How to use this thing.

Signing in

Three doors, one room. Pick whichever suits you:

1. Continue with Google, one tap, no inbox involved.
2. Email and password, the classic. New here? Flip to the New here tab, pick a password, confirm your email once, done.
3. Email me a link instead, for the password-averse: we send a one-time sign-in link. Check Spam if it doesn’t land in a minute.

Been here since the link-only days and want a password now? Hit Forgot password on the sign-in page and set one.

You land on the library, every record you've added, with covers, artist, album, and a few quick filters across the top. Tap any cover to open the full album page.

The top nav takes you everywhere else: your shelf (records you actually own), the trip planner, blind spots, the monthly recap, the platform charts, and the oracle, plus Add for filing a record and a Surprise button that opens a random record you own. Settings and sign-out live behind the gear menu on the far right.

Records can be in one of four buckets: Want (wishlist), Have (on the shelf), Pass (you decided no), or Oracle suggested (the Oracle proposed it; not yet decided). You land on All, the whole ledger at a glance. One tap on the Want pill narrows it to what you're hunting, which is the record-store move; come in through the trip planner and it's already flipped.

The library shows everything: owned, wished-for, passed. Filter chips up top: All, Want, Have, Pass, plus tier and gateway chips when you're filtering by them.

Search

The big serif search bar matches across artist, title, lanes, your album notes, AND your pressing notes, so if you wrote “Virgil rec” in a pressing note three months ago, typing Virgil finds the record. Adding a second word narrows the results, type virgil grunge to find just that one.

Sort

Priority uses the tier system (1 must, 2 strong, 3 solid, 4 deep, 5 deeper) to put your highest-priority records first. A–Z alphabetizes by artist, ignoring articles like “The”, Beatles vs. Eagles end up where you'd expect them.

Lanes filter

Click Lanes ▾ to fold open every lane in your library with a count. Tap one to filter. Tap a second lane to widen the filter, picking Rock and Hip Hop shows records in either one. Tap a chip again to remove it.

Four ways to add: search, photo-of-the-cover, filing it by hand, and Discogs CSV import. Pick whichever fits. However the record lands, it arrives with genre lanes already guessed from the archives, free, no oracle involved.

Search

Hit + Add in the top nav. Type anything, artist alone, album, even a song title, and pick your record from the list of Spotify matches; the cover, Spotify ID, and basic metadata land automatically. Below the results, Search Discogs instead → casts the vinyl-native net. That’s the move for pressings and comps Spotify never carried (and the page pivots there on its own when Spotify is being difficult). If you picked wrong, hit Pick from Spotify manually under the album page’s Edit cover ▾ menu later to choose a different release.

Photo of the cover

Same + Add page has a photo option (it rides with oracle access; on the free plan the page opens in Search mode and the camera button makes the pitch). Useful when you've got the sleeve in your hands at the store:

1. Tap + Add.
2. Tap the photo button and take a picture of the album cover.
3. Wait a few seconds. The app reads the cover and shows you its best guess.
4. If the guess is right, confirm it. If not, type the correct artist and title.

Discogs CSV import

Already keep a collection on Discogs? Export it (Discogs → Collection → Export, or Wantlist → Export, they email you the CSV). Drop the file at /settings/import. We auto-detect whether it's a collection or wantlist export and run a preview first, nothing writes until you confirm. Re-imports are safe; duplicates are caught by the Discogs release ID. See Discogs sync for the full flow.

The verdict

The record files instantly, and that part is mechanical and free, it never spends an ask. The stamp comes separately: Strong match, Maybe, or Probably skip, with a one-line why grounded in your shelf. Members get it fetched automatically while the draft sits there. On the free plan a Would I like this? Ask the oracle button spends one of your free asks, your call whether the record is worth it (see Membership).

Starter packs (for an empty shelf)

Brand new and staring at nothing? The home page (and the welcome walkthrough) offers starter packs, up to twenty records to your want list in one tap. Five curated packs (The Canon, Jazz Essentials, Hip-Hop Foundations, Alternative & Post-Punk, and Grails, the twenty records collectors whisper about). A sixth, Most Collected on Runout, appears once enough collectors are on the platform; it is built live from what everyone here actually shelves. Re-adding a pack never duplicates records you already have; prune the ones that aren’t you afterwards.

In Settings, under Your shelf, hit Bring your collection in. It auto-detects whether you dropped a collection or wantlist CSV. Same page also has export buttons.

Import

Two-step flow:

• Upload, drop the .csv (up to 2MB; a 5,000-row Discogs export is well under that).
• Preview, we show you exactly what will happen per row: new album + pressing, + pressing on existing album, duplicate, skipping, new wishlist album, or already in library, skipping. Counts at the top: X rows → Y new albums, Z new pressings, W skipped. Confirm to commit, cancel to start over.

Re-imports are safe. Each pressing carries the Discogs release ID; a row whose release ID is already on file gets skipped automatically. So you can run the same export again next month and only the new records land.

Wantlist behavior: wantlist rows only become new wishlist albums if the album doesn't already exist in your library at any status. Already-owned or passed records stay put, no downgrades.

Export

Same page has two download buttons:

• Collection CSV, one row per pressing for every owned album, in the same column layout as Discogs's own exports.
• Wantlist CSV, one row per wishlist album.

Note: Discogs doesn't offer a CSV import, so these files can't be loaded back into a Discogs account. Treat them as your portable backup, spreadsheets and other collection apps read them cleanly.

Pressing types map back to Discogs format codes (Reissue → RE, Remastered → RE, RM, Audiophile → 180g, Colored → color name, etc.), so the files read like a Discogs export anywhere you take them.

Tap any cover and you land on the album page, the workshop for that one record. Big cover on the left, all the editorial copy and your controls on the right.

Status, priority, lanes

Your call sets Want / Have / Pass. Priority sets the tier (1 must → 5 deeper). Lanes are clickable filter chips; hit ✎ edit lanes at the end of the row to add or remove them. See Lanes for the genre/custom system.

Editorial copy

Below the title you'll see Why you'll like it, the album snapshot, why-it's-shelf-worthy, edition notes, findability, and a record-store tip. These are oracle-written but only when you ask for them, hit Rewrite with the oracle at the bottom of any block to fill or refresh.

From the archives

Liner notes come free with every record, no oracle required. Just above the tracklist: a short who-is-this-band intro, then The record · from the archives, a facts row (year, genre, mood, label, a community score) plus the album’s opening paragraph from the encyclopedia. Tap From Wikipedia under either block for the full article. If a record is too obscure for the archives, the blocks simply don’t appear.

Fix the name or title

Spotify sometimes hands over “(Remaster)” or “Deluxe Edition” names that don't match the pressing on your shelf. Under the artist and title, hit ✎ Edit name / title (always visible on a phone, appears on hover on a computer). Fix either field and save, the cover, Spotify link, and everything else stays put; only the displayed name changes.

Present (cast it to a TV)

Top right of every album page, next to Back to shelf: ⛶ Present. It opens a fullscreen 16:9 “now playing” slide, big cover, the why-you'll-like-it in the album's own color, the record snapshot and shelf-worthy case, no scrolling. Built for AirPlay or casting to a TV or projector while the record spins. Press ESC (or the ✕) to exit.

Album notes

Your notes is a freeform text box you own. The search bar searches it. Friends who recommended a record, the mood you put it on, the bar where you heard it, drop it here and it'll come back when you need it.

Cover

Click the cover any time to see it full screen. Press ESC or click anywhere outside the photo to close it. Everything else lives under one Edit cover ▾ menu (it reads Fetch cover ▾ when the sleeve is still blank): Re-fetch Spotify info grabs a fresh cover, Pick from Spotify manually opens a list of close matches when the auto-pick was wrong, Fetch album info from Discogs pulls tracks, label, and art in one pass (the move when Spotify is being difficult), and Upload a photo uses your own shot of the album as the cover, useful for variants the catalogs don't have.

Painting the page

The record-glyph button next to Listen repaints just this album's page: pick from the sleeve's own palette, type any hex, or leave it on auto and the page pulls the strongest color from the cover on its own. Everything else in the app stays your accent (see the accent color).

Removing a record

Remove from collection at the bottom of the album page, tap twice, the first tap arms it, the second one means it. For a batch, the library's Select mode grows Pass · N and Remove · N buttons with the same tap-again-to-confirm.

Listen / Tracks

The Listen button opens the album on Spotify or Tidal, whichever you picked in Settings under Listening. Tracks opens the tracklist (loaded from Discogs by side, A1 / A2 / B1 etc.). If a tracklist hasn't been fetched yet, the button offers to fetch it. If the tracklist looks wrong (wrong edition, missing songs), scroll to the bottom of it and tap Refetch from Discogs.

Similar picks

At the bottom: two companion records the oracle suggests, specific to this album. Add them to your wantlist or skip. Each click generates two fresh ones, old companions get cleared so the list never piles up stale.

Chat with the Oracle

Pinned to the bottom of every album page is a conversational oracle chat scoped to that record. Ask it anything: “is this a good entry point to their catalog?”, “what should I play next if I love this?”, “is the original press worth chasing?” The Oracle reads your taste, your library, and the album's notes when answering. Voice changes via personas.

One album, multiple physical copies. The pressings section on each album page is where you log them, original press, reissue, audiophile half-speed, picture disc, whatever you've got.

Adding a pressing

Hit + Add pressing. Pick a type (Original, Reissue, Remastered, Collector's, Audiophile, Colored, Limited, Bootleg, Unknown). Optional fields: year, label, catalog number, country, color, purchase date, price, store, photo, notes. Everything except type is optional, log as much as you care to.

Photos

Each pressing can have its own photo. Useful for variants, the colored vinyl pulled from the sleeve, the matrix runout etched in the dead wax, the OBI strip on a Japanese press. Photos shrink before upload (1920px max on the long edge, re-encoded until the file is comfortably under a megabyte) so a phone shot doesn't take forever on record-store wifi. The hard ceiling is 5MB; JPEG, PNG, WebP, and GIF are welcome. Custom covers and profile photos get the same treatment.

Pressing notes

Same as album notes but per-pressing. The library search reads these too. So “Pallas pressing” or “the one from the bin sale” will find the right copy when you search.

Click My Shelf → in the nav. Owned records only. This is the “showroom”, bigger covers, more breathing room, written-up like a gallery rather than a spreadsheet. On a wide monitor the grid spreads out to use the whole screen.

Four view modes

Top-right of the shelf, four icon buttons toggle the layout (your pick is remembered for next time):

• ▦ Big, full-detail tiles with synopsis, album notes, and a per-pressing strip (photos + types + pressing notes). Tiles stay big on any screen.
• ▩ Medium, the Big tile scaled down. Same full info, tighter grid, at least three across on a big monitor.
• ≡ Compact, more records per screen. Small thumbnail on the left, artist and title big, a short synopsis alongside.
• ☰ Table, dense catalog. Cover thumb, artist, title, lanes, year (earliest pressing), pressings summary, and a notes column that pulls album notes first and pressing notes second. The whole row is clickable. Scrolls sideways on phones, feels like a real spreadsheet.

Sort: Alpha · Date added · Random

Three buttons on the left of the view toggle. Pick stays put across visits.

• Alpha, by artist, ignoring leading articles (“The Beatles” sorts under B).
• Date added, newest record at the top.
• Random ↻, every visit to the shelf gives you a fresh shuffle, so you stop seeing the same first three records. Click it again while it's already active to reshuffle in place.

Search the shelf

Once your shelf has more than 20 records, a small search bar appears above the view toggle. Search artist / title / lane / notes, same matching rules as the main library search. A lanes dropdown lives next to it for filtering by genre/scene.

Click any photo to see it big

Click the album cover, on the album page or in the shelf's Big view, and it opens full screen. Pressing photos work the same way. Press ESC or click anywhere outside the photo to close it. Useful for showing off the colored vinyl, the OBI strip, the matrix runout, etc.

Shelf synopsis (museum cards)

Each owned record can have a 2–3 sentence oracle-written “museum card”, neutral curator voice, third person, surfaces specific details (original pressings, rare reissues, your album notes, your pressing memories). Hit the Write the missing… button in the shelf header’s stack of oracle actions. It writes up to 25 at a time; when more are waiting, it becomes Write the next 25 (so a giant shelf doesn't kick off a runaway oracle loop). ↻ Rewrite card on any tile rewrites just that one. Written once and saved on the record, so it's a one-time cost per record.

Ask your shelf

In the shelf header’s stack of oracle actions: ✦ Ask your shelf, a running conversation with your collection as a whole. “What are my three favorite genres?” “How many classic rock records do I have?” “Am I more into prog or space rock?” Counting questions are answered from exact database numbers, never guessed; taste questions get argued from the records you actually own. The conversation sticks around between visits, and Clear × starts it fresh. Each question is one oracle call, and the chat itself is a member thing; on the free plan it sits out.

What should I play?

Button in the shelf header’s stack. It opens in its own window over the page. Type a mood (or hit a preset like “rainy Sunday morning” or “dinner party”) and the Oracle picks 1–3 records from your shelf with one-line reasons. Pure utility, no persona, just “here's what to put on right now.”

Share shelf

Top right of /shelf. Copies your public-profile URL to the clipboard if you've turned the public profile on (see Public profile); otherwise it points you at Settings to flip the toggle.

Lanes are how you slice your collection. Two kinds: standard genres (Rock, Hip Hop, Jazz, R&B / Soul, etc.) for the obvious stuff, and custom for the personal stuff (NorCal/Sacramento, Cooking, Late Night, Sunday Morning, whatever you want).

Manage lanes (settings)

Settings → Manage lanes shows your full vocabulary. Genres on top with usage counts, customs below. You can rename any lane (the new name shows up on every album that uses it), delete a lane (strips the tag from albums; the records themselves stay), toggle between genre and custom, and add new lanes from a small form.

Auto-cleanup

Top of the Manage Lanes page is a Run auto-cleanup button. It splits compound lanes (“Jazz / Cooking” becomes Jazz + Cooking), maps synonyms (Hip-Hop → Hip Hop, Rap → Hip Hop, Soul → R&B / Soul), and adds canonical genre tags from keywords (a “Classic Rock” lane keeps its name AND tags Rock alongside it). Run once. You can keep tweaking by hand afterwards.

Adding a lane to one specific album

On the album page, hit ✎ edit lanes at the end of the chip row. Each chip grows a × to remove it, and a search panel opens below. Type to filter your catalog or type a brand-new name and hit + Create “your name” at the top, that creates a new custom lane and tags this album in one tap.

Optional but worth it. In Settings, under Listening, find Spotify account and hit Connect Spotify →. You'll be bounced to Spotify, you click Authorize, you come back. The connection unlocks:

• Your top tracks (last ~6 months) and recent listens get quietly fed into Oracle prompts so recs land closer to what you've actually been playing.
• The Make a list feature can pull tracks from any of your albums to build a copy-pasteable tracklist (see Make a list).
• Listen buttons open the album directly on Spotify for every record that has a match.

Pick where you listen

Settings → Where you listen → Spotify or Tidal. This drives every Listen link in the app, album pages, shared lists, your runout page. Tidal needs no account connection (links open a Tidal search for the record). The Spotify extras above, listening signals and the playlist builder, stay Spotify-only because they need Spotify's account API.

Re-fetching covers

On any album page, Re-fetch Spotify info under the Edit cover ▾ menu grabs a fresh cover and metadata. Works without you connecting your personal Spotify, Spotify’s public API handles album lookups via app-level credentials.

If something gets weird

Spotify caches authorizations on their end. If the linked scope ever needs an upgrade and a normal reconnect doesn't seem to take, the fix is:

• Go to spotify.com/account/apps and click Remove Access on Runout.
• Come back here, hit Connect Spotify again.

That clears Spotify's cached approval and gets you a fresh grant.

For before you leave the house. Open Store trip, optionally tell it a budget (“$80 · three records max”), a mood or focus (“deepen the jazz shelf”), and how many records you're hunting. One oracle call turns your want list into a prioritized hunt list, each record with a short pitch, a practical HUNT tip (what pressing to look for, what it should cost), and up to two backups, “if the bins say no” alternates so a miss doesn’t end the hunt.

Tick records off as you find them in the bins. The plan lives on your phone (not the server) and sticks around until you build a new one.

The whole reason this app exists. Phone-first, fast, doesn't stutter. Pull it up while flipping through bins:

• Tap the Want pill, you narrow to what you're hunting for, not your full catalog.
• Search the artist if you find something interesting and want to know if you already have it. The search reads notes too, “already pressed” or “Virgil rec” turns up.
• Tap a record for the full editorial, the tier (must vs. deeper), the gateway pick badge if it's an entry point to that artist, the original-vs-reissue note, the record-store tip the oracle wrote.
• Snap anything you're not sure about, photo mode on Add reads the cover and gives you the verdict on the spot.
• Plan the trip first, the trip planner turns your wants into a prioritized hunt list before you leave home.
• Surprise button if you can't decide.
• + Add with the photo input if you find something brand new, snap, accept the Spotify match, and it's tracked.

The Oracle reads your taste profile, your library notes, your lanes, your Spotify listens (if you connect Spotify), and the running notes it keeps about you. It speaks in whichever voice you pick.

Personas (seven voices)

Settings → Pick a voice. Same brain, different personality:

• The Clerk (default), record-store clerk who knows you by name. Direct, conversational.
• The Snob, matrix runouts, original pressings, mild condescension about reissues.
• The Old Head, saw them live in '74. The show was better than the record.
• The Gatekeeper, High Fidelity, but it's Tuesday and they're tired.
• The Hype Man, everything goes hard, you HAVE to hear this.
• The Burnout, cosmic vibes, the bassline opens portals.
• The Detective, your collection is a case, the suspect is your taste.

The voice runs through everything conversational: Ask the Oracle recommendations, the album chat, Ask your shelf, the blind-spots report, the store trip plan, the monthly recap blurb, the public profile synopsis, the “Why it's on repeat” blurbs, even the spoken Siri answers. Behind-the-scenes stuff (similar picks, editorial fill, reprioritize) stays neutral so catalog copy reads consistently.

Ask the Oracle

Top nav → Ask the oracle →. Optional mood prompt (“something for cooking”, “hip-hop I'm probably missing”), or grab one of the preset chips (↻ re-roll deals a new hand), then hit Ask the oracle. It decides how many picks come back, one when there's an obvious answer, up to three when the field is open. Check New to me only if you want the Oracle to skip anything already on your shelf or want list. Each rec has artist + title + why-this-fits-you. Hit + Add to Want to save it, Skip to dismiss it, or the listen link to hear it. If a rec is already in your library, an Open → button takes you straight to that record.

Album chat

Bottom of every album page. Type a question, get an answer grounded in your taste and your shelf. If you don't know what to ask, tap one of the suggested questions. Tap ↻ re-roll to get new suggestions.

The oracle's taste notes

Settings → The oracle's notes. Your hand-written taste profile is sacred, the Oracle doesn't touch it. But it keeps its own running notes about what it's noticing: patterns across your owned records, what you've passed on, the moods your album notes reveal. Hit Generate the first time, Refresh later when you want it to catch up. Clear wipes the notes; the next refresh re-reads from scratch.

Reprioritize the wantlist

Settings → Re-rank the Wants. The Oracle reads your full wantlist and re-tiers each record (1 must → 5 deeper) based on how close it sits to your taste, what you've passed on, and your lane preferences. Useful when the wantlist starts feeling random.

The taste interview

Where the taste profile comes from in the first place: twelve questions, two sides, almost all taps, right here in the app. Your answers get pressed into a written profile the oracle reads before every verdict and rec, and you can edit the words before you keep them. Settings → Take the taste interview re-cuts it any time your taste shifts; nothing gets erased until you press the new cut. Prefer talking it out long-form with your own chatbot? A footnote on the interview page still hands you the prompt.

An editorial audit of what your collection is missing. The Oracle reads your whole library, lanes, eras, what you've passed on, and writes a critical report: thin lanes, skipped scenes, adjacent territory you'd probably love. With it come five fix-it records, which ride the same Add / Skip flow as recommendations.

Reports are saved, revisiting the page is free. Re-run it after your shelf has changed enough to deserve a fresh opinion. It needs at least ten records on file to have one worth writing; under that it'll send you off to add more shelf first. Every report also gets a ↑ Share card, same phone-sized treatment as the recap’s.

Your month in vinyl, wrapped like a spread. The masthead stamps the damage (money spent that month, cents and all) up in the corner, and tapping it drops you into the receipts, a per-pressing price table with the total at the bottom. Below it, three tiles: records added, what landed on the shelf, pressings bought. Each carries a little six-month trend line and a vs-last-month delta, so you can see whether the month was a binge or a breather. Then which lanes got deeper, and what you actually played (when Spotify is connected). The haul lists the month's records with an All / Have / Want flip. Stats are computed straight from your library and always free.

The read is the short write-up the Oracle adds on top. A member thing, one tight paragraph, not a thesis. While the month is still open, ↻ Rewrite with the month so far re-reads the shelf and writes it fresh (each pass is a normal oracle call); the moment the month closes, the last write is carved in and stays. ↑ Share card downloads a phone-sized story card built for the group chat, and Copy text grabs the plain version. Flip back through past months with the arrows.

Surprise

Top nav → ✦ Surprise. Picks a random owned album and opens its page. Useful when you've got 200 records on the shelf and can't decide. Also lives at the top of /shelf.

What should I play?

On /shelf, hit the button in the header’s stack. The picker opens in its own window. Type a mood (“rainy Sunday,” “dinner with friends,” “getting hyped,” or hit one of the presets). The Oracle picks 1–3 records FROM YOUR SHELF with a one-line reason each. Click an album to open its page; click Listen to hear it.

♫ Make a list builds a playlist from records you pick. It lives in select mode on the home page: click Select / Share (on a phone, the Select button in the tools row), tap the covers you want (Select all and Select all in lane grab a whole filtered set in one tap), then hit ♫ Make a list · N in the toolbar.

How it works

Pick your records (filter first if it helps: Want + a Lane chip, then Select all, gets “all my wishlist Hip Hop” in two taps). Then pick a strategy:

• ↦ First, first N tracks of each album in track order. Side A start.
• ↻ Shuffle, random N tracks per album. Re-roll changes the mix.
• ★ Top, top N tracks by Spotify popularity per album.

Slide for tracks-per-album (1–5). Hit Generate. You get two text boxes: Artist, Title lines (paste into Soundiiz, TuneMyMusic, Apple Music importers) and bare Spotify URLs (paste straight into a Spotify playlist on desktop and they all add at once). Each has a Copy button.

Platform-wide leaderboards, Discogs-style: Most Collected (on the most shelves right now) and Most Wanted (top of the most want lists). Each person counts once per record, and only the aggregate is public, nobody can see your shelf through the charts.

With a young platform the counts start small. That's honest. Watch them grow.

Two ways to share what's on your shelf or list:

Public profile

Long-lived URL at /u/yourslug. Updates live as you add records. Friends bookmark it; you don't have to re-share when things change. See Public profile.

Shared lists (snapshots)

From the home page, click Select / Share, check the records you want to share, hit Share link →. You get an unlisted web link like /list/abc123…. Anyone with the link can view it, no account needed, and it’s a frozen snapshot. Useful for “here's my hunt list for Saturday,” or “these are the records I'm thinking about, opinions?” The list shows your name and photo at the top, so your friend knows who it's from. If your runout page is public, it links there too.

Every shared list also has a ↓ Save a share card button, a ready-made image (covers, stamps, your name) sized for posting to a group chat or a forum without screenshotting around browser chrome.

Off by default. When you turn it on, you get a public URL like yourdomain.com/u/yourslug, anyone with the link can see your display name, stats, owned shelf, wantlist, optional photo, optional oracle synopsis, and your three On Repeat picks. No email, no private notes, no taste profile leaks. Visitors don't need to sign in.

Setting it up

In Settings, scroll to Your runout page:

• Profile photo, drop a picture (your shelf, your wall, your face, whatever). Landscape photos go full width above the bio; portrait photos float left of the bio with text wrapping. Click it on the public page to see it full screen.
• Display name, how the page introduces you.
• URL slug, 3–30 lowercase letters/digits/hyphens. Has to be unique. Examples: brian, mr-hooper, norcal-vinyl.
• Public profile is ON, the master toggle. Turn it off and the page shows nothing.
• Show the oracle's synopsis, separate toggle so you can have a generated synopsis but not display it. Off by default.

The synopsis

Below the toggles, hit Generate (or ↻ Rewrite) to have the Oracle write a third-person introduction in your selected persona's voice. The prompt always includes a “if you wanted to buy them a record, here's the move” beat, a concrete gift suggestion grounded in your wantlist or shelf. Saved; it only changes when you ask for a rewrite.

On Repeat

In Settings, under Your shelf, find Up to three on repeat. Pick up to three records from your shelf to feature with optional one-line blurbs. Surfaces above the shelf grid on your public page, and in your own library the matching cards wear a ♫ On repeat badge. The oracle can write the blurb for you if you click + write with the oracle next to the text box.

Search on a busy profile

When your public shelf + wantlist top 20 records, a quiet search bar appears at the top of your visitor's view (artist / title / lane). Stays out of the way for small collections but makes a 600-record library actually navigable for someone you sent the link to.

Your collection can answer the phone. A connect token (Settings → Connections) is a key that lets the outside world talk to your shelf: a Siri Shortcut in the record store, Claude on your desk, an Alexa skill in the kitchen. Mint one, wire it up once, and “do I have this?” works from anywhere. Each token is shown exactly once at mint time; revoking it in Settings kills it instantly.

“Hey Siri, check my runout”

One four-action Shortcut, built once (the same steps live in the settings panel next to your token):

• Shortcuts app → new shortcut, name it Check my runout (the name is the Siri phrase).
• Add Dictate Text.
• Add Get Contents of URL: the URL is myrunout.com/api/connect/ask, method POST, a header Authorization = Bearer rnt_… (your token), and a JSON body field q set to the Dictated Text variable.
• Add Get Dictionary Value for key answer, then Speak Text.

What you can say

• “Do I have Pinkerton by Weezer?” If it's in your library, the answer is instant, and the oracle speaks it in your chosen persona. Own it already? It points you at something adjacent you don't have, so the trip isn't wasted.
• “Do I have Led Zeppelin 2?” Typos, missing artist names, and spoken numerals all land (“2” finds “II”).
• “Do I have Songs of a Lost World by The Cure?” Not in the collection? You get a grab-it-or-skip-it verdict against your taste, with one thing to check before buying, grounded in the record's actual release date so brand-new albums aren't judged on invented memories.
• “Add Violator by Depeche Mode to my wishlist.” Instant and duplicate-safe: already wanted says so, already owned says “it's on your shelf,” brand new lands with cover art pulled in. Works without “by” too, “add Depeche Mode Violator” resolves against Spotify's catalog.
• “Add Abbey Road to my shelf.” Files it as owned instead of wanted.

Questions draw one oracle call from your daily allowance; adds and library checks are free and answer in under a second. Mumble something it can't parse and it asks you to run it again, without burning a call.

Claude (MCP)

Runout speaks MCP, the plug standard assistants like Claude use for tools, at myrunout.com/api/connect/mcp. In Claude Code it's one line: claude mcp add --transport http runout https://myrunout.com/api/connect/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer rnt_…". A copy-paste JSON config for other MCP clients lives in the settings panel. Once wired, Claude can check your shelf, search it, read your want list by priority, pull collection stats, add records, and ask the oracle for taste verdicts. Things worth asking:

• “What should I hunt for this weekend, under $100 total?”
• “Which of my lanes is thinnest, and what three records would fix it?”
• “Here are five records in front of me, which ones do I not already have?”
• “Add everything on this list to my wishlist.” Claude runs the duplicate-safe add for each one and reports what was already there.

Alexa, Google Home, everything else

The ask endpoint is plain HTTPS: POST /api/connect/ask with {"q": "…"} and the token header, and back comes one sentence written to be spoken aloud. Any Alexa custom skill, Google Home webhook, or Raspberry Pi in the listening room can be its mouthpiece, no extra server required.

Settings is one long page in eight sections, with a row of jump buttons at the top. Here's what lives where:

01 · Look & feel

• Pick your color, the single accent color used everywhere. Defaults to the radioactive orange. Nine presets, plus a custom hex picker.
• Reading mode, the accessibility toggle. Bumps every text size across the app, raises the smallest labels to 12px+, and brightens muted text to pass contrast.

02 · Listening

• Where you listen, Spotify or Tidal. Sets the service every Listen link opens (playlist builder and On Repeat signals stay Spotify-only).
• Spotify account, connect / disconnect + granted-scope readout.

03 · The oracle

• Take the taste interview, the twelve-question sit-down that writes your taste profile for you. Take it (or re-take it) any time. Covered in The oracle.
• Taste profile + lane sliders, your hand-written taste profile plus one slider per lane (1–5, neutral 3). Edit the prose; the sliders nudge the Oracle toward or away from a lane.
• Pick a voice, Oracle persona picker (seven voices).
• The oracle's notes, generate / refresh / clear the oracle's running notes about your taste.
• Re-rank the Wants, Oracle re-tiers your wantlist.

04 · Your shelf

• Up to three on repeat, three slot editors for current rotation, with optional oracle-written blurbs.
• Manage lanes, auto-cleanup + rename / merge / delete / add lanes.
• Bring your collection in, opens the Discogs importer/exporter.

05 · Your runout page

• Profile photo, the picture on your public page.
• Page + synopsis, slug, display name, public toggle, synopsis toggle, generate / rewrite synopsis.

06 · Connections

• Connect tokens, keys that let the outside world read your collection: wire Runout into Claude (or any MCP client), or build a Siri Shortcut so “Hey Siri, check my runout” answers “do I have this?” out loud and takes “add it to my wishlist” commands in the aisle. Each token shows once at mint time and revokes with one tap; step-by-step Shortcut and Claude setup instructions live right in the panel. Full walkthrough in Connections.
• Device idle animation, for a hardware shelf display wired up through a connect token: what it draws between records: spectrum, VU meter, scope, tunnel, or nothing at all.

07 · Talk back

• The suggestion box, a plain text box for feature ideas or bug reports. It goes straight to the person who builds Runout, with your email attached so you get a reply.

08 · Membership

• Your membership, all in one place: your plan status, a “Manage billing” button that opens a secure Stripe page where you can cancel anytime or update your card, CSV downloads of your collection and want list, and account deletion. Deleting cancels billing and erases everything; it cannot be undone.

Runout has two tiers. The catalog is free: your library, imports and exports, pressings, photos, the shelf, shared lists, your runout page, the charts, and your recap stats, no charge, no ads. The oracle is $24 a year, flat, billed by card through Stripe: every oracle feature in this manual, verdicts, recommendations, blind spots, chats, the lot. New accounts get ten free oracle calls to try verdicts and recommendations before deciding. Cancel anytime from Settings, under Membership; you keep oracle access to the end of the year you paid for, and your records stay yours either way. Within the first 30 days, a full refund is one email away (hello@myrunout.com).

The oracle budget

Every member gets a generous daily allowance of Oracle calls. It covers a long store session plus recs and chats. Heavier work (verdicts, recommendations, essays) draws more of it than quick mechanical jobs. The allowance resets at midnight UTC. Free accounts have the small lifetime taste instead.

If you somehow hit it, you'll see a “daily oracle budget” message, nothing is lost, everything else keeps working, and the meter resets overnight. Library lookups, search, the shelf, stats, and the charts never touch the budget, only the Oracle does.

The accent color

One color across the whole app, selections, links, CTAs, focus rings. Default radioactive orange (#FF4D00) because it's the only color anyway. Settings → Pick your color for nine presets including bone, sage, sand, rust if you want quieter, or hot pink / acid green if you want louder. Custom hex picker too. One exception on purpose: any single album page can paint itself from its own sleeve (see the album page), your color everywhere else stays put.

Reading mode

Settings → Reading mode, the accessibility toggle. Scales every text size up, raises the tiny mono labels to at least 12px, and brightens muted text for contrast on the dark ground. Built for arm's length and older eyes. This is your setting alone, not visible to anyone else.

Quiet mode (free plan)

On the free plan, album pages show unlock cards where the oracle features live. If you'd rather have a clean page, Settings → Hide the unlock cards turns them all off. The oracle stays one click away in Settings whenever you change your mind.

Ways to sign in

Google, email and password, or a one-time emailed link, whichever you prefer (step-by-step in the quick tour). They all open the same account as long as the email matches. Sessions persist on the same browser for a long time so you don't have to do this often.

The oracle says weird stuff about my taste

Settings → The oracle's notes → Clear → Refresh. That re-reads your library from scratch. If the synopsis on your public profile is off, Settings → Your runout page → ↻ Rewrite.

It says I'm out of oracle budget

Members have a generous daily allowance (see Membership) that resets at midnight UTC. On the free plan the allowance is a small lifetime taste instead; when it's spent, the oracle waits behind the $24/yr unlock. Everything that doesn't call the Oracle, search, shelf, library checks, charts, stats, keeps working either way.

A pressing's photo isn't loading

Re-upload it. Photos live in the same Storage bucket as cover uploads; a stale URL would point at a missing object. The replace button on the pressing form swaps it cleanly.

An album has the wrong cover

On the album page: Pick manually (cycles through close Spotify matches), or Upload photo (use your own photo of the actual sleeve). Custom uploads override the Spotify cover everywhere.

The tracklist looks wrong

Wrong edition, missing songs, bonus tracks that shouldn't be there. Open Tracks on the album page, scroll to the bottom of the list, and tap Refetch from Discogs to pull it again.

I imported a Discogs CSV but covers are blank

Right after the import lands, hit Fetch cover art for the imports → on the same page. It works through the batch politely: Spotify first (which also brings the Listen link), and when Spotify comes up empty or starts rate-limiting, the Cover Art Archive picks up the stragglers so your shelf still fills in today. Anything neither source has can take a photo or a Discogs cover from its album page’s Fetch cover ▾ menu.