Crosscredit currently finds people shared by two movies or shows. When there are no direct matches, the comparison ends there. An optional indirect search could turn that empty result into another discovery.
Proposal #
Add a "Find a connection" action that looks for a short bridge:
Title A -> person -> bridge title -> person -> Title B
Show results as readable chains with the people, titles, and relevant roles/jobs. Let users open the bridge title as a new comparison. Keep direct matches as the primary experience; indirect searches run only when requested.
Initial scope #
- Search for one bridge title rather than an arbitrary six-degrees graph.
- Bound upstream requests, concurrency, and runtime, and reuse cached lookups. Confirm a practical search budget for the existing Cloudflare Worker before expanding scope.
- Explain when no connection was found within the search limits; do not imply no connection exists or claim a globally shortest path.
- Match people by ID, distinguish movie and TV IDs, and retain merged roles and guest appearances. Make any search truncation explicit.
- Keep TMDB access server-side and frontend reads in TanStack Query. No database or background jobs for the first version.
The goal is a useful next step from an empty comparison, with a few understandable results and predictable request costs.