How it works
A compact knowledge base for the first useful moves: build a strong profile, understand Taste DNA, manage privacy, and use social rituals without losing control of what is yours. Questions are answered below.
Start
Claim 10 favorites across at least three categories, rate the ones that matter most, and pin the few that feel definitive. A small Canon should still feel intentional.
Shape
Taste DNA becomes sharper when your ratings, dismissals, imports, and category spread all point in the same direction. Treat it like an evolving portrait, not a score.
Share
CANON is built for public pride without forcing everything public. Your profile, individual items, AI surfaces, and export/delete paths stay under your control.
Play
Clash, Taste Match, Gravity, and discovery loops work best when your Canon already has a strong center. Add signal first, then compare.
FAQ
Everything you need to know about CANON. If something is missing, ask us directly.
CANON is your permanent taste record — a place to curate everything you love across 25 categories (films, music, books, games, food, fashion, and more). Unlike social feeds or review sites, CANON is a living archive of who you are through what you claim as yours. Nothing expires. Nothing gets buried.
Letterboxd is for films only. CANON spans 25 categories and uses AI to find patterns across all of them — what your love of Villeneuve films and Murakami novels and ambient music says about you as a whole person. That cross-category identity layer is what makes CANON different from any single-category tracker.
The core CANON experience is free forever — add favorites, build your profile, share your Canon, get basic Taste DNA insights, and connect with other curators. CANON Pro ($5/month) unlocks the full AI intelligence layer: advanced Taste DNA history, unlimited Time Capsules, Canon duels, and priority catalog search.
CANON is available on the web during private beta. Android and iOS preview distribution is not open yet while the current builds complete device, accessibility, store, and billing validation.
Films, Music, Books, Games, TV, Anime, Manga, Podcasts, Restaurants, Recipes, Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Fashion, Sneakers, Art, Architecture, Photography, Travel, Sports, Comics, Board Games, People, and more. Every category has dedicated catalog search with the right metadata for that medium.
Yes. CANON supports import from Letterboxd (CSV export), Goodreads (CSV export), and Spotify (paste the extended streaming history from Spotify's data request, which takes a few days to arrive; the mobile app can also import saved albums through Spotify sign-in). Generic CSV import works for anything else. Go to Profile → Import to get started. The AI parser maps your existing lists to CANON's catalog automatically.
Search will surface items from TMDB (films/TV), Spotify (music), Google Books, IGDB (games), and more. If something genuinely isn't findable, use the "Add it yourself" option in search — create a custom entry and it joins your Canon exactly like a catalog item.
Yes — Ghost Mode lets you make your entire profile private, or you can hide individual items with the visibility toggle (🔒) in your library. Your data is yours; public vs. private is always your call.
Once you've added enough items (typically 10+), CANON's AI reads your entire Canon and builds your Taste DNA — dimensions like Adventurousness, Nostalgia, Depth, and Eclecticism that emerge from patterns across all your categories. It uses Claude AI for the identity narrative and Voyage AI for semantic embeddings. The result is a portrait of your taste that most people take years to articulate.
Yes — AI Discovery (Pro feature) generates personalized recommendations based on your full Canon, weighted by your ratings and feedback. Tap 👍 or 👎 on suggestions to train it. It actively avoids repeating things you've dismissed.
Your Canon data is processed by Anthropic (Claude) and Voyage AI for Taste DNA generation and semantic search. This processing is server-side and private — it's not used to train their models. See the Privacy page for full details.
Bridge Walker is a badge earned by curators who have claimed items across 5 or more different categories. It recognizes rare cross-category taste — the kind that means your Canon spans film and philosophy and architecture and food rather than staying in one lane. Bronze (◇ 5+), Silver (◈ 10+), and Gold (◎ 20+) tiers track your breadth. Your Bridge Walker Atlas at whatsyourcanon.com/[username]/bridges shows the full cross-category map of your Canon.
Timeless Canon is a special section on public profiles that shows items you've explicitly memory-pinned — your permanent identity anchors. Not just things you love, but things that define you. A pinned item is a statement: this is part of who I am, permanently. To pin an item, open it in your Canon and tap "Pin to Timeless Canon." The section appears on your public profile and generates a distinct dark-gold share card.
CANON assigns one of 8 taste archetypes based on your Canon's patterns: Archivist (completionist, systematic), Curator (selective, intentional), Enthusiast (broad and joyful), Pioneer (early adopter, niche finds), Contrarian (underrated, against the grain), Eclectic (wildly varied), Nostalgic (classics, comfort), and Visionary (conceptual, forward-looking). Your archetype is re-inferred as your Canon grows.
Factions are six taste-similarity-based social groups — you're auto-assigned based on your Taste DNA. Factions compete in seasonal prediction markets and leaderboards, building a layer of collective identity on top of your personal Canon. You can see which faction you belong to on your profile and compare your standing in /discover.
Taste Match is a compatibility score between you and any other CANON user — computed from how much your Canons overlap, weighted by category affinity and rating alignment. Find your taste twin, or discover where you and a friend diverge.
Canon Duels are head-to-head taste challenges — you vs. another user across a chosen category. Pick your top items, see how they stack up, and generate a shareable result card. Great for settling arguments and discovering unexpected common ground.
Taste Circles are small auto-generated groups of people whose taste profiles intersect in specific ways — the 12 people who all love dark ambient music AND 90s Hong Kong cinema, for example. Circles surface through the social tab and can generate shared prompts.
Yes — your profile at whatsyourcanon.com/[username] is publicly viewable (unless you've enabled Ghost Mode). Share buttons generate beautiful shareable cards of your Taste DNA, top items, or category breakdowns. The "Would I share this?" quality bar is core to how CANON is designed.
Yes, anytime. Go to Settings → Account → Delete Account. Deletion is soft-first (30-day grace period so you can undo it), then hard-deleted. You can also export all your data as JSON before deleting.
Nothing is deleted. Your full Canon stays intact. You lose access to Pro features (advanced Taste DNA, Time Capsules, AI Discovery) but everything you've built is preserved. Free accounts are never penalized for being free.
Yes. Cancel from Settings → Billing at any time. You keep Pro access until the end of your billing period. No hidden fees, no re-billing after cancellation.
No. CANON is proprietary software built and owned by VaultSpark Studios LLC. All rights reserved.
Knowledge base
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