How do I follow someone on SPOOLED?

Open their profile and tap Follow. Their public builds, posts, and how-to guides will start surfacing in your feed. You can unfollow at any time without notification.

A crew is a persistent group on SPOOLED — platform-specific clubs, regional groups, race teams, friend groups. Joining a crew adds the crew's members' posts to your feed and surfaces your activity to them. Different shape from forums (which are topic-based and search-focused).

Can I have a profile without making my builds public?

Yes. Your profile shows whatever you choose to make visible. Many members keep their daily-driver builds private and only publish their show or track car. Profile visibility and per-build visibility are separate controls.

Will my profile show up in Google?

Public profiles are indexed by default. If you want a presence on the platform without search-engine indexing, set your profile to "limited" — you stay visible to logged-in members and still earn PSI, but search crawlers are excluded.

What's the difference between Follow and joining a Crew?

Follow is a one-to-one signal — you watch their feed. A crew is a group you belong to and contribute to. You can follow members of a crew without joining the crew, and you can join a crew without individually following its members.

Profiles, Crews, and Following

Profiles, crews, and the follow graph turn SPOOLED from a catalog into a community. Every member has a profile. Some join crews — platform clubs, regional groups, race teams, friend groups. The feed you see when you sign in is shaped by who you follow and what crews you're in.

What lives on a profile page

Builds — every public build the member owns or has owned.
Posts — the chronological post timeline.
Mods — the deduped union of mods across all the member's builds. Useful for "who else runs this turbo?"
Reviews — every mod, shop, and tuner review the member has posted.
How-to guides — every install how-to authored.
PSI tier badge — current tier, with a tooltip showing total score.
Crews — every crew the member belongs to.
Follow / unfollow — direct from the profile.

Crews — what they are

Crews on SPOOLED are persistent groups: platform-specific clubs (e.g. "Civic Si Owners"), regional groups ("PNW Builders"), race teams, brand fan clubs, friend groups. Each crew has a feed of its members' posts, an events page, and a roster. Joining a crew adds the crew's posts to your feed and surfaces you to other members.

Crews differ from forums: a forum is a topic you visit (Subaru forum, suspension forum), a crew is a community you belong to (the local meet group, your race team). They complement.

Following — what changes

Following another member adds their public builds' updates, posts, and how-to guides to your feed. You can follow people you meet at events, owners with similar builds for inspiration, or platform experts you've learned from. The feed prioritizes followed-account content over recommended-but-unfollowed content — the platform's default isn't algorithmic recommendation, it's a curated network.

How to build a useful profile

Real photo and a few-line bio. The platform's tone is owner-to-owner; placeholder profiles get less engagement.
One detailed public build. Quality of one beats partial completeness of three.
Post when you do work, not when you have nothing to say. The platform's feed values cadence over volume.
Write at least one how-to about a part you actually installed. Highest-leverage single contribution to your profile.
Answer questions in the forums on platforms you know well. Helpful-marks accumulate over years.

Privacy and visibility

Profile pages are public by default — that's the platform's social-network shape. You control which builds within your garage are public and which aren't; you control which posts attach to public builds vs your private timeline; and you can set your profile to "limited" mode if you want to hold a presence without being indexed by search engines.