DEV Community: Dipankar Shaw

I built a self-hosted alternative to Google Play Books for my PDFs, and I'm finally open-sourcing it.

Dipankar Shaw — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 13:51:55 +0000

Before this, I was using Google Play Book to upload a pdf and read it. But it has its few cons, most important one is it is not available for desktop.

For the past few months, I’ve been using a personal project I built to manage and read my PDF library. I originally built it because I wanted a way to read my own PDFs across all my devices without dealing with the vendor lock-in of platforms like Google Play Books.

It is basically strip down version of Google Play Books where I can upload my own PDFs, read them in the browser, highlight sentences, and bookmark pages. All of my progress and annotations are saved to a database, so I can seamlessly pick up where you left off on any device.

I’ve been using it daily for my own reading and it’s been working great. Since it’s been so useful to me, I figured it might be helpful to others. So, I’ve decided to open-source it so anyone can self-host it.

And I have named it Shelf Host.

About the stack:
I specifically designed it to be free. It’s built to run almost entirely on Cloudflare’s free tier (using Workers, D1, and R2). The only cost is R2’s pay-per-usage for storage, which is negligible for personal use, though it does require adding a card to your Cloudflare account.

You can check out the code and self-host it here:

dshaw0004 / shelfhost

Shelfhost

Shelfhost is a self-hosted PDF library, reader, and highlighting tool designed to provide a warm, focused, and distraction-free reading experience for your PDF collection.

Built using modern serverless tech stacks, Shelfhost can be deployed globally for $0/month on Cloudflare's free tier.

Key Features

Distraction-Free Reader: An interface designed to feel like sitting down with a good book — warm, focused, and unhurried. The browser UI chrome is minimal and retreats into the background while you read.
Text Highlights: Highlight text selections instantly. Supports multiple highlight colors (yellow, green, pink, blue) to organize your thoughts.
Page Bookmarks: Bookmark pages to easily navigate back to key reference points.
Auto-Resume Progress: Automatically tracks your reading progress (debounced on scroll) and resumes right where you left off.
Global Serverless Backend: Powered by Nuxt Nitro running on Cloudflare Workers and Pages, giving you instant load times anywhere in the…

View on GitHub

If you decide to try it out, please feel free to open issues for bugs or PRs for features.
And If you are a Product Hunt user, please feel free to upvote it there.

producthunt.com

Need your attention on my current project

Dipankar Shaw — Sat, 30 May 2026 22:30:00 +0000

I am currently working on a project. The concept is I select a github repository then it will automatically backs up that repository daily to a selected destination. Currently it only supports Google Drive and Dropbox for backup destination.

Current version is just a proof of concept. What I actually want to do is - it will take the repository and upload it to another git provider like gitlab etc. From then it will get only those commits that are not backed up and back up them. Basically automatic version controling.

It will help to have a back up copy of a project in other provider and easily migrate away from github to that git provider. I feel that we need this type of application now more than ever before. Slowly Github's quality is going down, it is having outages frequently. Their uptime dropped to 90% from 99%. A lot of developers are moving away from it but few developers don't want to. Perhaps they can't for any reason. I myself don't want to migrate away right now.

So I am thinking this concept can help those developers including me. What do you think. If you have any suggestions or queries let me know.
Also you can check the project at nexrepo.qzz.io

The Inefficiency Reward

Dipankar Shaw — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:58:19 +0000

This image is sourced from Work Chronicles, and all rights are reserved by them.

Stop Creating New Projects in the Name of Consistency

Dipankar Shaw — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 09:32:42 +0000

Stop lying to yourself. Having a repository count that hits triple digits doesn’t make you a senior developer—it makes you a serial quitter.

You need to stop rewarding the act of clicking “New Repository.” It’s the ultimate form of sophisticated procrastination. You’re not being “consistent” by starting something new every day; you’re just running away the second a project gets difficult.

Starting is easy. git init is a dopamine hit because there’s no technical debt, no broken dependencies, and no messy logic to untangle yet. But you don’t build skills in the first five commits. You build them in the 50th.

A profile littered with dozens of unfinished, one-commit repos is a massive red flag. It tells a hiring manager that you don’t have the grit to see a project through to production. They don’t care that you know how to initialize a project for the hundredth time; they want to see how you handled the boring, frustrating work of maintaining one.

True consistency is opening that same project folder you’ve been working on for three months and fixing a single, annoying bug. It’s refactoring your old, bad code instead of starting a “clean” version that you’ll just abandon again in a week.

Stop starting. Start finishing. One production-ready project is worth more than a hundred empty repositories.

Less than 10% of this guy’s repo have more than 10 commits.

Meet Numberle: The 6-Digit Puzzle That Will Break Your Brain (in a Good Way)

Dipankar Shaw — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 09:26:18 +0000

We all know the drill. Wake up, grab coffee, guess a five-letter word. But what if you’re tired of thinking about "crane" or "slate"? What if you want to feel like a Hollywood hacker cracking a safe code?

Enter Numberle.

It’s the classic Wordle formula you know and love, but we’ve swapped the dictionary for a numeric keypad. It’s faster, it’s purer, and it might just be the logic workout you’ve been waiting for.

How to Play

The rules are simple, but the mastery is hard. You have 6 chances to guess a secret 6-digit number (between 101,010 and 999,999). No leading zeros allowed!

Every time you enter a number, the tiles will change color to give you clues:

🟩 Green: You nailed it! Right digit, right place.
🟧 Orange: Close call! The digit is in the number, but it’s in the wrong spot.
⬛ Gray: Strike out. That digit isn't in the code at all.

Why You’ll Be Hooked

Numberle strips away the vocabulary barrier. You don’t need to know obscure words to win; you just need logic, pattern recognition, and a little bit of luck.

It’s a game of elimination. Is that "5" in the wrong spot, or is there a second "5" hiding elsewhere? Do you risk guessing high to narrow down the range?

It’s the perfect "espresso shot" of brain training for your morning break.

Ready to crack the code?

Play Numberle Now

VS code have added vide code meter

Dipankar Shaw — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:08:23 +0000

I wasn't using vs code for past few days. Recently i have updated it and started to work in it and found out that it now have a meter to show how deep are you into vibe coding. Mine is 44%, whats yours

Extension I use daily

Dipankar Shaw — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 09:02:31 +0000

I have made a kanban style browser extension to manage tasks when I have to move on a different branch for bug fix and other stuffs.

How I work ?

Suppose I am working on some feature which is not completed yet and I have to fix a bug on production or in a open PR which will be merged to production soon. I stash or commit the changes depending on situation, switch to bug fix branch, do the bug fix and test it then commit it. Then return to previous branch.

What issue I face ?

Sometimes I forgot exactly were I was because that bug was critical or it took way more time than expected and I got into too much. Therefore I loose the context of previous branch and feature, like -

What is done and what is pending ?
what to do next etc

What approach I was using

For sometimes I was using a text app write current progress and pending tasks stuffs. And it was working but I was looking for a better approach.

What better approach I found

I have made a kanban style simple project/task management webapp. Then I convert that to a chrome extension that replaces new tab with its ui. So whenever I start working on something I break that into small task to add them in that extension. Once a task is completed move it to done. Now even when I move back to task from working on a different task for a long time, I know what is done and what is pending.

Why didn't I use any other platforms or app

I could have used linear or another app for task tracking but the issue was I have to open another app or website to view that. Whereas with my extension it shows everything whenever I open a new tab which I do a lot.

How can you try it

If you are using firefox then you are lucky because I have added it to firefox extensions store.
Firefox Extension Store Link

For chrome users you have to use it as a webapp as it is not available in chrome web store.
Web App Link

Extension Landing Page

It is already tuesday for more than half of the world. Where is the meme monday

Dipankar Shaw — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 04:44:13 +0000

Can I see you in my office real quick

Dipankar Shaw — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 04:37:34 +0000

This image is sourced from Work Chronicles, and all rights are reserved by them.

We’re just finishing up… said every meeting ever

Dipankar Shaw — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 10:26:01 +0000

This image is sourced from Work Chronicles, and all rights are reserved by them.

Never say that's not my problem

Dipankar Shaw — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 10:50:00 +0000

This image is sourced from Work Chronicles, and all rights are reserved by them.

Never be a Yes Man

Dipankar Shaw — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 04:44:37 +0000

This image is sourced from Work Chronicles, and all rights are reserved by them.

DEV Community: Dipankar Shaw

I built a self-hosted alternative to Google Play Books for my PDFs, and I'm finally open-sourcing it.

dshaw0004 / shelfhost

Shelfhost

Key Features

Need your attention on my current project

The Inefficiency Reward

Stop Creating New Projects in the Name of Consistency

Meet Numberle: The 6-Digit Puzzle That Will Break Your Brain (in a Good Way)

How to Play

Why You’ll Be Hooked

VS code have added vide code meter

Extension I use daily

How I work ?

What issue I face ?

What approach I was using

What better approach I found

Why didn't I use any other platforms or app

How can you try it

It is already tuesday for more than half of the world. Where is the **meme monday**

Can I see you in my office real quick

We’re just finishing up… said every meeting ever

Never say that's not my problem

Never be a Yes Man

It is already tuesday for more than half of the world. Where is the meme monday