MoodReel

What to watch or read tonight, in three taps. Pick a mood, an energy and a time; swipe a short deck; let your favourites go head-to-head; get one pick: tonight's film or series, or the next book.

Built for one person on an iPhone and a Mac. Signed out, the landing page above is all there is to see; sign-in is a passkey, and there is no sign-up page.

What it does

• Films, series and books, each with its own rules (no soaps, no kids' or self-help books).
• A deck that learns from saves, skips, "not for me" and your star ratings.
• People: a page of the directors, actors and authors you follow, with photos; follow or avoid anyone, mark their work seen or read, or deal a deck from one of them.
• Lists: Oscar, Palme d'Or, National Film Award, Booker, Pulitzer and Hugo winners, TMDb's top rated, and any film collection, with your progress; follow one to badge its titles in your decks, or deal straight from it.
• Books on screen: films of books you've read come first, with the book on the card.
• Cover flow: Saved, History, lists and people's pages show posters you swipe through, and the page takes on the colour of the poster in front.
• Your library: Saved and History as one continuous flow each, Watching and Reading, a Details sheet for any title, and a way to add what you'd already seen or read: search, or rate a quick stack.

The moods

How a night works

flowchart LR
  T["Three taps<br/>mood · energy · time"] --> D["Deck of up to 15<br/>swipe save · skip · seen · not for me"]
  D -->|2–4 saves| H["Head-to-head<br/>best of your saves"]
  H --> P["Tonight's pick<br/>and why it won"]
  D -->|one save| P
  P -->|film, 3 hours later| W["Did you watch it?<br/>stars → History"]
  P -->|series or book| L["Watching / Reading list<br/>check-ins until finished"]
  S["Saved"] -->|Pick from my saved| H

Run it locally

You need Node 24+ and Docker.

docker compose up -d          # Postgres on localhost:5433
cp .env.example .env.local    # fill in BETTER_AUTH_SECRET and OWNER_SETUP_TOKEN
npm install && npm run db:migrate && npm run dev

Then open http://localhost:3000/setup, enter your OWNER_SETUP_TOKEN and save a passkey.

Deploy

1. Vercel project → Storage → Create → Neon (sets DATABASE_URL).
2. Add BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, OWNER_SETUP_TOKEN and TMDB_ACCESS_TOKEN; optionally NYT_API_KEY and CRON_SECRET.
3. Deploy: migrations run on production builds.
4. Open /setup on the production domain and save your passkey.

Architecture, scripts, deployment notes and how every deck is built: docs/how-it-works.md.

Credits

This product uses the TMDb API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDb. Where-to-watch data is provided by JustWatch via TMDb. Book data comes from Open Library. Bestseller data: The New York Times Books API. Book ↔ film and series links and award winners come from Wikidata (CC0).