AI-Powered Social Movie Discovery
Built for Victorhack 2026
TasteTape is not just another movie tracker—it's a personalized, social-first cinema experience. By combining the power of Google Gemini AI with real-time social activity, TasteTape helps you discover your next favorite film through the lens of your friends and advanced AI reasoning.
Unlike traditional algorithms, TasteTape uses Gemini 1.5 Flash to analyze your unique "vibe" and watch history. It doesn't just suggest movies; it tells you why you'll like them with AI-generated "Vibe Snippets."
Stay in the loop with what your friends are watching. Our custom Activity Engine tracks:
- Watch History: See when friends finish a film.
- Vibe Shifts: Get notified when a friend changes their movie preferences.
- Live Reviews: Read and react to community ratings as they happen.
Beyond the standard IMDB/TMDB scores, we calculate a unique Community Score using MongoDB Aggregation, showing you how your specific circle of friends is rating a movie.
Built with scalability in mind for Victorhack:
- Modular Design: Clean Controller-Service-Route architecture.
- Persistent Caching: Optimized TMDB API integration with MongoDB-based TTL caching to ensure lightning-fast performance.
- Secure Auth: Seamless identity management powered by Clerk.
- Backend: Node.js, Express.js (ES Modules)
- Database: MongoDB (Mongoose ODM)
- AI Engine: Google Gemini AI (Generative-AI SDK)
- Authentication: Clerk
- API Integration: TMDB (The Movie Database)
- Environment: Dotenv for secure configuration
- Node.js (v18+)
- MongoDB Atlas account
- Gemini AI API Key
- TMDB API Key
- Clerk API Keys
- Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/your-repo/tastetape.git