Why I Made Bingecat

Like many of you I love Stremio.. The thing is, despite using several plugins to manage my catalogs and search, I was still missing Netflix' recommendations that often let me to find new content to watch. My girlfriend and I spent numerous times looking for a show to watch. And unfortunately... the default Stremio search isn't that helpful in that regard.

The Stremio AI Search by Itcon really improved things. However, it seemed a bit slow, returns a limited amount of results and Gemini tends to give obvious and sometimes not-so-related titles unless specifically prompted. Also, it sometimes didn't work at all in my case.

Having some free time on my hand I wanted to make a version that pre-cached the results before serving them to my home screen. Then.. Things got a little out of hand. Down the way I figured LLM's are not the best way to do this. I ended up with a self-hosted meta content index in Meili + Gemini Embeddings instead of a LLM. After hundreds hours of tweaking, rebuilding, optimizing, adding just ONE missing feature to make it complete and to use it myself to discover some (hidden gem) content I like... It's finally time to share it.

https://www.bingecat.com

Made with the help of AI

Yes, the flair says it's made with AI. Yes, 85% of the code is generated by LLM's. Without it, it would have taken me a year to build in my spare time. But I feel that I want to emphasize this is not a "vibe coded only" slop project by someone who doesn't have a clue what this code/app actually does, about databases, security... While I'm not a professional dev, I have a degree in IT infrastructure and I understand what the code does. I also spent hundreds of hours to optimize, secure and improve the app. Anyone who used LLM's to make apps will know you cannot create a large stable app like this without effort and knowledge. This doesn't mean there will be absolutely no bugs in this first release though ;)

Read more about security & optimalization here; https://bingecat.com/quality

✨ What is Bingecat?

• Feature-rich, fast, AI-assisted movie and series search (~200 results <1sec)
• "Because you watched" / Similar to recommendations, highly optimized
• Public catalog browsing, discovery, recommendations and import
• List creation, management and enhancement (custom sort/shuffle/filter/dedupe)
• Stremio addon management & remove cinemeta (Token login, no password)
• One all-in one place to manage your catalogs & search. No need to combine several addons/accounts/api's to get the best experience.
• Load balancing & caching to keep things fast and stable

Other AI Search Addons

There are already some great AI search addons available for Streamio. Most of these addons use LLM's to directly generate recommendations. There are some upsides to this approach;

• Understanding of the most complex and long queries (give me something to watch tonight.. we are with friends from a football club)
• Creativity, depending on the LLM used

However, there are some downsides aswell;

• Usually slow, especially when asking for >20 Results
• Slow recall is especially bothersome in home-catalogs (increased loading time)
• No/limited knowledge of post- LLM training cutoff titles (~2024 for gemini)
• Reliability might vary depending on the model used
• Limited amount of results which always have to be verified for hallicunations and incorrect imdb/tmdb ID's (causing slowdown)
• Need to setup your own api keys or usually have low daily limits due to LLM Api cost/token usage

Bingecat AI search uses our own database and uses a AI-Assisted (embedding) search for searching within this database. So you'll get 150 results in less then a second, recent title lookup, consistency. And while LLM's might still be the winner in very complex, ambigious and long queries, our search understands context and semantics just as well!

🚀 Key Features

🔎 AI-Assisted Search

Bingecat includes a fast AI-assisted search. Great for exact lookup but it shines in "discovery-like" searches.

• Search by mood, theme, plot, genre mix, time period, or combinations of requirements
• Powerful "like xxx" lookup so search similar mood/vibe or storylines.
• Use advanced options to tune result style and strictness
• Returns a balanced mix of blockbusters and niche items by default
• Exclude watched history in results (Toggle in UI, "unseen" word in Stremio)
• Excelent "find similar to xxx" lookup based on story and vibe semantics!
• 150+ Quality Results in about 1 second (or 100ms when cached)
• No API Keys required, generous free daily limits (~100 searches/day)
• Multilanguage; EN + NL Fully supported | DE, FR, ES & PT 90% supported. Adding more soon!
• Other language fully supported trough LLM Translation (15 per day when using our gemini keys, best-effort fallback after that which still works well)

Example queries:

• Show me the movie with leonardo where he goes crazy on an island
• Good sci fi movies without space (using "good" or "best" will increase upranking of high-rated items)
• Dutch movies made after 2022 about crime
• Hidden gem drama series, but no french series
• Movies like one battle after another released between 2021 and 2024
• High rated comedy movies
• Last aired sci fi series rated 8 or higher
• Movies suitable for children
• Show me movies for thrill seekers
• Show me a series that is about a missing child in new york

Try the web search yourself: [linknaarsearch]

✨ Personalized AI Recommendations

Generate personalized recommendations on titles that you have watched, liked and loved. Our app generates personal recommendation catalogs, using our own powerful AI semantic search as source, supplmented (30%) with TMDB Recommendations

• Include, exclude or uprank genres
• Quick pre-caching and loading in stremio - No slowing down your home screen!
• Fresh recommendations every time. We'll randomly show 50 items on a 200-item prebuilt pool for you.
• A Random public list on your homescreen based on your taste
• Coming soon: Recommendations based on profile (Same stremio/bingecat account, toggle in stremio)

✨ Because You Watched

Bingecat can generate recommendations based on what you watched

• Personalized "Because you watched" catalog based on Stremio/Trakt/Simkl history
• Helps users move from one title to the next without manual filtering
• Works as part of the wider recommendation and list tooling inside the app
• "Search similar to" button in every Stremio item

📚 Public Lists Browse & Search

Bingecat includes a public lists area where you can browse and search community-facing catalogs and then import useful ones into their own setup.

• Browse public lists from our app, TMDB, Trakt, Mdblist
• Over 2000 pre-cached popular & trending lists
• Random recommended list for you on stremio
• Enhance public lists; custom sort, dedupe, shuffle, sort

🛠️ List Create & Import

Bingecat is also a catalog manager. You can create their own lists or import them from external sources.

• Create AI-generated lists from a prompt or other titles
• Create Manual, TMDB Discovery
• Import lists from other stremio addons manifest
• TMDB Discovery, Trakt, MDblist, Manual (bulk) creation
• Build catalogs around a theme, a prompt, or curated picks
• Up to 2000 Items per list, 30 lists per account (more for free on request)

📱 Mobile-Friendly

• Responsive layouts for search, discovery and browsing
• Works well as a companion web UI for Stremio users on phones
• Swipe to browse trough items and lists and add to favorites lists

🚀 Other Features

• Automatic Stremio Addon update
• Manage Addon order
• Hide default Cinemeta catalogs
• Combined, cached metadata from TMDB, IMDB, TVDB
• Multilanguage search & Metadata
• Manual history fill
• Clear/sync Stremio watch history
• RPDB & Top Posters in Stremio
• Some features work a bitter with a connected (token) stremio account, but it's not required
• Coming soon/currently testing: Multiprofile in stremio (with switcher), multi-stremio account management, even better multilang support & search improvements/tweaks

🚀 Getting Started

1. Open bingecat.com
2. Try the public AI-assisted search or create an account
3. Connect Stremio inside Bingecat
4. Create or import lists
5. Install or update the Bingecat addon with 1-click in Stremio

See the screenshots page:

• View screenshots

📝 Notes

• Public search supports English queries only; Signed up supports multilanguage queries
• API Keys for using our search in other addons are available on request (send a message on app)
• This app is a non-commercial project. No subscription costs, no advertisements, no data collection.