I open sourced my book cataloging app

Albert Amat — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 22:16:44 +0000

So about two weeks ago I released Vaultisse, a free open source app for cataloging your own book collection (with optional loan tracking if you lend books to friends). I posted it on r/selfhosted and honestly the response was way better than I expected - 72 stars, 5 forks, 650+ downloads. Now I want to get it in front of more people than just that one subreddit, so here's the story of why I built it and what it does.

Why I built it
I own a lot of physical books and I kept losing track of what I actually have, what I've lent out to who, and where things are on the shelf. Goodreads and LibraryThing exist but they're not really built for that, they're more about tracking what you've read and reviews. I wanted something dead simple: what do I own, where is it, who has it right now.

Couldn't find anything that did just that without a ton of extra stuff I didn't need, so I built Vaultisse.

What it does
Nothing fancy, just:

• Catalog your books, shelf location and all
• Store EPUB, PDF and Kindle format copies for each book
• Auto fill book info by just scanning or entering the ISBN
• Import your existing library straight from Goodreads
• Track who you've loaned a book to and when it's due back
• Self host it or just use the hosted version, both free
• Open to anyone, no company or paywall behind it, I'm just one dev maintaining it in my spare time
• Share your vault with other people so they can add books too, great for a family sharing one home library

The stack
Built with Vue on the frontend and Node.js on the backend, the stuff I use daily at work so it was the fastest way for me to ship something real instead of getting stuck picking a framework for weeks.

One thing that took longer than expected was the loan tracking part, figuring out due dates, reminders and multiple copies of the same book without the data model turning into a mess. Still not 100% happy with it but it works.

Try it
Repo is at github.com/AlbertAmat/vaultisse, self host it or use the hosted version, both free.
If you end up trying it I'd love feedback, and if you like it a star on the repo genuinely helps other people find it. Thanks for reading!

DEV Community: Albert Amat

I open sourced my book cataloging app