Using Wavecast

What Wavecast is

Wavecast is the console beside the mic for two to six people recording a podcast together. Everybody in a room sees the same running order, the same clock and the same log, live, and anything one person changes everybody else sees at once.

It never records audio or video, and never asks for your microphone or camera. You record where you already record — a studio, Riverside, Zoom, a portable recorder — and Wavecast keeps the plan and the timings beside it. A mark is a timestamp on the session clock that you line up with your recording in the edit.

There are two ways in: a quick session from the front page, which needs no account and keeps nothing, and an account, which keeps shows, episodes and a calendar until you delete them.

A session without an account

On the front page, give the session a name if you like and press Start session. You get a join link and a six-digit PIN. Send them by different routes — the PIN is never part of the link, so the link alone lets nobody in — and press Join as host to go in yourself.

Anybody with the link and the PIN comes in as a host. The room lives in memory only and is wiped once everybody has left, so save the running order to your browser and copy the log out before you go.

Joining a room

Open the link you were sent, say what to call you, and enter the PIN. You are given a colour of your own, which you can change from the list of people in the room. Reloading the page puts you back in the same seat without asking for the PIN again.

Members of a show never see the join form for that show’s episodes: signed in, they go straight into the room as hosts. An invited guest uses their own single-use link instead, and agrees to be recorded before they are let in.

A room holds six people. Too many wrong PINs from one address lock that address out for a quarter of an hour, while everybody else can still get in.

Accounts and signing in

Create an account with your name, an email address and a password, or with Continue with Google where it is offered. You can also have a sign-in link emailed to you, and reset a forgotten password from the sign-in page.

The account page, in the menu under your name at the end of the bar, is where you change your name, add a picture of yourself, set or change your password, choose your preferences, publish a calendar subscription, and delete the account.

Shows and the people in them

A show is a podcast: its episodes, the people who make it and its calendar. A show opens on its Show home: the next recording and the guests on it, the next release, what is waiting on an edit, and a way to each of its other pages. Press the show’s square at the start of the bar to open the drawer, which holds the show’s pages, Plan an episode and Create new show. Whoever creates a show is its owner.

Invite co-hosts from the show’s Co-hosts page with a single-use link; whoever opens it and signs in becomes a member. Members plan and run episodes. An owner also looks after the show’s Settings — its name, description, time zone, artwork, links, calendar subscription and default template — and can delete it.

Removing somebody from a show, or somebody leaving it, gives every one of its episodes a new PIN, so a former member cannot walk into a future session.

The calendar

Signing in lands on the calendar: every episode across every show you are in, a list on one side and the month on the other. The list opens on Scheduled, what is coming up; the filter at its head also reads Needs attention, Past and the archived episodes, and the plus beside it plans a new episode. An episode with no date yet is on the board, or found by name in the list’s search.

The switch above the month chooses which date the calendar is read by: when an episode is recorded, when it is released, or both. Press the magnifying glass at the head of the list to search by title; a search that finds nothing offers to plan an episode by that name.

Press a day to plan an episode on it. Drag an episode to another day to move it — or hold Alt and press an arrow key — and drag a row from the list onto a day to give it a date. An episode whose room is open cannot be moved from the calendar, because the room is where its date is settled.

From idea to edited

The board — Show board in the drawer, under Show calendar — lays every episode out by where it is up to, in six columns read left to right: Ideas, Planning, Scheduled, Ready, Unedited and Edited. Drag a card to another column, or right-click it for its menu, to move it on or back. The + at the head of Ideas jots a new one. Each column has a magnifying glass at its head that opens a search of that column alone — closing it clears the search — and a long column scrolls beneath its head.

Ideas are the backlog: a title and a few notes, jotted down with New idea. An idea is not an episode yet — it has no room, no PIN and no place on the calendar. Members vote for the ideas they want made, and the most wanted stand at the top. Moving an idea into Planning makes it an episode, with its notes as the brief.

Planning is an episode being planned in its room with no recording date yet. Give it a date and it is Scheduled — still in the Planning state, now with a day. Both can go back. Scheduled to Planning takes every date off the plan. Either one back to Ideas deletes the episode and keeps only its title and brief: its agenda, every topic and point on it, and its dates go with it. Each asks first and says what will be lost, and neither can be done while somebody is in the room.

Ready is an episode somebody has called ready, with Ready in its room or by moving its card; it can go back to Planning until the recording starts. The room moves itself to Recording when the clock starts, and on the board it stays in the Ready column until it is archived.

Archiving an episode — Archive this episode in the drawer, or moving its card on — freezes its record, and it waits in Unedited: archived, with no link to the edit yet. Add the link to where the edited episode can be heard and it moves to Edited, the end of the line. Taking the link off moves it back to Unedited; nothing leaves the archive from the board.

Planning an episode

An episode moves through four states, in order: Planning, Ready, Recording and Archived. Plan an episode from the drawer, from a day on the calendar, or from a search. It starts in Planning and opens straight into its room on the Planning screen. The link and the PIN exist from the moment the episode does, so they can be sent out weeks ahead.

The column beside the running order has three panels. Details is the title and what the episode is about, then its properties — its state, recording date and time, release date, number and tags, each changed where it is read — then saving and loading the running order, with deleting the episode under Advanced. People lists the show’s hosts, each ticking their own name if they can make the recording, and the guests you are having on. AI suggests topics.

Everything on Planning is live: two hosts can plan at once and each sees the other’s changes as they are made. When the plan is done, press Ready to move the episode to Ready. Planning closes and the three screens that run the hour open for everybody in the room.

The four screens

An episode’s room is four screens, named on the bar in the order an episode happens. Planning is the weeks before. Preshow is the half hour before: links, everybody’s checks and a last look at the order. Studio is the hour itself — the clock, the topic in hand and who is ready. Producer is the same hour from the other chair: the running order and the log side by side, with the figures that say whether you will finish on time.

Only Planning and Producer can rewrite the running order. The presses that move the hour on — Next topic, Next point, the Ready check, Start session and Back to planning — are on Producer, so whoever is steering sits there.

Which screens are open follows the episode’s state: Planning alone while it is in Planning; Preshow, Studio and Producer once it is Ready and while it is Recording; and the record alone once it is Archived. Preshow closes when the clock starts, and everybody except whoever is on Producer is moved to Studio. A guest only ever sees Studio. A room started from the front page has all four screens throughout.

Building the running order

The running order is an outline of topics and the points under them. Type a topic into the field at the foot of the list, give it a length in minutes, and add points under it from the + on its row. Any topic or point can sit under any other, at any depth.

Drag a row by its handle to move it; a line shows where it will land and how far in. From the keyboard, Alt+↑/↓ moves a row and Alt+←/→ takes it out a level or puts it under the row above; the arrows beside each row do the same. The chevron at the start of a row folds away what is under it.

A row can carry a line of details under its title, and a note — the longer briefing — opened from a mark on the row into a side panel. A row’s menu — right-click the row, press and hold it on a touch screen, or press Shift+F10 on its title — adds points after and under it, and a topic’s also uploads its points from a CSV spreadsheet of titles and details, and starts or skips it out of turn.

Running orders can be saved to the show and loaded into another episode, or downloaded as a file and uploaded again. An owner can make one the show’s default template, which every new episode then starts with. A room also keeps its running order on this browser’s saved agendas shelf as it changes.

Suggested topics

On Planning, the AI panel suggests about six topics from the episode’s title, each a single line with a sentence of description. Add a steer — who it is for, an angle, something to leave out — and press Suggest topics; Suggest more asks for ones not already on screen. An owner can give the show a prompt of its own under Settings → AI, which is sent with every episode’s title.

Nothing lands on its own. Drag a suggestion into the running order where you want it, tick several and drag them together, or add them to the end or under a topic you choose. Suggestions need an account and are limited per hour and per day, and only the title, your steer and the show’s prompt are sent to the AI provider. Check what comes back before you say it on air.

Getting ready to record

On Preshow everybody ticks their own checks — headphones on, phone and notifications silenced, somewhere quiet — and says whether they have a hard stop and when. Then they press Ready to record, and the checks fold into one All set line.

The earliest of everybody’s hard stops becomes the show’s, shown on the bar and counted down on Producer. The list of people shows who is ready, and the time where each of them is.

When the room is ready, whoever is on Producer presses Start session as the recording starts. That press starts the clock for everybody, moves the episode to Recording, and every time in the log is measured from it. Not recording after all? Back to planning puts the episode back in Planning.

During the recording

The clock counts the session and the topic in hand, running on past the plan rather than stopping at it. On Producer, Next topic (N) finishes the topic and starts the next, and Next point ticks off the point you are on.

The strip along the bottom is what you say about yourself: Raise hand (H) to come in, Ready to move on (R), Step away to leave the count, and Ask for a break. Studio shows each from the edges of the screen, so it can be caught out of the corner of an eye. Mark (M) drops a timestamp for the edit, and Reactions (1–6) throw an emoji at the room for a moment.

When everybody counted is ready, Next lights up. A producer can also put a Ready check to the room, which asks everybody “OK to move on?” on whatever screen they are on. A break started from Producer holds the topic it interrupts, and End break carries on with it.

Turn on Sounds in the strip to hear a short cue for each thing that happens in the room — a hand going up, a mark, the next topic, somebody joining or leaving. They are for your tab alone, and a preference on the account page decides whether rooms start with them on.

The log and archiving an episode

The Log on the bar lists everything that happened with its time into the recording: topics started and finished, breaks, marks and who pressed them, and people joining and leaving. Label a mark afterwards by writing on its line, filter the log by kind, and copy it out as a cue sheet for the edit.

Stopping the recording holds the clock at its length. Archive this episode, in the drawer, then moves it to Archived: the running order as it was actually run and the log are frozen as the episode’s record, which can be read from the calendar afterwards. An Archived episode cannot be changed.

The record’s In the recording tab says who was on: each of the show’s hosts and whether they were in the room while the clock ran, each planned guest and whether they turned up, and anybody else who came in.

Guests and recording consent

Invite a guest from Guest invitations in the drawer. Each link admits exactly one person, once, as a guest. Before they are let in, the guest reads and signs a recording consent — audio and video agreed to separately — in the language they read it in.

A guest sees Studio and nothing else: the topic, the clock, who is ready and what is coming up. They can raise a hand, say they are ready, step away, ask for a break and react, but cannot change the running order.

Each show has a Consents page, in the drawer beside Settings, listing the consents signed in its rooms. Read one as it was signed, download one as a document, or download all of them at once. No deletion reaches a signed consent.

The guests written down on Planning’s Attendees panel are notes for the hosts — a name and some details — and never an account or an invitation. A guest counts as having turned up when somebody comes into the recording as a guest under the same name. On Preshow they are listed again, each with Copy invite link, which makes a single-use invitation in their name and copies it.

Artwork and pictures

An owner can give a show a square of artwork and a wide background from Artwork in the show’s Settings. Your own picture is set on the account page, and stands where your coloured dot would in rooms.

Choosing an image opens a frame: drag and pinch, or use the slider, to crop it to the shape it is shown at. It is resized in your browser before it is sent, so a photograph straight off a phone is fine. PNG, JPEG and WebP images are accepted.

Upload only pictures you have the right to use. Every uploaded picture can be seen and removed by the site’s administrators. If you find something of yours used without permission, write to william@wo.dev.

Calendar subscriptions

Follow Wavecast’s dates in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook. A show publishes its own subscription from Calendar in its Settings, and your account publishes one for every show you are in from the account page. Recordings, releases and both together are three separate subscriptions.

Each address is a secret: anybody holding it can read that calendar. An entry carries the way into the room, never the PIN. Calendar services refresh a subscription on their own schedule, so a change can take hours to show. Stopping a subscription retires its address for good; publishing again gives a new one.

Preferences and language

The account page sets how Wavecast behaves for you: a 12- or 24-hour clock, whether dates say how far off they are, switches for the Studio screen’s coloured edges, the queue in its corners and the connection word, reduced motion, and whether rooms start with sounds on.

The language — English or Japanese — is in the menu under your name, or on the bar when you are not signed in. Signed in, your preferences and language follow you to any machine you sign in on.

Keyboard shortcuts

In a room, press ? for the full list and ⌘/Ctrl+K for a palette that finds any press by name. N is the next topic on Producer, A writes a new topic, M marks, R says you are ready, H raises a hand, and 1–6 react.

M is Riverside’s marker key as well, so one press can mark both timelines — but only the tab in front of you receives it.

Your data

A session from the front page keeps nothing once it is empty. A show keeps what its members write into it until somebody deletes it: an owner can delete an episode or a whole show, and anybody can delete their own account from the account page, which takes everything they are the last owner of.

Wavecast is an early alpha: accounts and data may be deleted at any time without notice, and nothing is guaranteed to be kept. Take the log away after each session and keep your own copies. The details are in the terms and conditions, the privacy policy and the cookies policy.

When something goes wrong

If the connection drops, the room reconnects by itself and your line in the list of people says so. If the server restarts, the room comes back as it was. A room that says it is out of date needs a reload.

A change that lost a race with somebody else’s is refused with a message saying what did not happen and why, and the screen shows the version that won. If a press seems to do nothing, its tooltip says why it cannot be made just now.