AuraWatch - Stardance

Ship #1 Pending review

@Ander507 on AuraWatch · about 12 hours ago

What I made: AuraWatch — a vibe finder for movies, TV, anime, and songs. You pick format/genres, optional “like these” titles, and a short mood note; it returns a few grounded picks with posters and where-to-watch / listen links.

Problem: Picking something to watch (or play) usually means doomscrolling Netflix/Spotify until you give up. AuraWatch turns that into one short decision.

3 QoL improvements:
1. Vibe + “similar to” in one place — no hopping between lists and search tabs.
2. Region-aware Where to Watch — so you don’t get hyped for a title you can’t stream.
3. Songs mode with listen links — same friction fix for music, not just video.

Challenging: Gemini’s JSON was a mess (fences, trailing commas, truncations), so I added repair + key rotation and a local catalog fallback when APIs flake.

Proud of: The dual path (TMDB similar vs Gemini concierge) and that it still works without keys.

How to test: Open https://aura-watching.vercel.app/ → try Desktop + Minimal themes → pick Anime or Songs → add a “like” title and hit Get picks. Check providers/listen links on a result.

1 devlog
3h
Frictionless

Try project → See source code →

Open comments for this post

@Ander507 on AuraWatch · about 12 hours ago

3h 16m 35s logged

AuraWatch — Devlog #1

Added a dual-path recommender: vibe prompt / genres go through Gemini, and “like this title” goes through TMDB similar — then both get posters + region watch providers.

The painful part wasn’t the AI. It was Gemini’s JSON. Trailing commas, curly quotes, markdown fences mid-object. Spent a chunk writing a repair/parse loop and bumping maxOutputTokens to 3072 after it kept truncating mid-array.

Also shipped songs mode (Gemini → iTunes covers/listen links) and a local catalog fallback so the app still picks something when keys die. UI has two themes now (minimal / desktop)