ZenkaiTV
Preview
What ZenkaiTV includes
- Recent-release home screen with a daily carousel, high-resolution artwork, blur-until-ready loading, and fast manual navigation.
- Smart anime search with typo tolerance, alternate-title matching, franchise grouping, and natural ordering so original seasons appear before sequels.
- Rich title pages with stable posters and backdrops, complete descriptions, English and Spanish text, expandable summaries, seasons, episode names, dates, and thumbnails.
- Long-series support with predictable episode filtering and navigation for catalogs such as Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach.
- Latest episode routing that opens the newest available episode in context without autoplaying it.
- Multi-source playback with HLS, direct video, and embed support. AnimeAV1 is preferred when available, with provider fallbacks preserved when it is not.
- Google Cast controls with receiver-compatible source selection, duplicate-device protection, and an explicit stop-casting action.
- Responsive playback for desktop, portrait phones, tablets, and TV, including compact episode titles and fullscreen behavior.
- Personal library with animated favorite feedback, resilient favorite storage, continue watching, history, and resume positions.
- Weekly schedule with stable Monday-to-Sunday sections, local-time airings, and 12-hour clock formatting.
- Isolated adult mode with its own catalog, releases, artwork pipeline, favorites, and a persistent random-title control.
- Installable clients as a PWA, Android mobile/tablet APK, and Android TV APK from the same codebase.
Performance and reliability
ZenkaiTV is designed to avoid scaling upstream traffic one-to-one with visitors:
- Vercel CDN caching and stale-while-revalidate for shared catalog and metadata routes.
- In-flight request coalescing for identical upstream work.
- Bounded timeouts, rate-limit handling, and stale fallbacks instead of aggressive retries.
- A compact homepage bootstrap followed by deferred catalog enrichment.
- Lazy metadata and artwork hydration so navigation stays responsive.
- Versioned static assets and a service worker for reliable updates.
- Stable image selection so cards and carousel slides do not swap artwork after rendering.
The implementation and route-by-route decisions are documented in the Vercel Function audit.
Architecture
flowchart LR
Client[Web / PWA / Android clients] --> CDN[Vercel CDN]
CDN --> Static[Versioned static application]
CDN --> API[Node API function]
API --> Metadata[AniList / Jikan / TMDB]
API --> Providers[Configured catalog and playback providers]
API --> Cache[Memory cache and request coalescing]
The frontend is framework-free JavaScript and CSS. The same Node handler runs locally and through the Vercel catch-all adapter. Shared metadata is cacheable at the edge, while short-lived media URLs remain narrowly cached so playback and Cast behavior stay correct.
Quick start
Requirements: Node.js 20.9 or newer and npm.
git clone https://github.com/JSolanoDev/AnimeTV.git
cd AnimeTV
npm install
cp .env.example .env.local
npm run dev
Open http://localhost:4173. Optional API keys and provider bridges are documented in .env.example; the catalog UI can still start when optional providers are unavailable.
On Windows, use Copy-Item .env.example .env.local in place of cp.
Validation
npm run check
npm test
npm run vercel-build
GitHub Actions runs the static checks, regression suite, lint rules, adult release checks, and production build for every pull request and push to main.
Android builds
With the Android SDK and a compatible JDK installed:
npm run android:build
| Target | APK |
|---|
| Phone and tablet | android/app/build/outputs/apk/mobile/debug/app-mobile-debug.apk |
| Android TV | android/app/build/outputs/apk/tv/debug/app-tv-debug.apk |
See Android mobile and TV setup for ADB installation and device notes.
Deployment
The production site is deployed on Vercel. The repository already includes the static build, catch-all API adapter, CDN headers, security headers, and SPA rewrites required by the app.
npm run vercel-build
See the deployment guide for Vercel configuration, optional environment variables, cache verification, and self-hosting.
Project layout
| Path | Purpose |
|---|
index.html, styles.css, client.js | Main application shell and UI |
js/ | Shared routing, normalization, metadata, image, and source logic |
player/ | Video player and playback integrations |
animetv-server.js | Local and serverless API implementation |
api/[...path].js | Vercel Function adapter |
scripts/ | Catalog, verification, build, audit, and regression tooling |
android/ | Mobile/tablet and Android TV wrappers |
docs/ | Setup, API, deployment, and troubleshooting guides |
Documentation
Privacy and legal
ZenkaiTV is a catalog browser and media player. It does not host or store copyrighted video. Playback is supplied by third-party sources configured by the operator, who is responsible for using those sources lawfully. Favorites, history, and resume state are stored on the user's device.
License
MIT Copyright ZenkaiTV contributors.
