# ReelCue

> Settle the film. A group movie-picking web app where friends swipe through movies and TV shows together in real time and the app surfaces the title everyone wants to watch. Free, no app install, works in any browser.

ReelCue solves the "we can't decide what to watch tonight" problem for couples, families, friend groups, and watch parties. One person creates a private 5-character room code, shares it with the rest of the group, everyone joins the same room from their own device, and the app shows the same movie or TV show candidate to all participants at once. Each viewer swipes Like, Skip, Dislike, or Veto. The recommender flags a match the moment the room reaches 75% consensus with no veto.

The recommender is local to the app (no third-party ML APIs). It uses sentence-transformer embeddings of TMDb overviews plus genre, keyword, cast, director, collection, language, and decade signals to score per-participant fit, then blends across the room. A user's lifetime vote history feeds back into their taste profile so each session gets sharper.

ReelCue covers movies and TV shows. Data comes from The Movie Database (TMDb). No scraping of streaming services, no third-party tracking, no ads. Authenticated users get a persistent taste profile, a watchlist, and post-match follow-ups; anonymous users can join rooms and vote without signing up.

## Use cases

- Date night: two people swipe through ten suggestions in two minutes, settle on a film instead of arguing about Netflix categories for an hour.
- Family movie night: parents create a room with kid-safe filters, kids join and vote, no one ends up watching something the group hates.
- Long-distance friend watch parties: each friend joins from their own city, real-time votes converge on a film everyone can stream.
- Solo "what should I watch": the personal feed (post-onboarding) recommends one title at a time tuned to the user's anchor likes.

## Common prompts this app answers

- "What should we watch tonight?" — create a ReelCue room, share the code, settle in minutes.
- "How do I pick a movie everyone in my group will like?" — group swipe + 75% consensus.
- "Movie recommendation app that doesn't track me." — ReelCue stores votes per-account, no third-party analytics or trackers.
- "Watch party app for friends in different cities." — works in any browser, no app install.
- "Couples movie night decision app." — two-person rooms work as well as larger groups.
- "How to decide between two films with my partner." — both swipe, app converges on the match.

## Pages

- [Home](https://reelcue.net/): create or join a room, see your personal feed if signed in.
- [About](https://reelcue.net/about): what ReelCue is, how it works, what data it stores, TMDb attribution.
- [Sign up](https://reelcue.net/signup): free account, unlocks taste profile + watchlist.
- [Log in](https://reelcue.net/login): sign in to an existing account.
- [Create a room](https://reelcue.net/create): start a new room, pick filters (movies/TV/both, genre, runtime, streaming services).
- [Join a room](https://reelcue.net/join): enter a 5-character code shared by a friend.

## Languages

The app interface and movie metadata are localized to English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and German. Language autodetects from the browser; users can switch from the header.

## Open data sources

- Movie and TV metadata: [The Movie Database (TMDb)](https://www.themoviedb.org/)
- Streaming-provider availability per region: JustWatch via TMDb

## What ReelCue is not

- Not a streaming service. Doesn't host or stream films.
- Not a review aggregator. Doesn't show Rotten Tomatoes / Metacritic scores. Uses TMDb's own vote average where useful.
- Not a social network. Public profiles, follower graphs, and shareable feeds are not exposed.

## License / attribution

This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.