Setup, identification, troubleshooting, contact
iPhone running iOS 17 or later. WaxStax is iPhone-only at launch — there's no iPad-specific layout. The universal binary will run on iPad but the UI is designed for one-handed phone use in a record shop. iPhone 13 or newer is recommended; cold launch is under two seconds and SwiftData stays snappy past 500 records.
WaxStax is free and has no backend. The two services it depends on — Anthropic for vision and Discogs for metadata — both require an API key. Rather than rebill you (and run a billing system, accounts, and a backend), WaxStax asks you to paste your own keys in Settings. You pay Anthropic directly for vision identifications. Discogs personal access tokens are free.
Discogs: sign in at discogs.com, go to Settings → Developers, and generate a personal access token. Anthropic: sign up at console.anthropic.com, go to Settings → API Keys, and create a key. Add a small amount of credit to your Anthropic account — at ~$0.003 per identification, $5 covers about 1,500 scans. Both keys are pasted into WaxStax Settings (masked input) and stored in iOS Keychain.
Approximately $0.002–$0.005 per IDENTIFY tap, billed by Anthropic to your account. The cost is for one ~1080p JPEG plus a short prompt and ~50 tokens of structured output, processed by Claude Haiku 4.5. WaxStax does not mark up or rebill — you see the same line items in the Anthropic console that any direct API user would.
WaxStax itself is free with no in-app purchases or subscriptions. Anthropic typically offers some free credit on signup; Discogs tokens are free and unlimited within their rate limits. So your first batch of identifications usually costs you nothing out of pocket.
The center label of the record is the most reliable target — it carries the catalog number, the artist, and the label name in a relatively standard layout. The album cover also works well for releases with distinctive artwork. The back cover is third-best (good text but lots of distraction). You don't need a barcode and you don't need to clean the sleeve first.
Typically 2–3 seconds end-to-end on a normal home network: encode the JPEG, post to Anthropic, receive the structured response, query Discogs, score the candidates, render the confirm card. Slower on cellular or hotel Wi-Fi. The shutter button shows an in-flight state so you know it's working.
That's the design target. WaxStax was built specifically for the records that barcode scanners and OCR-based apps can't handle — vintage pressings, regional editions, faded ink, white-label promos. The model identifies records by typography, label color, logo design, and layout, not just by readable text.
The confirm card shows Claude's confidence level and one-sentence reasoning. If something looks off, tap Reject and try again — better lighting, less glare, or a different angle usually fixes it. If Claude returns low confidence, the result is still shown honestly so you can decide whether to record it or scan again.
The card surfaces Claude's raw identification with a "No Discogs match" warning. You can still save the record to your collection — it just won't have a canonical Discogs release ID. This sometimes happens with very obscure private pressings or non-standard reissues that Discogs hasn't catalogued yet.
Almost always an orientation issue. WaxStax assumes you're holding the phone in portrait — the encoder applies a 90° clockwise orientation to the back-camera frame so Claude sees the label right-side-up. If you've rotated to landscape, results can come back rotated. Hold the phone vertically while scanning.
In SwiftData, in WaxStax's private app container on your iPhone. Cover art is downloaded once and saved to the app support directory; the database stores the local path, not the image bytes. Your collection is included in iCloud / iTunes device backups if you have those enabled, but it does not sync between devices.
Not directly — WaxStax has no cloud sync by design. The supported workflow is to export a CSV and re-import it on another device, or push to your Discogs account (which you can then read on any device through Discogs's own apps and website).
Yes — that's the primary export format. Columns match Discogs's importer exactly: Catalog#, Artist, Title, Label, Format, Rating, Released, release_id, CollectionFolder, Date Added, Collection Media Condition, Collection Sleeve Condition, Collection Notes. The release_id column is preserved so re-imports dedupe correctly. Conditions use Discogs's exact strings (e.g. Very Good Plus (VG+)). UTF-8 with BOM for special-character compatibility. RFC 4180 quoting throughout.
Generic CSV (all fields, comma-separated, UTF-8), JSON (full fidelity, lossless round-trip through JSONDecoder), and XLSX (opens in Excel and Numbers without repair dialogs). All four formats route through the standard iOS share sheet.
Yes — every field on a record is editable from the detail view. There's also a "Refresh from Discogs" button that re-pulls marketplace stats and updates cached pricing. Bulk actions (delete, tag, export) are available from the Collection tab via a selection mode.
Marketplace pricing is cached for 24 hours per release. The detail view shows when it was last refreshed; tap Refresh to pull fresh stats on demand. Bulk refresh respects Discogs's rate limits (60 requests/minute for authenticated users, with token-bucket throttling driven by Discogs's own response headers).
Almost always a missing or invalid API key. Open Settings and verify that both Discogs Token and Anthropic API Key are set. The Settings screen will run a test API call when you save each key — green check means it's good, red means the key was rejected.
Discogs allows 60 requests per minute per authenticated user. WaxStax self-throttles using Discogs's own X-Discogs-Ratelimit-Remaining header, but if you're rapidly bulk-refreshing pricing on a large collection you can hit the limit. Wait a minute and try again.
Tap anywhere in the viewfinder to set focus and exposure on that spot. The torch toggle (top-right of the viewfinder) helps in dim shop lighting. Make sure you've granted camera permission in iOS Settings → Privacy → Camera → WaxStax.
The camera and the network round-trip both consume power. WaxStax monitors ProcessInfo.thermalState and will surface a warning if the device approaches a serious thermal level. Take a one-minute break and the phone will recover. Avoid scanning in direct sunlight.
Open the record in the Collection detail view and tap Edit. You can correct any field manually, or delete the record and re-scan. There's no penalty for re-scanning — Discogs lookups are free.
Need more help?
If you can't find the answer above, send a message.
Or email directly: craig@psiloops.com