2026 · 1 min read
Runway
A private media guide — watchlists, personal ratings, TV guide data, and recommendations that learn from taste. Grown from an embedded experiment into a standalone PWA.
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The itch
Deciding what to watch is a nightly negotiation. Runway is my answer: a private app that tracks what we're watching, knows what we thought of it, and recommends what's next — across streaming and broadcast TV.
What's inside
- My List — watchlist with per-title watched tracking: films get completed, shows record each episode watched, without leaving the active list.
- Ratings as signal — a five-star rating on every item feeds the recommendation logic, so suggestions learn from actual taste rather than global popularity.
- Live data — TMDB for titles and metadata, EPG data for what's actually on television.
- Recommendation inbox — suggestions arrive somewhere reviewable, instead of interrupting.
- PWA — installable, with its own icon and service worker; it feels like an app because it is one.
The interesting part
Runway started life embedded inside this site's codebase and earned its way out: once it had real users and its own release cadence (versioned changelog, review packs for external inspection), it graduated to a standalone app with proper separation. Products tell you when they've outgrown their scaffolding — the skill is listening.