CompletedDartFlutter

Sunday Suspense

Open-source Flutter app to listen to Sunday Suspense episodes

Timeline

Oct 2022 — Jan 2023

Role

Solo

Team

Solo

Status

Completed

Live Demo Source Code

Technology Stack

Dart

Flutter

Key Challenges

Keeping the episode database fresh as new episodes air — manual curation would never keep up, so the entire pipeline had to be automated end-to-end
Building a minimalistic Flutter audio player that handles background playback, lock-screen controls, and resume-where-you-left-off without bloat
Organising hundreds of episodes into a sensible taxonomy — by category, genre, and author — without duplicating entries or confusing the browse experience
Making a meaningful GPL v3.0 stance in a hobby project: the license terms had to be loud and clear so forks stay open source

Key Learnings

GitHub Actions can own the entire content pipeline — scheduled scrapes, regenerated JSON databases, and backups, all without owning any infrastructure
A minimalistic player UI respects the content: Sunday Suspense is audio storytelling, and the chrome should get out of the way
Distributing via GitHub Releases (instead of the Play Store) keeps distribution aligned with the GPL v3.0 philosophy and removes a closed-source middleman
Open-source licensing only works if you document the philosophy, not just the legal text — the README plain-language section matters as much as the LICENSE file

The Problem

Sunday Suspense is a cult-favourite Bengali radio show — part thriller anthology, part storytelling tradition. For millions of listeners, finding and replaying specific episodes used to mean digging through YouTube playlists, SoundCloud links, or scattered Telegram channels. There wasn't a single, well-built mobile app that treated the show with the curation it deserved.

On top of that, every attempt I saw at a "Sunday Suspense app" was closed-source. The maintainer would disappear, the app would go stale, and the community would lose access. I wanted something different: open source, GPL-licensed, and built to last.

What I Built

Sunday Suspense is an open-source Flutter app for listening to the show on Android. It pulls from a curated, regularly-updated episode database, organises episodes by category, genre, and author, and ships with a clean, minimalistic player that doesn't get in the way of the story.

Everything ships from this repo — no proprietary backend, no telemetry, no ads. The app is distributed via GitHub releases, and the full source is under GPL v3.0.

Features

Smooth, responsive UI — built natively with Flutter for fluid scrolling and transitions
Curation by category — episodes hand-grouped so you can browse by mood, not just by date
Categorised by genre and author — Satyajit Ray adaptations, Feluda, Byomkesh, Tarini Khuro, and more
Search — find a specific episode by title, author, or story
Playback history — the player remembers where you left off, so you can resume mid-story
Minimalistic player — large play/pause, scrub bar, and that's it. No distractions while a story is playing
Updated weekly — new episodes land in the database automatically; no app update required

How It Works

The app is a thin Flutter client over a versioned episode database. The database holds episode metadata — title, author, genre, category, audio URL, duration — and is bundled with the build. The audio itself streams from publicly hosted sources.

The player is a single-screen experience: tap an episode, hit play, lock your phone. Playback history is persisted locally, so the next launch can offer "continue listening" at the top of the home screen.

Architecture at a glance

Flutter app (Dart)
   │
   ├── Local episode database (JSON) ── updated weekly via CI
   ├── Audio player (background-capable, lock-screen controls)
   ├── Playback history (local persistence)
   └── Search + browse UI (Material)

Automation

This is the part I'm quietly proud of. Two GitHub Actions workflows keep the database fresh without me lifting a finger:

update_db.yml — runs on a weekly schedule, scrapes the latest episode metadata, regenerates the JSON database, and pushes the result back to the repo
db_backup.yml — mirrors the database to a backup location so a bad scrape can never wipe out months of curation

You can see the status of both workflows right on the README badges. The app never goes stale — your library is always the latest library.

License Philosophy

This project is licensed under GPL v3.0, and I'm deliberate about what that means:

Anyone can fork, modify, and redistribute — as long as they stay open source
You cannot take this code, rebrand it, and ship a closed-source copy on the Play Store or App Store
Any derivative work must disclose its source, state its changes, and retain the original copyright
Selling a non-free copy is explicitly not permitted

The README spells this out plainly: "You can ONLY use the source code of this app for Open Source Project under GPL v3.0." I chose GPL specifically because the show itself is a cultural good, and the tooling around it should stay a cultural good too.

Building from Source

The project builds like any standard Flutter app:

git clone https://github.com/imsudip/sunday_suspense.git
cd sunday_suspense
flutter pub get
flutter run

You'll need the Flutter SDK installed. Contributions are welcome — there's a CONTRIBUTING.md in the repo.

Links

GitHub: imsudip/sunday_suspense
Releases: github.com/imsudip/sunday_suspense/releases
License: GPL v3.0

Timeline

The repo was created at the end of October 2022, and development kicked off the next month. The Flutter app took shape over a few months, and the project wrapped up in late January 2023 with the addition of GitHub Actions workflows to keep the episode database fresh.

Oct 2022 — Repo created and initial Flutter app scaffolded
Nov 2022 — Core features built: audio player, episode curation by genre/author, search, playback history
Jan 2023 — GitHub Actions automation added (update_db.yml for weekly episode DB refresh, db_backup.yml for backups); final commit