Understand shelves, Collections, and universes

Learn how Tuvima Library groups related media in about four minutes. Start with a shelf in Read, Watch, or Listen, then explore broader connections when your library supports them.

A book series belongs in Read, a movie series in Watch, and albums or audio series in Listen. Comics use volume and issue wording. TV shows have their own Watch scope, with only episodes you own.

Book, movie, and audiobook series normally need at least two distinct owned works to appear as series cards. A single title remains a normal item. TV shows can appear with one owned episode; music albums have their own grouping rules.

Local or provider metadata can establish a shelf even when Wikidata cannot resolve an identity. A useful lane group does not require a broader universe.

How a Series is told apart, numbered and ordered

A Series is identified by its Wikidata Series plus its kind of media. The Expanse novels, the Expanse audiobooks and the Expanse TV show are three separate Series, never merged, even though they share a name. When there is no Wikidata identity, the Series falls back to the retail name for that kind of media.

Each Series shows its own numbering, and decimal positions are kept as the source gives them (1, 1.5, 2). Only the main sequence is numbered and counted in “x of y”. Novellas, short fiction and other collected or companion works that Wikidata lists for the same world appear in a separate Also in this world row under the Series, never inside the numbered run. Works with no position stay in the Series after the numbered run, unnumbered.

The shelf, the item page and the apps all use the same order: Wikidata’s position first, then the position the work carries itself, then its date, then its title. A work is placed in one Series by one rule, so reprocessing the library never moves a sibling to a different shelf. If Wikidata puts a work in the main sequence of two different Series and nothing tells them apart, the work waits in Needs Review instead of being guessed into one.

You can also choose the Series yourself. On a computer, open the item’s editor and go to Match & Identity: the Series override block sits below the re-match controls and says that re-matching the item is the normal fix. It shows the Series the item is on, the Series that list it (“In the main run (#3)” or “Also in this world”), Pick a different Series (a search over any other Series of the same kind) and Remove from its Series. A Series you pick is saved with Save override, marked Overridden by you, and the Library keeps it every time it scans, refreshes or reorganises. Go back to the Library’s choice gives it back.

Understand broader Collections

Automatic Collections need trusted shared series, franchise, or universe evidence. They connect at least two distinct lower-level groups, or a trusted series containing distinct owned titles across multiple lanes.

Owning several Matrix films creates a Watch series shelf. It does not also create a top-level collection just to repeat that shelf. Related Middle-earth book and movie shelves can support a broader collection when trusted relationships connect them.

Several formats of the same work remain variants. An ebook and audiobook alone do not create a collection, nor do same-title formats become separate owned story installments.

Find and read a Universe

A Universe is the larger world several of your Series belong to. Open Collections and choose the Universes group, search for it by name, or follow the quiet “Part of the … Universe” line on a title that belongs to one (it appears when you own two or more Series, or two or more formats, in that Universe).

The Universe page shows its name and how much of it you own, then each Series in order with “Also in this world” underneath, any standalone works, and a Connections section listing the people who appear across formats, what was adapted from what, and the Universe’s characters. Every row there says where it came from (Wikidata, or an approved lore source such as a Fandom wiki), and choosing a person or a character shows every Work you own that shares them. Characters follow your spoiler level (Settings, Preferences, Playback, Spoilers; Up to where I am unless you choose Everything). With the default, a character first seen in a later episode than you have reached, or marked as a spoiler for something you have not finished, is held back, and the page says how many were hidden; one the Library cannot place (they appear only in something you have not started, or somewhere in a book or show with no episode to point to) is listed by name only, with “No plot details”. The Library works out where a character first appears from the episodes you own, matched by Wikidata item and never by a name; books and audiobooks carry no chapter information from any source, so they are never narrowed to a chapter. A character you have met in any one title is shown, even when another title first sees them later. Entries you do not own can be shown as dashed “Not in library” placeholders in their place if you chose to see missing entries for that Series; otherwise only a quiet count is shown. While the Library is still learning about a Universe the page says so and shows how far it has got, rather than inventing connections. On a computer, Connections links to the explorer for paths between characters and the family tree.

Build your own collections separately

A custom collection can use manual membership or complete dynamic rules. Profile-owned collections are private unless supported sharing policy allows otherwise. Only administrators publish or manage library-wide collections.

Your collections appear in For Me. Accessible library collections enter My List only when you save them. Playlists stay in Listen and use their own queue/edit experience.

Collections also offers a Shelves index and a People list. The Shelves index covers eligible same-media book, movie, and audiobook series. It does not turn albums, TV shows, comic issue groups, or contributor lists into automatic top-level collections.

Keep files, titles, and story facts distinct

A work is an underlying title. An edition is a particular release or format. A media asset is an actual file. One title can have several editions or files without becoming several story installments.

A universe describes a larger creative world. Its graph can connect characters, places, organizations, events, objects, and works. Those story facts do not silently move files or reorder your authored collections.

Applying a different provider match can propose a structural move. The editor previews the old and new paths before Apply. Confirming a universe relationship alone does not change shelf placement.

Follow the evidence

Relationship surfaces show stored library data and grounded enrichment results. An unavailable graph shows its unavailable state rather than sample characters. Related recommendations need a reason such as a shared series or creator.

Owned counts describe your media. Missing entries may come from a provider manifest, but they are not files you own. Only authoritative totals support a completion target; comic issues use issue identity and owned count.

Technical details

The catalog model is Library → optional Series → Work → Edition → MediaAsset. The knowledge graph is Universe → fictional entities ↔ qualified links to Works. Authored containers keep user-owned canonical titles and explicit order; these are separate models.

Each Universe is one record tied to its Wikidata ID, and the same record backs both the Universe you browse and its Connections. A book, its audiobook and its TV adaptation land in one Universe as three Series when Wikidata links them: the works name the same fictional universe or franchise, or the show is based on the book Series. Where sources disagree, retail providers win for titles, descriptions and cover art, Wikidata wins for identity, Series membership and order, and a work in two Series keeps its own number in each. The optional Fandom lore plugin only adds facts and never moves a work.

Trusted Wikidata evidence can include P1434 (fictional universe), P8345 (franchise), P179 (series), P144 (based on), and P361 (part of). A shared label, author name, folder, or file format is not enough to merge identities or create a universe rollup. Broader collections require trusted shared relationship rows; local/provider shelf identities can support lane grouping without a QID.

Sequence placement uses ordinal_sort, immediate shelf identity, sequence_total, sequence_total_scope, and child identity keys. MainSequence members have positioned P179/direct P527 evidence. Supplementary covers P361 links; expanded P527 children are CollectedContent; explicit franchise expansion is BroaderContext. Unpositioned members lack ordinal or chain evidence beside a positioned run. Source ordinals, including decimals, retain their meaning rather than being densely renumbered.

Graph appearances can carry role, work context, anchor, narrative-time, date-range, and spoiler qualifiers. Real-world dates, fictional chronology, and editor History are different facts. Organization membership and event participation are distinct projections of qualified relationships.

Stage 2 establishes canonical identity; bounded Stage 3 enriches grounded entities and relationships. Enrichment does not silently realign structural placement or overwrite an authored container’s title/order. Consumer Explore is read-only; authorized entity editing uses the shared editor.

Universe grouping lives in the data store and does not create a universe folder hierarchy. Internal Collection and ParentCollection records have several roles; do not translate every stored Collection into the same user-facing label. The surface determines whether the user sees a series, show, album, or broader collection.

Default series-card thresholds are configured through lane_group_display.*.minimum_series_items. Missing-item defaults live in config/ui/library-preferences.json; explicit profile/series overrides live in profile_sequence_preferences and can be removed to restore inheritance.

See Universe Graph architecture and the processing pipeline for the stored relationship model.

Follow along on your phone

While something plays on a TV or another device on your profile, Home on your phone shows a Now playing card with a Companion button. The companion shows who is on screen up to where you are, where else you have met those characters in your own library, and what happened in the episode before. Reading a book or listening somewhere the Library cannot see? Open any title’s … menu, choose Companion, and pick the episode or chapter you are at. The small Up to here / Everything switch is the same spoiler setting as in Settings. When the Library has no character details for something, the companion says so rather than guessing.