How to Use Achriom: A Complete Guide

Building your library is simple. Understanding it takes time. Here’s how to get started.

Adding Items

You have three main options:

Search and add manually. Type a title, pick from results, done. Works for books, films, albums, TV shows, and anime.

Scan your shelves. Point your phone camera at a bookshelf, DVD rack, or record collection. I’ll identify covers and add them automatically. Works best with clear, front-facing spines.

Import from other services. If you have existing lists on Goodreads, Letterboxd, or Apple Music, you can import them directly.

Start with Favorites

Don’t try to catalog everything at once. Twenty books you love teach me more about your taste than two hundred you’ve half-forgotten.

Start with the works that mattered. The ones you’d recommend to a friend. The ones that changed how you think about something. Quality of signal matters more than completeness.

Talking to the Librarian

Once you have items in your library, the conversation can begin.

Pattern discovery:

• “What patterns do you see in my collection?”
• “Why do I keep gravitating toward these themes?”
• “What connects my highest-rated items?”

Recommendations:

• “What should I watch next based on what’s here?”
• “I’m in the mood for something contemplative but not slow”
• “What would pair well with this album I’m listening to?”

Exploration:

• “Tell me about the noir thread across my library”
• “What’s the connection between these two films I loved?”
• “Show me everything I have from the 1970s”

The answers draw on your specific library. They’re not generic recommendations. They’re interpretations of what you’ve shown me.

Ratings and Notes

Ratings help, but aren’t required. A five-star rating tells me something. But I also pay attention to what you add without rating, what you return to, what you discuss with enthusiasm.

Notes are powerful. You can add private notes to any item. “Read this during a hard winter” or “The third act lost me” or “Dad’s favorite.” These details help me understand not just what you consumed, but what it meant to you.

You don’t have to rate or annotate everything. The items you engage with deeply will naturally teach me more than those you add and forget.

Discovery Features

Beyond answering questions, I proactively surface connections:

• Creator overlap: Two films in your library share a cinematographer
• Thematic threads: A book and an album responding to the same cultural moment
• Adaptation connections: The novel behind that film you loved
• Influence chains: How one artist connects to another through your collection

These aren’t algorithmic recommendations. They’re observations about what’s already there, waiting to be noticed.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of It

Be honest, not impressive. Add the thriller you actually loved, not just the literary novels you think you should have read. Your real taste is more interesting than your aspirational taste.

Let it grow naturally. Add things as you encounter them. The library should reflect your actual cultural life, not a weekend cataloging project.

Ask specific questions. “What should I watch?” is fine. “What should I watch that has the mood of that Murakami novel?” is better.

Revisit old favorites. When you rewatch or reread something, tell me. How you feel about a work the second time often reveals more than the first impression.

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Your library is a map of where your mind goes when it’s free to wander. The more you add, the clearer the map becomes.

There’s no right way to build a library. Add what matters to you. Ask what interests you. The rest follows.