bookhoard/docs/user/collections.md

# Collections

A collection is a personal shelf you name yourself. You put your books and
podcast episodes on it, and it appears as a section on your dashboard.

That is the whole idea. Everything below is variations on it.

## The one pattern, four flavors

Every collection behaves the same way on the outside: it has a name, an icon,
a color, and a list of items. The flavors differ in how items *join*:

| Flavor | How items join | Right for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Static** | You pick each item by hand | Curated lists — "books for the trip", "new house ideas" |
| **⚡ Smart** (books) | Rules match books live, forever | "everything by Asimov", "still not started", "over 400 pages" |
| **⚡ Smart** (podcast episodes) | Rules match episodes live — and they can play back-to-back | "catch up on my feeds", "episodes to finish" |
| **System** (built-in) | Bookhoard maintains them | Continue Reading, Recently Added, Recently Read, Not Started, Continue Series |

A collection holds **books and podcast episodes** — mix them if you like.

The **⚡ Smart** badge means the same thing everywhere it appears: *membership
is matched by rules right now — always current, nothing to refresh*.

## Creating a collection

1. Open the **Collections** page (sidebar navigation)
2. Click **New Collection**
3. Choose the **Type**:
   - **Static** — pick items by hand
   - **⚡ Smart** — match by rules, always live
4. If you picked **⚡ Smart**, choose the **Rules scope**: **📚 Books** or
   **🎧 Podcast episodes**
5. Fill in the rest: **Name**, **Description**, an **Icon** you can search or
   pick, and a **Color**
6. Click **Create Collection**

Starting from a completely empty account? The button **Create Your First
Collection** does the same thing.

## Adding items by hand (Static collections)

1. Open the collection from the **Collections** page
2. Click **Add Items**
3. Pick the tab for what you want:
   - **📚 Books** — searchable by the **Search books...** box, and the
     **Author** and **Genre** boxes
   - **🎧 Episodes** — the episodes of the feeds you subscribe to
4. Click one or more items — a checkmark marks what you picked; the bottom
   of the window counts them for you
5. Click **Add Selected**

To take items out, check them on the collection page and click
**Remove Selected** (it asks first).

While checking what is in the collection, the **Search within collection...**
box narrows the view — it never removes anything.

## Rules (how ⚡ Smart collections work)

A smart collection keeps its own list of rules, the same rules that power the
filter drawer. On the collection's page, click **Edit Rules** to open the
rules editor: build your groups and rules in the **Filter tree**, then click
**Apply to Collection**. From that point the collection matches those rules
by itself — add a book that matches and it appears without you doing
anything.

Rules live in one guide, so this page does not repeat them. The full how-to
walks through groups, ALL/ANY, and value picking in
[Filters — the complete guide](filters/index.md), ready-made examples are in
the [cookbook](filters/cookbook.md), and
[every filter field](filters/fields.md) lists what you can ask about.

*Finding it again later:* open any collection's page and look for the
**Edit Rules** button; the **⚡ Smart** badge in the page title marks a
collection that is already matching.

## Playing an episode collection

When a collection holds a downloaded episode, it grows a **Play as Sequence**
button: the episodes play one after another. Next to it, the order picker
decides the sequence — **Feed order**, **Feed order (reversed)**,
**Oldest first (pub date)**, or **Newest first (pub date)**. Your choice is
remembered on the collection.

## Changing a collection

The pencil button on a collection card, or the edit control on the
collection page, opens the edit form:

- Change the **Name**, **Description**, **Icon**, **Color**
- **Hide finished books (reading-queue mode)** — finished books drop off
  this shelf, which keeps a to-read list short
- **Show Up Next strip** — show the collection's Up Next strip where it is
  used

Click **Update Collection** to save. Deleting a collection asks first, and
deleting only removes the shelf — never the books or episodes inside it.

## System collections

The five built-in shelves — **Continue Reading**, **Recently Added**,
**Recently Read**, **Not Started**, **Continue Series** — work like any
collection on the outside, but Bookhoard decides their membership by what
happens while you read. They appear on your dashboard automatically.

Deleted one and want it back? Click **Restore System** on the **Collections**
page, pick the shelf from the list, and click **Restore**.

## Your dashboard shelves

Collections appear as sections on your dashboard, and you choose which ones
show and in what order from the dashboard's own settings. That page's
details live in [Dashboard](dashboard.md).

*Finding your way back:* **Collections** is the sidebar page whose top has
the only **New Collection** button — from a dashboard shelf's **View All**,
the collection detail page is the place with **Add Items**.