Daily Drive (Personal Fork)

Recreates Spotify's retired Daily Drive experience by building a playlist that blends podcast episodes with music on an automatic schedule.

This repo is my personal fork/customization of the original project by Patrick Deglon.

Credit

All core project credit goes to:

• Patrick Deglon
• Original project: patdeg/dailydrive

This fork keeps the same core idea and expands it for my own usage and deployment workflow.

What This Project Does

• Authenticates with Spotify using OAuth (setup.js)
• Pulls latest episodes from configured podcasts
• Pulls music from one or more sources:
  • top tracks
  • source playlists
  • genre discovery search
• Mixes podcasts + music using a configurable pattern like PMMMM
• Updates a target Spotify playlist
• Caches run state to avoid unnecessary updates

What I Changed in This Fork

Compared to the original baseline concept, this version includes practical enhancements for my daily use:

• Added hourly podcast-only refresh mode (--podcast-only) so short-lived episodes stay fresh without reshuffling music
• Added daily + hourly automation scripts in scripts/ for cron-based scheduling
• Uses Spotify playlist /items endpoint for playlist reads to avoid the deprecated /tracks behavior
• Added music filtering controls (exclude_keywords, optional classical filtering) for cleaner mixes
• Added state-aware behavior to skip updates when podcast episodes have not changed
• Added AI taste profile helpers:
  • taste-profile.js (Demeterics)
  • taste-profile-google.js (Gemini)
• Added Docker support (Dockerfile, docker-compose.yml) for containerized deployment

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• Spotify Premium account (required for current Spotify dev restrictions)
• Spotify Developer app credentials

Quick Start

1. Install dependencies:

npm install

2. Create config from template:

cp config.example.yaml config.yaml

3. Fill in config.yaml:

• spotify.client_id
• spotify.client_secret
• spotify.redirect_uri (use http://127.0.0.1:8888/callback)
• playlist_id
• podcast show IDs and music preferences

4. Run first-time auth:

npm run setup

5. Dry run:

npm test

6. Update playlist:

npm start

Commands

• npm run setup - run OAuth setup and save Spotify token
• npm start - full playlist refresh
• npm test - dry run (no playlist write)
• npm run taste - generate genre suggestions via Demeterics
• npm run taste:google - generate genre suggestions via Gemini

Scheduling

For unattended updates, use the scripts in scripts/ with cron:

• scripts/daily-refresh.sh - full refresh + housekeeping
• scripts/hourly-refresh.sh - podcast-only refresh

These are designed for Linux-style deployments (including mini PCs and SBCs).

Configuration Highlights

Main file: config.yaml

• podcasts[] supports episodes and optional position: first
• music.top_tracks controls personal favorites source
• music.genres enables discovery tracks
• music.playlists imports tracks from existing playlists
• music.total_songs sets music count target
• mix_pattern controls interleave logic (P=podcast, M=music)

Example pattern:

• PMMMM = 1 podcast, then 4 songs, repeat

Security Notes

This repo intentionally keeps secrets out of git. Do not commit:

• config.yaml
• .env
• .spotify-token.json
• state.json

License

MIT (see LICENSE).

---

If you are here from the original project: thank you again to Patrick for creating and sharing the foundation this fork is built on.