How it works

Four ways in, one film out

Different evenings call for different questions. Pick whichever matches the state you are in.

The four ways

1

The Vibe

Say how you feel in plain words, or tap a mood. You get picks with a line explaining why each one fits.

2

Describe

You remember a scene but not the name. Describe whatever you have and we work out the title.

3

Roll the Dice

Swipe right to save, left to skip. For when you want to be surprised rather than to choose.

4

Browse

Trending now, genres, and curated collections, if you already know roughly what you are after.

What happens when you describe a mood

It looks like magic and it is deliberately not. Here is the actual sequence:

1. We read your intent, not your words

A language model turns your sentence into structured filters: genre, era, rough quality floor, tone. Crucially, it is not allowed to name any films at this stage. Its only job is to understand what you meant.

2. The film database does the finding

Those filters go to TMDB, which returns a wide pool of real, existing films that match. Every candidate is a genuine title with real data behind it.

3. The model ranks and explains

The pool comes back to the language model, which now picks the best fits for your specific mood and writes the one-line reason under each poster. It can only choose from films that came back in step two.

Why it is built this way: ask a language model to recommend films directly and it will confidently invent ones that do not exist, or recommend the same handful of famous titles to everyone. Letting the database find and the model interpret means you get real films, chosen for how they feel.

4. We check where you can actually watch it

For every pick we look up current streaming availability in your region, so “Watch now” sends you to the right service rather than a dead end. If a title is only available to rent or buy, we say so instead of pretending otherwise.

What we deliberately do not do

When it gets things wrong

It will, sometimes. A mood can be read too literally, availability data can lag behind reality, and an occasional pick will simply be a bad call. When that happens the useful thing is to tell us exactly what you typed and what came back, which is the fastest route to a fix.

Report a bad result or a bug.


More on the thinking behind it: About DecideMyMovie.