u/g3n3r4ly

Hey all — I built (with the help of Claude) Spool, a self-hosted tracker for movies, TV, and anime. Started as something just for myself, but it's grown into something I think is solid enough for others to actually use, so I'm opening it up.

Why I built it: I was using Trakt and Simkl, but both lock a lot of useful features behind a paywall, and Trakt's newer redesign honestly made the experience worse for me personally. On top of that, Trakt recently restricted things so you can only have one external app connected via their API unless you're VIP — which made syncing from other apps a lot more limited unless you pay. I wanted something standalone that didn't depend on Trakt or Simkl for syncing at all.

That's where Nuvio comes in — if you watch content through Nuvio, Spool can automatically track your watch progress from it directly, no Trakt or Simkl account needed in the middle. Honestly, props to Nuvio for having that sync capability in the first place — it's what made a standalone tracker like this actually feasible.

What it does:

• Dashboard with continue-watching, up next, quick stats
• Movies & TV / Anime library with Watching / Watchlist / History tabs
• Calendar of upcoming episodes and releases, synced nightly from TMDB
• Shared and private lists, stats (streaks, genre/year breakdown, heatmap)
• Multiple household profiles on one instance
• Nuvio sync for automatic watch progress tracking
• Import via CSV, or auto-sync from a connected Trakt or Simkl account if you still use those
• Runs entirely on your own server — no account limits, no ads, no paywalled features

Stack: Django + Postgres + Redis/Celery, server-rendered with HTMX, shipped as a 5-container Docker Compose stack.

Repo: https://github.com/aljaz-h/spool-tracker

Known limitations (documented here): Simkl history sync hasn't been verified against a live account yet, no light theme, no multi-tenancy (it's a household tracker, not a multi-user SaaS), and poster matching is title+year based rather than ID-based.

I'd genuinely appreciate feedback, bug reports, or PRs if anyone wants to dig in.

Hey all — I built (with the help of Claude) Spool, a self-hosted tracker for movies, TV, and anime. Started as something just for myself, but it's grown into something I think is solid enough for others to actually use, so I'm opening it up.

Why I built it: I was using Trakt and Simkl, but both lock a lot of useful features behind a paywall, and Trakt's newer redesign honestly made the experience worse for me personally. On top of that, Trakt recently restricted things so you can only have one external app connected via their API unless you're VIP — which made syncing from other apps a lot more limited unless you pay. I wanted something standalone that didn't depend on Trakt or Simkl for syncing at all.

That's where Nuvio comes in — if you watch content through Nuvio, Spool can automatically track your watch progress from it directly, no Trakt or Simkl account needed in the middle. Honestly, props to Nuvio for having that sync capability in the first place — it's what made a standalone tracker like this actually feasible.

What it does:

• Dashboard with continue-watching, up next, quick stats
• Movies & TV / Anime library with Watching / Watchlist / History tabs
• Calendar of upcoming episodes and releases, synced nightly from TMDB
• Shared and private lists, stats (streaks, genre/year breakdown, heatmap)
• Multiple household profiles on one instance
• Nuvio sync for automatic watch progress tracking
• Import via CSV, or auto-sync from a connected Trakt or Simkl account if you still use those
• Runs entirely on your own server — no account limits, no ads, no paywalled features

Stack: Django + Postgres + Redis/Celery, server-rendered with HTMX, shipped as a 5-container Docker Compose stack.

Repo: https://github.com/aljaz-h/spool-tracker

Known limitations (documented here): Simkl history sync hasn't been verified against a live account yet, no light theme, no multi-tenancy (it's a household tracker, not a multi-user SaaS), and poster matching is title+year based rather than ID-based.

I'd genuinely appreciate feedback, bug reports, or PRs if anyone wants to dig in.