Shows, Episodes, Hosts, & Guests

[rawkode]

I likely took a slightly naive approach to this on the first pass, but now I want to make sure we get something correct that works long term.

Currently, we have:

• Video
• Shows
• Episodes
• People
• Show Hosts

Where:

• Video is a single piece of video content
• A Show is a Show
• An Episode is a Video attached to a Show with a unique Episode Code
• People are people
• Show Hosts are People attached to Shows

Now I want to add Episode Guests.

I started to implement this with a service called episode-guests like we did for show-hosts.

However, it made me think.

• What about guests on videos that aren't attached to shows?
• What if a Show has a temporary Host for one, or more, episodes?

Should we actually be having a cast list for each video, where each person has a "role"?

[rawkode]

Show Hosts should still exist, as it documents the "current" host of any show; and makes displaying show information trivial.

However, what if we change the host over time? It may not always be me. Allocating roles to videos would make this a solid improvement, but I do understand I'm preparing for circumstances that may not exist for many months, year, or perhaps never.

[swade1987]

Here's a proposed approach that provides both current functionality and future flexibility:

Instead of creating a separate episode-guests service, you should consider a more generic video-cast service that handles all participants in any video (both show episodes and standalone videos).

Each VideoCast entry would represent one person's role in one video. For example, a video with one host and two guests would have 3 VideoCast entries:

VideoCast {
  videoId: string;
  personId: string;
  role: string;  // e.g. "HOST", "GUEST", "CO_HOST"
  startTimestamp?: Date;
  endTimestamp?: Date;
  notes?: string;
}

This approach:

• Handles both show episodes and standalone videos
• Maintains historical accuracy for role changes over time
• Supports temporary roles (like guest hosts)
• Keeps entries atomic for easy querying and updating

The existing show-hosts service should remain as it serves the specific purpose of documenting current show hosts, making show information displays straightforward.

This structure gives flexibility for future scenarios like:

• Guest appearances on non-show videos
• Temporary/rotating hosts
• Multiple hosts/co-hosts
• Historical tracking of role changes