We were inspired by a very real and personal problem: we don’t watch TV series in one continuous binge. We take breaks between episodes and seasons, often for weeks or months. When we finally come back, we realize we’ve forgotten who certain characters are, what their relationships were, or why a specific conflict even matters.
The usual workaround is pausing the episode and searching online- which almost always breaks immersion and risks spoilers. We felt there should be an easier, safer way. Something that feels like having a friend next to you who remembers everything and can quickly remind you, without ruining the story.
That’s where the idea for Maddie was born.
What it does
** Maddie** is an AI-powered movie buddy that watches shows together with you.
While you’re watching a series, you can ask Maddie questions like:
- “Who is that character?”
- “Why does she hate him?”
- “What happened between them earlier?”
Madi briefly pauses playback, understands the current context of the episode, and gives a short, clear, spoiler-free answer based only on what you’ve already watched. Then you can immediately jump back into the story without losing the flow.
The goal is simple: no googling, no spoilers, no broken immersion.
How we built it
We built Maddie as a Proof of Concept Chrome extension that works on Netflix.
Under the hood, Maddie:
- uses subtitles and timestamps to understand what’s happening in the current scene,
- keeps track of previously watched episodes and events,
- builds contextual knowledge about characters, relationships, and storylines,
- uses an AI model to generate natural, conversational answers.
Because of DRM limitations, we intentionally avoided using video frames or screenshots. The entire system is designed around text-based context and careful control of what information Madi is allowed to access at any given moment.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge was spoiler control.
Getting access to specific Netflix hidden features and overcoming it
From a technical standpoint, it’s easy for an AI to know too much. Making sure Maddie doesn’t say too much required strict rules around timestamps, episode boundaries, and fallback behaviors when a question is ambiguous.
Another big problem was to detect what's going on in specific scene, because we don't have access to screens, but we managed to tag subtitles to specific person making this much more accurate.
Another challenge was designing Maddie to feel like a helpful companion, not an intrusive assistant. The interaction had to be fast, optional, and lightweight- something that supports the viewing experience instead of interrupting it.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Building a working PoC that can answer contextual questions during playback
- Ensuring answers are limited to the viewer’s progress in the story
- Creating a natural, friendly interaction instead of a generic chatbot
- Solving a real problem we personally experience while watching series
Most importantly, we proved that the movie buddy concept actually makes sense in practice.
What we learned
We learned that spoilers are not just a content issue- they’re a trust issue. If the user can’t trust the system, the product fails.
We also learned that contextual AI becomes much more useful when it understands where the user is in time, not just what the content is about. Constraints turned out to be a feature, not a limitation.
What's next for Madi
Next, we want to:
- test Maddie with real users and gather qualitative feedback,
- improve character disambiguation and follow-up questions,
- explore support for more platforms and shows,
- refine Madi’s personality to feel even more like a true viewing companion.
This hackathon project is just the beginning. Our goal is to explore whether an AI buddy can genuinely make watching stories (and not only) more enjoyable- especially when life gets in the way and you forget a few details along the road.
Built With
- chromeextensions
- docker
- dockercompose
- elevenlabs
- fastapi
- gemini
- gluestack
- jwt
- omdb
- opensubtitles
- postgresql
- react
- stripe
- supabase
- tailwindcss
- typescript
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