3207b89205
Five providers existed and none covered the "video" kind, so every movie and show got a title from its filename and nothing else - no poster, no plot, no cast, no year. That is the gap between "a folder of videos with a nice web UI" and a media server. TMDB keeps films and television in separate namespaces behind separate endpoints, and a Query does not say which one it is. Rather than guessing from the title, Search asks both at once and merges by TMDB popularity, which is the only ranking signal available without a second request per item. Speed is the point, so the two requests run concurrently over one derived context on a single shared client, and whichever fails first cancels the other: one dead endpoint cannot hold the result hostage while the healthy one is waited out. Verified red-green - serialising the two fetches makes TestTMDBSearchesConcurrently fail at 2s. Two corrections made in review, both found by reading the code rather than trusting the report: 1. ExternalID was the bare TMDB id, so film 603 and show 603 - different works - would have been stored identically in provider_ids. Namespaced as movie/603 and tv/603. Nothing resolves an item from an external_id today, so this was latent rather than broken, but the table is populated as enrichment runs and correcting it later would have needed a data migration. Pinned by TestTMDBExternalIDIsNamespaced. 2. Query.Year was added but never populated, so the year filter - the main way to tell a remake from the original - never applied. catalog.Item already carried Year; the enricher now passes it. No cover bytes are fetched here: the provider returns image URLs and the existing enricher caches what it uses. A missing key logs the env var and skips, so the feature is discoverable from the boot log. Not verified: the live TMDB API. Tests run against httptest servers only. |
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|---|---|---|
| cmd/vellum | ||
| docs | ||
| internal | ||
| migrations | ||
| scripts | ||
| web | ||
| .dockerignore | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| compose.yml | ||
| DEPLOY.md | ||
| Dockerfile | ||
| entrypoint.sh | ||
| go.mod | ||
| go.sum | ||
| LICENSE | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README.md | ||
Vellum
One application, one process, one database for every media type — ebooks, comics, audiobooks, music, photos, games, and video — behind a single account system with real per-user progress and per-library permissions.
A modular monolith. One Go binary, one SQLite file, one web frontend.
The full plan lives in ~/.opencode/plan/vellum.md.
Status
| Phase | Scope | State |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Repo, config, migrations, health, Docker | done |
| 1 | Users, sessions, library grants | done |
| 2 | Scanner, items, assets | done |
| 2b | FTS5 search | done |
| 3 | EPUB reader + progress | done |
| 4 | CBZ comic reader | done |
| PDF reading (pdf.js) | done | |
| 5 | Job queue, metadata (Open Library, Google Books, MusicBrainz, ComicVine, IGDB, TMDB) | done |
| 6a | Audiobooks + music playback | done |
| 6c | Photos + thumbnails | done |
| 7 | Games: ROM scanning, platforms, cloud saves, EmulatorJS | done |
| UI | Svelte app: home, browse, item pages, readers | done |
| 6b | Music smart playlists | not started |
| — | Video (stays on Jellyfin) | deferred |
What works today: an administrator adds libraries pointing at server folders, scans them, and optionally enriches metadata. Users sign in and read EPUBs and PDFs, read CBZ comics, listen to audiobooks track-by-track, browse photos, and play emulated games in the browser with their own cloud saves — with position saved per account, per file.
Six media types work: ebooks, comics, audiobooks, music, photos, games. Video is the only one not implemented, and it stays on Jellyfin on purpose.
Of the services in the existing stack, this covers Stump, Kavita, Audiobookshelf, Navidrome, and RomM. Only Jellyfin (video) is left.
Quick start
sudo dnf install golang # once; Go is not in the base image here
make build
make run
curl localhost:7788/healthz # {"database":"ok","status":"ok",...}
Run with media roots configured:
VELLUM_MEDIA_DIRS=/mnt/storage/media/ebooks:/mnt/storage/media/comics make run
Configuration
All configuration is environment variables. Every one has a default, so the binary runs with no configuration at all.
| Variable | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
VELLUM_LISTEN |
:7788 |
Bind address |
VELLUM_DATA_DIR |
./data |
SQLite database lives here |
VELLUM_CONFIG_DIR |
./config |
Regenerable cache (covers, pages) |
VELLUM_MEDIA_DIRS |
(none) | Read-only library roots, colon-separated |
VELLUM_ADMIN_USER |
(none) | Creates the first admin, only on an empty database |
VELLUM_ADMIN_PASSWORD |
(none) | Password for that first admin (min 8 chars) |
VELLUM_COOKIE_SECURE |
false |
Set true when serving over TLS |
VELLUM_COMICVINE_API_KEY |
(none) | Enables comic metadata via ComicVine |
VELLUM_DISCOVERY |
on |
Set off to stop advertising over mDNS on the LAN |
VELLUM_IGDB_CLIENT_ID |
(none) | Enables game metadata via IGDB |
VELLUM_IGDB_CLIENT_SECRET |
(none) | IGDB client secret (both required) |
VELLUM_TMDB_API_KEY |
(none) | Enables movie and TV metadata via TMDB |
VELLUM_LOG_LEVEL |
info |
debug, info, warn, error |
VELLUM_LOG_FORMAT |
text |
text or json |
VELLUM_SESSION_TTL |
720h |
Login session lifetime |
VELLUM_SHUTDOWN_GRACE |
15s |
Graceful shutdown timeout |
The first admin is created only when no users exist, so setting these on an established install does nothing. If the database is empty and they are unset, the server logs a warning and refuses to invent a default password.
Layout
cmd/vellum/ main — wiring and lifecycle only, the one place packages meet
internal/
core/ config, logging, database, migrations, timestamps
httpx/ shared JSON helpers
httpapi/ router, middleware, security headers, static SPA serving
auth/ argon2id, sessions, grants, bootstrap
apitoken/ credentials for non-browser clients (Jellyfin, Subsonic)
catalog/ THE data seam: read an item, and check you may
library/ library CRUD and the media-type registry
scanner/ walk the filesystem and reconcile with the database
probe/ ffprobe wrapper — codec facts (optional dependency)
media/ generic item/file/cover/progress endpoints
home/ the five home shelves
search/ FTS5 queries
metadata/ the enrichment job and its matching policy
providers/ Open Library, Google Books, MusicBrainz, ComicVine, IGDB, TMDB
playback/ playback engine selection endpoint
engine/ playback engine registry (html5, mpv, vlc, mdk)
progress/ the polymorphic per-user progress store
stream/ range-capable file serving
jobs/ table-backed job queue
natsort/ natural ordering for pages and tracks
jellyfin/ Jellyfin protocol adapter (+ dto/)
subsonic/ Subsonic protocol adapter (+ dto/)
discovery/ mDNS advertisement on the LAN
arch/ import-rule tests; holds no code
modules/
ebooks/ EPUB parsing and cover extraction
comics/ CBZ page listing and extraction
games/ platforms, IGDB, cloud saves, EmulatorJS
photos/ thumbnail generation
web/ Svelte app; dist/ is embedded via web/embed.go
migrations/ embedded SQL, applied in order at boot
docs/ architecture guide and decision records
Module rule: the core never imports a feature module; modules import the core and mount their own routes, tables, and scanner rules. Adding a media type is a new package plus a migration, never a core edit.
Layer rule: packages are arranged in six layers and a package may never
import from a higher one. This is enforced by tests in internal/arch, not by
convention — see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.
Schema rule: media items are global; everything user-specific is a join. Nothing may hold per-user state on a media row.
Documentation
- docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — how the pieces fit and why.
- docs/decisions/ — the decisions that were expensive to reverse, with the alternatives that were rejected.
Database
SQLite in WAL mode, opened through modernc.org/sqlite — a pure-Go driver, so
the binary builds with CGO_ENABLED=0 and cross-compiles without a toolchain
per target.
Migrations are embedded and applied in filename order; applied files are
recorded only by number in PRAGMA user_version, so never edit an applied
migration — add a new one.
Back up by copying the database (or its directory); VACUUM INTO 'backup.db'
takes a consistent snapshot while running.
Deploy
make docker # podman build
podman compose up -d # see compose.yml
The container mounts /data (database), /config (cache), and /media
(read-only). On SELinux hosts every bind mount needs :z — compose.yml
already has it.
The application never writes to /media.
Development
make dev # backend + Vite dev server together, with hot reload
make build # builds the frontend, then the Go binary with it embedded
make build-go # Go only, when the frontend is unchanged
make check # gofmt + vet + test
make run # run the server on :7788
cd web && pnpm dev # frontend only; needs the backend running on :7788
make dev is the one to reach for while developing: it builds and starts the
backend, waits for it to answer, then starts Vite. Vite proxies /api to the
backend so the browser sees a single origin and sessions behave exactly as in
production. Ctrl-C stops both.
If you run Vite on its own, the backend must already be running, or every
request fails with ECONNREFUSED on :7788.