The BookMatcher Journey

BookMatcher started as a weekend project and grew into a full platform. Here's the story of how it came together.

The Problem

I read a lot, but finding my next book was always a chore. Goodreads recommendations felt stale. Amazon's suggestions were too commercial. I wanted something that understood *why* I liked certain books, not just *what* I read.

Initial Prototype (Week 1-2)

The first version was embarrassingly simple:

A Next.js app with a single text input

Users describe what they want to read

OpenAI's API suggests books based on the description

Surprisingly, this worked well enough to validate the concept. User feedback was enthusiastic.

Building the Real Thing (Week 3-12)

Tech Stack Decisions

**Next.js** - Already familiar, great for SEO (book pages should be indexable)

**Supabase** - PostgreSQL with auth, real-time, and edge functions built-in

**OpenAI API** - For the recommendation engine

**Tailwind CSS** - Fast iteration on UI

The Recommendation Engine

The interesting part. Rather than just prompting GPT with "recommend books like X", I built a more sophisticated system:

**Preference extraction**: When users rate books, we extract *why* they liked/disliked them

**Taste profile**: These preferences build up a "reading personality"

**Contextual matching**: Recommendations consider mood, time available, recent reads

This approach produces much better results than simple collaborative filtering.

Pivots Along the Way

**Dropped social features** - Users wanted recommendations, not another social network

**Added "reading moods"** - Quick filters like "something light" or "make me think"

**Simplified onboarding** - Original was too long; now it's 3 books rated and you're in

Launch and Beyond

Launched on Product Hunt, reached #4 for the day. Current users: ~2,000 monthly actives.

The biggest lesson: ship early, iterate based on real usage. My "perfect" v1 plans would have taken 6 months and missed what users actually wanted.

From Idea to App Store: The BookMatcher Journey