4a

Personal AI podcast curator, codenamed internally after its unit of listening: a foray — a curated, cross-episode, continuously-playable audio session stitched from a listener's subscribed shows. Long-term target: an iOS app per the briefing package in docs/brief/. The project is well past the early web-menu prototype phase: it now has a full playback engine, native app shells, a backend curation pipeline, and a published foray a real visitor can open and listen to end to end.

Live: https://jw-incorporated.github.io/foray/ (GitHub Pages, deploys automatically on push to main; production preview also served from foray-web-seven.vercel.app)

Layout

• Root (index.html, app.js, styles.css, search-engine.js, sw.js) — the static web client: browse/search shows and episodes, and play forays. Deployed as-is with no build step (see vercel.json / tools/web/prepare-dist.mjs).
• player/ — the playback/queue engine shared by the web client and the iOS app (ES module; mirrored by hand against ios/ForayKit so the two stay diffable — see docs/mobile-shell.md). Handles queueing, seam gaps between episodes, playback rate, resumable position, and progress tracking.
• backend/ — Node.js + TypeScript curation core: feed ingest, episode identity/dedup, enrichment, cost-metered generation, and the engine that assembles a foray. Local-first (npm install && npm test, no cloud services or API keys required). See backend/README.md.
• mobile/ — the shipping iOS and Android app shell (Capacitor wrapping the web player). Platform projects are generated on demand and not committed; see mobile/README.md and docs/mobile-shell.md.
• ios/ForayKit — a CI-tested pure-Swift reference package (state machine, Tier-1 voice-intent grammar). No longer the shipping app, but still live and exercised by CI; see ios/README.md.
• data/ — taxonomy, catalog, foray, and session JSON (versioned).
• tools/ — build, harvest, classify, transcribe, narrate, and refresh tooling that produces the data above and prepares the deployable site.
• test/ — root-level app tests (naming, security, data deletion, topic integrity, diagnostics surface, etc.).
• docs/ — brief/ (original product briefing package), adr/ (architecture decision records), research/ (agent research outputs), product/, curation/, legal/, ux/, store/, plus operating and status docs (DECISIONS.md, roles.md, mobile-shell.md, and others).

Current phase (2026-08)

The repo has a published foray (capital-types-1) that any visitor can reach without a special URL — the first time any foray has been visible to a general visitor rather than gated behind ?foray=. Native iOS/Android shells build in CI, and the backend curation pipeline, playback engine, and search are all live and tested. See STATE.md for the current detailed status and docs/DECISIONS.md for the history of how the project got here.

For contributor and AI-agent operating rules (decision authority, workflow, review gates), read CLAUDE.md first.