MoodReads is on the App Store

As of today, MoodReads is on the App Store. It’s free, and I built it myself.

The idea

Most book recommendations work the same way. You liked this book, so here’s a book other people who liked it also liked. That’s fine, but it ignores something obvious. What you want to read depends a lot on how you feel right now. The book that’s perfect on a calm Sunday can be the wrong book in the middle of a stressful week.

So I designed a recommendation framework that starts from emotion instead of history, and built an app around it.

What it does

MoodReads figures out how you’re feeling, across six emotions, and builds a feed of books that fits. Over time it learns the authors, genres, and themes you like, so the suggestions get more personal the more you use it.

There’s also an explore page of AI-curated books, a profile that shows what you’ve read and the emotions you feel most often, and a leaderboard for reading milestones. The leaderboard is there because competing with your friends is a surprisingly good reason to finish a book.

What’s next

This is the first version, and now the real test starts: whether people actually use it.

If you try it, let me know what it recommends you, and whether it got your mood right. That’s the part I want to get better at.