Dramatis tracks characters in books, series, and movies

As shown in my post about Claude Code, Dramatis (from "dramatis personae," the list of characters in a story) is a tool Claude created to help me keep track of the relationships between major characters in books, TV series, and movies. Here's a look at the main screen, for season one of The West Wing:

When you retrieve data for a title, it's automatically grouped into buckets that make sense for the show's plot—by function in The West Wing, Friends gets "Main Six," "Romantic Interests," and "Supporting Cast," etc. Click on a bucket and you'll see just the characters within that bucket.

Each character can have a separate, lower level of organization—Jed Bartlett is in the Executive Branch bucket, but his info card also shows Oval Office. Click on any character for full details on their role, as well as links to other characters who interact with the selected character.

I love having a reference guide available for shows I'm watching, especially those with complex plots and multiple characters. (I'm looking at you, Dark!)

Dramatis is a web app, running a local web server on your Mac. The web app itself is completely free (but see below as to why it's not free to use), completely unsupported :), and was completely written by Claude Code, with the exception of some of the help. So if you don't like running AI-generated code, you shouldn't download this web app.

If you'd like to try Dramatis, well, here's what you need to do…

First Time Setup

Download and unzip the archive, and put the Dramatis folder where you'd like it to reside. Then open the Dramatis folder, and try double-clicking _Launch Dramatis. It won't launch, because I'm not a $99 per year registered Apple developer (so the app isn't signed). If you're familiar with the process of allowing unsigned apps, go ahead and do that for the launcher app. (You'll probably have to do the same for _Stop Dramatis the first time you use it.)

If you're not familiar with that process, open the Read Me file in an editor that can process Markdown, like Visual Studio Code or BBEdit. There you'll find instructions for removing what's known as the quarantine flag, using either System Settings or Terminal. After removing the quarantine flag, try the launcher again, and you should be greeted by this dialog:

On first launch, Dramatis crates a virtual Python environment, which is where all its requirements are installed; your stock Python won't be modified in any way. This takes a bit of time, as does generating the self-signed SSL certificate needed to keep Safari happy—it really doesn't like it when you visit http://. In order to save that certificate as trusted to your keychain, macOS will ask for your admin password (or fingerprint).

You must save the certificate as a trusted certificate; if you don't do this, Dramatis won't be able to run.

Once you've saved the certificate to your keychain, a web page should open to Dramatis' help. Give that a read, expand the section on how to get your API key, and do that. Enter it in the spot provided, then click Return to App at the top of the page. (This would be a great time to bookmark the page.) Dramatis is now ready to use.

Using Dramatis

Start by selecting Series, Movie, or Book from the leftmost buttons at screen top, then enter a title and click Retrieve. (I recommend not using the All button until you're really certain you want to get all of something.) Dramatis will then query Anthropic, and this step can take some time, especially for large data requests. Once done, though, the data should populate, already saved locally (as indicated by the entry in the sidebar), and ready to browse.

The help provides a pretty good overview of how to use Dramatis, but here are some highlights:

• The Settings button lets you change the theme, whether or not spoilers are shown, how sorting of leading articles works in title, and holds a separate spot where you can input your Anthropic API key.
• The Tools menu offers an easy way to back up your database, and export your data in either JSON (best) or CSV format.
• Notice the cutoff date at the top of the window: Anthropic's models have a learning cutoff date, so anything newer than that date won't yet be retrievable—you won't find a match for Project Holy Grail (the movie) as of April 2026, but you will find Project Hail Mayr (the book), as it was released before the cutoff date.
• If you're interested in using one database from multiple Macs, you can either enable web sharing (if you're of the geeky sort), or install Tailscale, which will let you access one Mac from anywhere you have a network connection. Details on this are in help.
• Dramatis stores your settings, database, and certificate files in your user's Library → Application Support → Dramatis folder. Back this folder up regularly. This is also what you'd copy to another Mac to migrate your Dramatis installation.

When you're done with a session, you can just close the tab (and leave the server running), or you can click the Stop icon in the Dramatis interface, or run the _Stop Dramatis icon in Finder. When you're ready to start again, just run the _Launch Dramatis app in Finder, or open the page in your browser if you left the server running.

If you have any questions, please let me know! (No, I don't have any tokens to share; I used a bunch of them on these projects!)

A Note About Sharing Dramatis

I am not putting any sort of official license on Dramatis; do with it what you like. However, if you're going to modify Dramatis and share the modified version, please do not include your database with the distribution. If you do, there are probably some media companies who may take notice, and, um, contact you—they may claim copyright over some of the information you're distributing.

It shouldn't be hard to avoid bundling your database, as it's in your user's Library → Application Support → Dramatis folder, and the code is in the Dramatis folder. So share the Dramatis folder itself, not your user's data folder.

If you're going to post/share Dramatis, please take a look at the zip file posted here—it contains exactly what needs to be included in your distribution. All the other files gets created at run time, and shouldn't be included.