I built a mood-based OTT discovery app in my spare time — here's my story

I'm a program manager by profession who hasn't coded in the last 10 years. A few months ago, I got frustrated enough by the "what to watch tonight" problem that I decided to build something.

The result: MoodBinge (moodbinge.com) — a tool that lets you pick your mood and get curated picks across Netflix, Prime Video, Hotstar, ZEE5, and SonyLIV with real IMDb ratings, cast info, and direct watch links.

What I actually built:

- Mood-based content discovery across major OTT platforms

• Various filters to refine your search (newest, trending, highest rated)

• Ability to mark content as watched as remove it from the filters

- Geo-aware trending section (India top 10, updated twice daily via Streaming Availability API)

- Watchlist with emoji ratings

- Google login

- PWA — installable on mobile

• Android app (in progress)

What surprised me:

The hardest part wasn't the code — it was data. Getting accurate, fresh OTT availability data for India is genuinely painful. Most APIs are US-centric or stale. I ended up chaining various APIs and a 12-hour cache to make it work.

Current status:

- Live at moodbinge.com

- Submitted to Google Play Store (waiting for review)

- Sent cold outreach to early users

- No paid marketing spend

What's next:

Figuring out the early reviews that can suggest the next wave of changes along with discovering ways to make it reach more and more folks who have the similar pain point.

If you've launched something similar or have experience in scaling something similar, would love to get in touch with you