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mithral 4c51482dd6 Home: five sections — Continue, Most Viewed, Suggestions, Recently Added, Explore
The landing screen now reads as a product rather than a list.

- migration 0006: item_views, per user. "Most viewed" is personal — what I
  re-read is not what you re-read. Counted when an item is opened in a reader,
  so the number means consumed, not merely fetched.
- Suggestions: unstarted items related to what the user has been consuming —
  same author first, then same kind, then recent as a floor. Each carries the
  reason it was chosen ("More by Daft Punk"), because a suggestion nobody can
  understand is noise.
- Explore: a mixed sample across every kind, excluding in-progress items so the
  zone is discovery rather than a repeat.
- Home fetches all five shelves in one request; the screen never pops in.
- web: Shelf gained subtitle/badge support, Card gained a subtitle, and the
  home renders four shelves plus a wrapping Explore grid.

Three bugs found and fixed while verifying:

- Continue showed a multi-track audiobook once per chapter. GROUP BY item_id
  with MAX(updated_at) picks one card per item (SQLite takes the bare columns
  from the row that produced the max).
- Suggestions and Explore passed their SQL arguments in the wrong order: the IN
  list precedes the user id in those queries, so a user id was being bound as a
  library id. Covered by a scoping test that would have caught it.
- The sidebar lost its media types on a cold, logged-out load. bootstrap()
  fetched media types inside a Promise.all with /auth/me, so the expected 401
  rejected the whole thing and nothing refetched after login. Media types are
  public and now load independently.
2026-10-10 16:59:39 -04:00
cmd/vellum Phase 7: games — ROM scanning, platforms, cloud saves, EmulatorJS 2026-10-09 21:54:49 -04:00
internal Home: five sections — Continue, Most Viewed, Suggestions, Recently Added, Explore 2026-10-10 16:59:39 -04:00
migrations Home: five sections — Continue, Most Viewed, Suggestions, Recently Added, Explore 2026-10-10 16:59:39 -04:00
scripts dev: fix the Vite proxy and add a one-command dev runner 2026-10-10 16:32:32 -04:00
web Home: five sections — Continue, Most Viewed, Suggestions, Recently Added, Explore 2026-10-10 16:59:39 -04:00
.dockerignore Phase 0: skeleton, config, migrations, health check, container 2026-10-09 16:26:08 -04:00
.gitignore Redesign the user-facing experience: home, browse, item pages 2026-10-09 21:38:11 -04:00
compose.yml Phase 0: skeleton, config, migrations, health check, container 2026-10-09 16:26:08 -04:00
Dockerfile Web UI: Svelte app, embedded into the binary 2026-10-09 16:40:58 -04:00
entrypoint.sh Phase 0: skeleton, config, migrations, health check, container 2026-10-09 16:26:08 -04:00
go.mod Phase 6c: photo thumbnails and viewer 2026-10-09 21:22:30 -04:00
go.sum Phase 6c: photo thumbnails and viewer 2026-10-09 21:22:30 -04:00
Makefile dev: fix the Vite proxy and add a one-command dev runner 2026-10-10 16:32:32 -04:00
README.md dev: fix the Vite proxy and add a one-command dev runner 2026-10-10 16:32:32 -04:00

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 PDF reading (pdf.js) done
5 Job queue, metadata (Open Library, Google Books, MusicBrainz, ComicVine, IGDB) 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_IGDB_CLIENT_ID (none) Enables game metadata via IGDB
VELLUM_IGDB_CLIENT_SECRET (none) IGDB client secret (both required)
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
internal/
  core/              config, logging, database, migration runner
  httpx/             shared JSON helpers
  httpapi/           router, middleware, static SPA serving
  auth/              argon2id, sessions, grants, bootstrap
  library/           library CRUD, media-type registry, scanner
  media/             generic item/file/cover/progress endpoints
  progress/          the polymorphic per-user progress store
  stream/            range-capable file serving
  natsort/           natural ordering for pages and tracks
  jobs/              table-backed job queue
  metadata/          provider interface, Open Library, Google Books, enricher
  search/            FTS5 queries
  modules/
    ebooks/          EPUB parsing and cover extraction
    comics/          CBZ page listing and extraction
    photos/          thumbnail generation
web/                 Svelte app; dist/ is embedded via web/embed.go
migrations/          embedded SQL, applied in order at boot

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.

Schema rule: media items are global; everything user-specific is a join. Nothing may hold per-user state on a media row.

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.