How AchieveIQ Works
No black boxes. Here's exactly what happens when you generate a guide, what data we use, and where our AI falls short.
The process, step by step
1. You enter your Steam ID
We call Steam's public API to fetch your game library, playtime, and achievement progress. Your Steam profile must be set to public for this to work. We never ask for your Steam password.
2. We build a personalized prompt
Your completed and incomplete achievements are separated. We pass only your incomplete ones to the AI, along with your playtime and game metadata. The guide is built around what you still need, not a generic walkthrough.
3. An AI writes your guide
We use a large language model trained on a broad corpus of internet data, which includes gaming guides, wikis, and forums. It generates strategies based on what it learned during training, not by browsing the web live. Guides stream to you in real time.
4. Community guides are cached
Once a guide is generated for a game, it's stored and shared with other users who request the same game. This keeps generation fast and costs down. Cached guides are marked with a "Community Guide" label in the modal.
What data we access
Where our AI falls short
We'd rather be upfront about this than have you trust a wrong guide.
For achievements that depend on very specific in-game data (e.g. catching a particular fish in Stardew Valley, or a speedrun-precise challenge), the AI may give generic advice. Steam's API doesn't expose this level of game state, so the AI works from training knowledge only.
The AI doesn't browse the internet live. If a game was patched recently or released after the model's knowledge cutoff, strategies may be outdated or missing.
If a game has almost no online presence, the AI has less to draw from. The guide will still try to cover every achievement, but strategies may be less precise than for well-documented titles.
See something wrong in a guide? Use the "Report inaccuracy" button inside any guide to flag it. We review all reports.
How we compare to human-written guides
Sites like TrueSteamAchievements are excellent. We're not trying to replace them. We serve a different job.
- ✓ Games with zero or few existing guides (thousands of indie titles)
- ✓ Getting a guide in 30 seconds, not waiting months for a community write-up
- ✓ Personalized to your exact progress, not a generic full walkthrough
- ✓ When you just need a quick pointer, not a 20-page deep dive
- ✓ Popular titles with rich community knowledge
- ✓ Achievements requiring precise, verified step-by-step routes
- ✓ Games with complex multiplayer or RNG-heavy achievements
- ✓ When you need absolute certainty over speed
What we're building next
We know AI alone isn't enough. The roadmap is built around community refinement.