Show Notes

A "read-first" podcast player that uses AI to transcribe and summarize episodes, letting you triage your podcast backlog by reading instead of listening.

You subscribe to more podcasts than you can listen to. Traditional apps present an overwhelming feed of audio with no way to quickly assess what's worth your time.

1. Triage — New episodes land in an Inbox. You decide: add to Library or skip.
2. Transcribe & Summarize — Episodes in Library are processed by Whisper (transcription) and Claude (summarization).
3. Read First — Open an episode to see the AI summary with notable quotes. Audio is secondary.
4. Tap to Listen — Tap any quote to jump to that moment in the audio.

• PRD.md — Product requirements, user flows, feature priorities
• TECHNICAL_GAMEPLAN.md — Architecture, data model, implementation phases

Phase 1 Complete — Core MVP functional. 128 passing specs.

# Clone and install dependencies
git clone <repo-url>
cd show-notes
bundle install

# Setup database
rails db:create db:migrate

# Copy environment template and add your API keys
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your actual keys

# Create a test user (temporary until auth is implemented)
rails console
> User.create!(email: "you@example.com")

# Start the server
bin/dev

Visit http://localhost:3000 to use the app.

You'll need accounts and API keys from:

• Podcast Index — Free, for podcast search and feeds
• OpenAI — For Whisper transcription (~$0.006/min)
• Anthropic — For Claude summarization

# .env (local development)
DATABASE_URL=postgres://localhost/show_notes_development
PODCAST_INDEX_API_KEY=your_key
PODCAST_INDEX_API_SECRET=your_secret
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
SECRET_KEY_BASE=generate_with_rails_secret

• Per episode: ~$0.45-0.55 (mostly Whisper transcription)
• Heroku hosting: ~$19/month (web dyno + worker dyno + Postgres)
• 10 episodes/week: ~$39/month total

Private project (for now).