibilities rather than promises.
Species found, lifetime earnings, remaining signals on the current body, session value and carried unsold value stay visible at a glance. During sampling, the distance assistant tells you when the colony range is clear for the next sample.
Near a planet or on its surface, open Nav → Surface Nav, enter signed latitude and longitude in decimal degrees, and save the point under a name. You can also save your current position when Elite provides coordinates, then rename that waypoint in the saved list. Saved waypoints stay with your Commander profile and can be selected again after a restart.
The Raw Material Farms section below saved waypoints is collapsed by default. Open it to filter by material, sort either by straight-line distance from the Journal's current system position or by material then distance, copy a destination system, and turn a bundled-catalog entry with surface coordinates into a saved waypoint. You can edit a farm's material, system, body, coordinates and notes, or remove an outdated entry and restore the bundled original later. Edits are stored per Commander profile, separate from the bundled catalog. Unknown distances sort last; a changed system without known galactic coordinates also has unknown distance. Sites without exact surface coordinates cannot become compass waypoints. These distances are not jump-route lengths or a live guarantee of material availability.
The compass arrow points toward the active waypoint relative to your current ship, SRV or suit heading. The page also shows the bearing and the shortest distance along the body's surface. Direction needs live coordinates and heading from Elite's Status.json; distance additionally needs its planet radius. Elite updates coordinates more coarsely while flying, so the final approach is more precise near the surface. A waypoint on another body or in another system remains saved, but guidance resumes only when you return there.
Show Nav Overlay opens a separate, movable always-on-top compass with the active waypoint, relative turn, surface distance and status. Its visibility, position, opacity and scale persist independently of the Engineering overlay. Lock and click-through can be toggled from the Nav tab or the Windows tray menu. As with other desktop overlays, use Elite's borderless-windowed mode; exclusive fullscreen can cover the overlay.
Six themes, four interface languages, UI scaling, reduced motion and enhanced GPU visuals let the cockpit fit the display. Tray mode, Windows start-up behavior, renderer selection and Journal-folder controls are available without editing configuration files.
Every network service is opt-in. Frontier CAPI can supplement credits and the active ship; INARA can synchronize supported Commander events and import a fleet snapshot; EDDN can share schema-approved public galaxy data and receive live State Finds intelligence; Spansh can refresh the navigation catalogs. Queues, receipts, retries and service status remain visible, while operational detail belongs in the local log and exportable diagnostic archive.
Advanced Diagnostics exposes Journal watcher health, renderer and service pipelines, copyable reports and a local log when troubleshooting is actually needed.
All screenshots use the Orbital Dawn theme and synthetic demo data. They contain no real Commander profile, Journal history, service credentials, or API keys.
Requirements: Windows 10 or 11, and Elite Dangerous Journal files for live Commander data.
- Open the latest release.
- Under Assets, download
ED-Frame-<version>-Windows.zip. - Extract the whole ZIP to a writable folder.
- Run
ED-Frame.exe, keeping the_internalfolder beside it.
The Windows package bundles its runtime and is Explorer-compatible. A full project archive and SHA256SUMS.txt are published alongside it. Windows SmartScreen may warn because the executable is not code-signed.
Install Python 3, clone the repository, run INSTALL_REQUIREMENTS.bat once, then launch START_APP.bat.
Personal settings, Journal cursors, caches, plans and service credentials live outside the program directory and are never included in release archives.
The complete 1.5.5 manuals are available in English and German.
ED-Frame works locally from Elite Dangerous Journal files. Every network integration is optional and opt-in:
- INARA — supported Commander events are batched, deduplicated, rate-limited, and written to local receipts before any upload. The API key is encrypted for the current Windows account with DPAPI, is never exposed back to QML, and is redacted from logs and crash reports.
- EDDN — supported public market, station, exploration and exobiology messages are validated and stripped of private or unsupported fields before transmission.
- Frontier Companion API — an explicit in-app consent tick is required before the first login. Authorisation uses Frontier's PKCE OAuth flow with no client secret; only credits and the active ship are imported, and newer Journal values always stay authoritative. OAuth tokens are encrypted for the current Windows account (DPAPI) and are never written to logs.
- Spansh — optional read-only catalog data assists navigation and material guidance, with bundled offline fallbacks.
A build run from a source checkout identifies itself to INARA and EDDN as a development build, so ad-hoc runs are never counted as a released version.
The bundled Frontier OAuth client covers the default GitHub Pages redirect. If you run your own instance and have accepted the Frontier developer terms, set EDEC_FRONTIER_CLIENT_ID (and, if needed, EDEC_FRONTIER_REDIRECT_URI) to use your own registered client.
- A headless load of the real
Main.qmlin CI whose QML runtime errors fail the build, plus state-based QML interaction tests. - Contract tests for physical slot binding, ED-Frame/EDSY/Coriolis interchange, Powerplay observation boundaries, and external-service safety limits.
- Atomic local persistence with corruption quarantine, bounded history, multi-process protection, retry backoff, and durable queues.
- Journal processing that follows recently active files without replaying known lines.
- Translation contracts that keep the EN/DE/ES/FR catalogs and their placeholders in sync.
The full test suite and a source/packaged smoke test run on every release.
INSTALL_REQUIREMENTS.bat
START_APP.bat
See requirements.txt for runtime dependencies. ED-Frame is under active development; bug reports, translations and feature suggestions are welcome through GitHub Issues.
ED-Frame is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 and is free to use.
ED-Frame is an independent third-party project and is not affiliated with Frontier Developments. Elite Dangerous is a trademark of Frontier Developments plc.
Exobiology reference data (ed_data/exobiology_species.json, ed_data/exobiology_colony_ranges.json) is ED-Frame's own re-expression of public game facts — spawn conditions, credit values and colony-range distances — not copied code. The colony-range distances are sourced from the Elite Dangerous Fandom wiki (CC BY-SA).