Overseerr

TAS Score: S3/3 — D5/5 — A3 / T2

Brief Description

Media request and discovery tool. Family members browse movies and TV shows through a polished interface, click “request”, and Overseerr sends the request to Radarr/Sonarr automatically. No one needs to know how the *arr stack works — they just ask for what they want to watch.

Architectural Role

Applications/media layer: the family-friendly frontend for the media stack. Hides the complexity of Radarr, Sonarr, and Prowlarr behind a Netflix-like discovery interface. Users browse, request, and get notified when content is ready.

Technical Autonomy

✅ Works without internet (browse existing requests offline)
✅ Stores data locally (SQLite database)
✅ Does not require external accounts
✅ Allows data export (database backup)
⚠️ Needs internet for TMDB metadata (movie/show info and posters)

Philosophical Assessment (whose.world criteria)

Criterion	Status	Comments
Pause	✅	Stop container, requests queue. Media still playable.
Exit	✅	Request history in SQLite. Remove Overseerr, use Radarr/Sonarr directly.
Recoverability	✅	SQLite backup. Non-critical — media stack works without it.
Visibility	✅	MIT license.
External Dependencies	⚠️	TMDB API for metadata. Works without it but loses discovery features.

Configuration (Minimal)

services:
  overseerr:
    image: sctx/overseerr
    container_name: overseerr
    ports:
      - "5055:5055"
    volumes:
      - ./data/overseerr:/app/config
    environment:
      - TZ=UTC
    restart: unless-stopped

Media Server — add Overseerr for family-friendly requests

Alternatives

Alternative	Autonomy	Notes
Jellyseerr	A3 / T2	Fork of Overseerr with native Jellyfin support. Recommended for Jellyfin users.
Petio	A3 / T2	Simpler request tool. Less maintained.
Manual requests	—	Tell someone to add it in Radarr. Works but doesn’t scale for families.

Trajectory

Direction: stable.

MIT licensed, steady development. Originally built for Plex, community forks (Jellyseerr) added Jellyfin support. Mature and focused.

Signal assessment:

Signal	Status	Evidence
License	✅	MIT, unchanged.
Feature gating	✅	No paid tier.
Self-hosting	✅	Docker, simple setup.
Governance	⚠️	Primary maintainer less active. Jellyseerr fork is more actively maintained.

Signal key: ✅ opening · ➖ neutral · ⚠️ closing

Sources

Website: overseerr.dev
Repository: github.com/sct/overseerr
Docker image: sctx/overseerr