WatchMike
Eliminating streaming decision fatigue by turning the chaos of too many services into a single, opinionated play button.
Role
Founder / Developer
Key Skills Used
Consumer UX • Taste personalization • Real-time data APIs • PWA architecture • Social features
The Problem
The average household subscribes to 4–5 streaming services. The result is a paradox of choice — hundreds of hours of content spread across Netflix, Max, Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, and Prime, with no unified way to track what you want to watch, remember where you left off, or get a meaningful recommendation without scrolling endlessly through each app's algorithm. "What do you want to watch?" has become one of the most stressful decisions in modern life. Existing solutions like Letterboxd focus on film enthusiasts, JustWatch focuses only on availability, and none of them learn your actual taste and proactively tell you what to watch next.
The Solution
WatchMike acts as a single universal remote for all your streaming services — tracking everything you want to watch, learning your taste, surfacing mood-aware recommendations via TMDb, and showing you exactly where to stream each title. One app replaces the 5-app shuffle. The mood-selector is the killer feature: instead of browsing genres, you tell WatchMike how you feel right now, and it surfaces content matched to your emotional state.
Content Discovery
Scroll 5 apps for 20 minutes
Mood-matched pick in seconds
Tracking
Mental notes & forgotten titles
Universal watchlist across all services
Availability
"Which app has this?"
Where to Watch chips on every card
Product Strategy
- Mood-first discovery: replace genre browsing with an emotional state selector for faster, better recommendations
- Universal watchlist as the core retention hook — once users track content here, they have a reason to return daily
- TMDb integration for rich metadata, trailers, cast pages, and real-time streaming availability via Watch Providers API
- "Where to Watch" chips on every card eliminate the service-hopping lookup that kills momentum
- Social sharing as a growth loop — beautiful shareable watchlist cards spread the app organically
- PWA architecture: installable, offline-capable, works on every device without App Store friction
- Episode-level tracking differentiates from simple "want to watch" list apps — it's a real DVR replacement
- Notification system (new episodes, cancellations, premieres) creates daily active use habit
My Role
As founder and developer, I:
- Identified streaming decision fatigue as the core user pain, validated by universal relatability
- Integrated TMDb API for comprehensive movie/TV metadata, trailers, cast, and Watch Providers availability
- Built the mood-aware recommendation engine — the primary differentiator vs. genre-based competitors
- Developed episode-level progress tracking across series with watch status management
- Implemented "Where to Watch" provider chips using TMDb's Watch Providers API with real-time availability
- Built the social sharing feature — generating beautiful, branded watchlist snapshot images
- Architected the alert system for new episodes, cancellations, and coming-soon notifications
- Designed and built the full dark PWA with bottom-tab navigation and Framer Motion transitions
- Set up Supabase for auth, watchlist persistence, ratings, and notification preferences
Product Decisions
Why mood-based discovery instead of genre filters?
Genre filters solve the wrong problem. People don't browse Netflix thinking "I want a thriller" — they think "I feel like something exciting" or "I need to unwind." Mapping to emotional states instead of genre labels produces faster, more satisfying picks and is a unique mechanic that no major competitor uses.
Why build a universal watchlist vs. improving within each streaming app?
Each streaming service has a commercial incentive to keep you inside their ecosystem. A neutral, cross-service watchlist aligns with the user, not the studio. This is the same reason Spotify displaced individual artist websites — one place beats five every time.
Why TMDb instead of a proprietary data source?
TMDb is the industry standard for movie and TV metadata — comprehensive, continuously updated, free-tier friendly, and it includes the Watch Providers API that powers the "Where to Watch" feature. Building or licensing a proprietary database would cost orders of magnitude more with no quality gain.
Why include social sharing for a personal tracking app?
Watching is inherently social. People share what they're watching constantly via text and social media. A built-in share feature that generates beautiful branded cards turns every recommendation into organic word-of-mouth. It's a zero-cost growth channel baked into the product.
Screenshots & UI
🎬
QR code coming soon — domain in progress
Additional UI screenshots coming soon.
What I Would Improve Next
Strategic improvements to take WatchMike to a full production consumer app:
- AI "Tonight's Pick" — one opinionated daily recommendation based on your mood, history, and what's trending
- Watch Party mode — sync playback with friends remotely with built-in chat
- Friend activity feed — see what your friends are watching and their ratings
- Streaming service cost optimizer — shows which services have the most content on your watchlist
- Watchlist import from Letterboxd, IMDb, and Trakt to remove the cold-start barrier
- Native iOS and Android apps with widget support — see your "Up Next" queue on your home screen
- Push notifications for new episodes and streaming availability changes
- Premium tier: unlimited watchlist, advanced filters, offline lists, and early access to new features