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Every API response includes meta.attribution_required: true. This isn’t a marketing flag — it’s the system reminding your application that displaying our data carries an obligation to credit us. The Developer Agreement spells out the legal version; this page is the practical one.

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What’s required

If your application displays Elestrals card data to end users, you must include an attribution that:
  1. Names the API. “Powered by the Elestrals TCG API” is the canonical phrasing.
  2. Links to the developer site. Either docs.elestrals.com or elestrals.com.
  3. Stays visible. A buried “credits” page two clicks deep doesn’t count if the data is on the home screen.
Place it somewhere that appears on the same surface as the card data — a footer below a deck list, a tagline below a card image, an “About” pop-out on a mobile app’s main view.

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Copy-paste snippets

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HTML

<small>
  Card data powered by the
  <a href="https://docs.elestrals.com">Elestrals TCG API</a>.
</small>

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React

<footer className="text-xs text-slate-500">
  Card data powered by the{' '}
  <a href="https://docs.elestrals.com">Elestrals TCG API</a>.
</footer>

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Plain text (Discord bots, embeds)

Card data powered by the Elestrals TCG API — docs.elestrals.com

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What doesn’t count

  • Burying the credit in a Terms of Service page or About modal that’s three taps deep.
  • Renaming the API in your attribution (“Powered by SuperDeck Database”).
  • Wrapping the attribution in display: none to satisfy the linter.
  • Crediting only the underlying card game (“Cards © Elestrals”) without referencing the API as the data source.

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When you don’t need attribution

Two narrow cases:
  • Internal tools. A spreadsheet for personal use, a Slack bot for your team of 5, a one-off analysis script. No public-facing UI = no attribution requirement.
  • Server-to-server pipelines. Backend processing where the data is transformed into a non-card output (e.g., a stats analysis) and the card data itself never reaches an end user.
If you’re not sure your case qualifies, assume it doesn’t.

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Logo and brand assets

We don’t ship a logo bundle today. Use the wordmark “Elestrals TCG API” in plain text. If your project has space and design conviction for a brand logo, write to support and we’ll send the SVG plus our usage rules.

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Why this matters

Attribution is the price of free public data. It’s how new developers find the API, how the Elestrals team justifies running this infrastructure, and how the broader TCG community knows where the data is coming from. It’s also the cheapest part of compliance — five seconds of HTML in your footer prevents a much harder conversation later.