The Usher
Your AI movie expert — find what to watch and where, without all the clutter.
Timeline
2-3 weeks
The Problem
On movie night, the streaming app sometimes doesn't show the Rotten Tomatoes score, so my husband asks me to look it up. Google and IMDb show everything about a movie, and the score is often a couple of clicks away. Other times, we think of a movie but don't know where to stream it.
The Solution
The Usher shows what I want fast: the RT score and where to stream. For anything else, a movie-expert chat answers my questions.
How AI Is Used
"Ask the Usher" uses Claude as a movie expert limited to the movie page you're on. A second chat on the home screen makes recommendations.
Tech Stack
A mobile stack connected to movie databases and Claude for conversational recommendations.
What I Learned
It's a simple app that does 3 things. A key decision was limiting the AI to its training data, which sharpens its answers. The tradeoff: it won't search the web, so it doesn't know new movies. I'm not promoting the app and rarely watch brand-new movies at home, so I can live with that.
*I'm a die-hard fan of em dashes — both visually, and as a form of written communication. All em dash placements are my own.