vasanthk1125

We'll have subscriptions for extra features like Letterboxd does. All basic features though is free forever.

Phoenix doesn’t have built-in auth, and setting it up with Guardian (the JWT library for Elixir) took too much time. Since we were already using Supabase for Postgres, we decided to go with its auth to move faster. Supabase provides a UUID after authentication, which we then use throughout the rest of the database.

1. No, it just means completely free. And the website’s not going anywhere unless I die or something. I'll look into making this clearer.

2. Noted. We'll put up a proper email address. I just figured Discord would be faster.

I’ve always hoped that once we reach Goodreads scale, we’d be able to release database dumps like VNDB (https://vndb.org/d14) and Lichess (https://database.lichess.org/)

Since the metadata is contributed by volunteers in the first place, it only seems fair for it to be freely available rather than locked down.

They switched because it took more effort from users to rate on a 5 vs just saying good or bad. Because Netflix is a streaming service, casual users don't want to put in that much effort when they're chilling. Tracking is fundamentally different, where you go in with the expectation of organizing your library.

Thanks for the detailed comment!

1. Friends reviews on book is actually not that hard at all. We will implement it right after we get the friends and follow system working.

2. This one will take a decent number of users and ratings. We need a lot of data before we can make recommendations using ML.

3. Noted.

4. We will add that in the next few weeks. Filtering TBR seems to be a common request.

Thanks!

We'll definitely implement automatic review bombing protection. I'm thinking something like Steam does.

Do users create and moderate the group themselves? It seems like a subreddit, but for book related topics?

When I first started working on the website nine months ago, I didn’t even know what Postgres was, so going with an easier option made sense. Right now, we also use Supabase for auth and emails.

For queries, we don’t use Supabase’s API interface—we interact with Postgres directly through our backend

We’ll definitely have this at some point. A good recommendation system needs a solid base of user data, so it’s only possible once we have a larger user base. I really wanted to have this for the launch since it seemed so important for a book tracking platform but we didn't have the data to train models to make recommendations.

Not yet, but we’re rolling out a way to add missing books later this week!

LiveView just has fewer libraries. For example, we use a rich-text editor called TipTap, and I’m not sure there’s anything similar for LV.

Yeah, search is currently by book title and series name. It should handle typos pretty well—Meilisearch allows for up to two—but I still need to tweak it further

I'm curious—what would you like to do with the API?

They're there. Looks like our search needs some improvement. We'll add a dedicated search results page too.

https://kaguya.io/books/pandemic-6 https://kaguya.io/books/the-rift-1

Mostly the former. I wanted our website to celebrate storytelling, and naming it after one of the oldest Japanese stories felt fitting. Plus, I did love Kaguya from the anime—so that's a bonus. :)

You can view the website without registering though? Just click the link and browse without registering.

Sure, we do. I'm planning to have reddit-like forums for each book over 500 ratings at the bottom of the page like IMDB used to do. Also, I'm considering forums for genres like romance, fantasy.

I did go back and forth on this. I just like 10 stars better. IMDB, MAL, Mangadex all have 10 stars. So it's not really uncommon. But yeah, if a lot of people feel 5 is enough, we'll just return it back to the 5 star system.

That's totally okay. If it works for you, keep using it by all means. The point of an alternative is to serve those who do have a problem and are frustrated with the status quo.

I agree. I hope we keep growing and one day reach that level. People also bring in their reviews when they import from goodreads. So it's not gonna take that long.

It just feels satisfying to me—organizing my library neatly by rating, based on how much I like each book. A four-level system just doesn’t have the same impact. Personal preference, I guess.

StoryGraph has made it pretty clear they don’t want to be more social—you have to go into your settings and explicitly turn on friends and followers.

They also de-emphasize reviews, hiding them under a button. There are no likes or comments on reviews, and they don’t have shelves like Goodreads.

But to me, a big part of Goodreads is the community, library organization, and reviews, so I want to emphasize those on Kaguya.

Also, I just think our design is much better.

Yeah, we don't have comics and graphic novels currently. I wanted to keep it simple for launch.

We currently don't have that on the website. I'm planning to add it soon though, probably next week.

Tech Stack

    Backend: Elixir & Phoenix
    Database: PostgreSQL with Supabase (originally CockroachDB, big mistake)
    Auth: Supabase
    Frontend: Next.js
    UI Components: shadcn
    GraphQL API: Absinthe
    Hosting: Fly.io (Phoenix) + Vercel (Next.js)
    Storage: Cloudflare R2 + CDN