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The Goodreads app can't export, so this has to happen on their website — on a phone too. Open goodreads.com/review/import and sign in. If the page looks cramped on a phone, tap aAin Safari's address bar and choose Request Desktop Website.

Tap Export Library, wait a moment, then tap the “Your export from…” link that appears below the button. The CSV saves to Files. Back in Match Book, choose it from the import screen.

To build a theme, yes for now — it's the ratings that make the whole thing work. You can try the app first with the sample library if you just want to see what it does.

Working out what a book is actually like — its mood, pace, how it ends — takes a language model, and that costs money per book. Match Book is free and has no subscription, so instead of charging you and paying for it out of that, you bring your own key and pay your provider directly. It costs a fraction of what a subscription would, and nothing passes through us.

From OpenAI. Create an account, add a small amount of credit, create a key, and paste it into Settings → Your AI key.

Reading a whole library costs roughly 30 cents, once. After that each round of matches is a few cents. Most people spend under a dollar a month.

On the old phone: Settings → Your data → Back up to a file, and save it somewhere you'll find it, like iCloud Drive. On the new one, install Match Book and choose Restore from a backup.

Your library, ratings, theme and all the book analysis come across — so you don't pay to work the same books out twice. Your AI key deliberately isn't in the file; you'll paste it again on the new phone.

On your phone, in the app's own storage. There's no account and no server, so deleting the app deletes everything. That's also why backups matter — see Privacy for the detail.

Settings → Your data → Delete all my data, or just delete the app. Your API key lives in the iOS Keychain and is removed separately from Settings → Your AI key → Remove this key.

The app now shows OpenAI's own words after the error code, and they tell you which of three different problems it is. Incorrect API key provided means the key is wrong or only partly pasted — copy it again from platform.openai.com/api-keys. Has been revoked means it was deleted or rotated, so make a new one. Does not have access to model means the key belongs to a project without that model enabled; pick another model in Settings or use a key from a project that has it.

A 429 is a different thing entirely: either you are being rate-limited, in which case wait a moment, or the account is out of credit, in which case top it up. The message says which.

Stray whitespace is not a cause, despite what this page used to say — Match Book trims a pasted key before it ever stores it.

Match Book only suggests books it can verify exist in a public catalog, so a round occasionally comes back thin. Try again, or move a dial — a very specific combination of all 15 dimensions can be genuinely rare.

If it's consistently empty, check your theme was built from enough books. A handful of five-star ratings makes for a shaky signal.

Thirty to ninety seconds is normal. The app asks for candidates, checks each one really exists, works out what it's like, and scores the fit. Picking a faster model in Settings helps.

Use 👍 and 👎 — anything you thumb down is excluded from later rounds. If your five-star shelf has drifted, re-import from Library → Update from Goodreads and rebuild your theme.

They need notification permission, an AI key, and a built theme. Check Settings → New release alerts is on, and that Match Book is allowed notifications in iOS Settings.

iOS decides when apps get background time, so checks can be irregular — the app also looks when you open it. Alerts only fire for a genuinely strong match, so quiet weeks are normal rather than a fault.