librarium-api

The backend service for Librarium, a self-hosted, privacy-focused tracker for your physical book, manga, and comic collection. A self-hosted alternative to Libib and similar cloud catalog services. Free and AGPL 3.0; there is no paid tier. iOS Lite is next up.

Go 1.25 · PostgreSQL 16 · River for background jobs · Swagger-generated OpenAPI docs.

⚠︎ Early beta. Things are changing fast, some edges are rough, and self-hosters should expect to read release notes before upgrading.

Part of the Librarium stack:

Repo	Role
librarium	Marketing site at librarium.press, planning docs
librarium-api ← you are here	Backend · Go · Postgres · River jobs
librarium-web	Web client · React · TypeScript · Tailwind · Vite
librarium-ios	Native iOS client · SwiftUI · iOS 26+ (TestFlight)
librarium-mcp	MCP server · Go · chat with your library from Claude / Cursor / etc.

Quickstart (development)

docker compose up -d --build

The API listens on :8080. A healthy response:

curl http://localhost:8080/health

API documentation is served at http://localhost:8080/swagger/index.html once the container is up.

For self-hosting the full stack (api + web + db) see the Deployment section below.

Environment

Set in docker-compose.yml for local dev; in production pass via environment or a secrets manager.

Variable	Purpose	Example
DATABASE_URL	Postgres DSN	postgres://librarium:librarium@db:5432/librarium?sslmode=disable
JWT_SECRET	HMAC secret for auth tokens	any long random string
LOG_LEVEL	debug / info / warn / error	info
COVER_STORAGE_PATH	Where cover images are written	/data/covers

A .env.example file documents the full set.

Local development

# rebuild and restart after any Go/migration/swagger change
docker compose up -d --build api

# follow logs
docker compose logs -f api

# regenerate swagger (after editing handler annotations)
make swagger

Migrations live in internal/db/migrations/ and are applied automatically on startup.

Versioning

Format: YY.MM.revision (e.g. 26.4.0).

• YY — two-digit release year.
• MM — release month, not zero-padded (26.4, not 26.04).
• revision — feature counter within the month, starting at 0. Resets to 0 when the month rolls over.
• -dev suffix — local, unshipped builds. Never used for released artifacts.

Release history in CHANGELOG.md.

Deployment

Two supported paths for self-hosting. Both use the multi-arch images published to GHCR — no local build required.

Docker Compose (whole stack)

deploy/docker-compose/ contains a compose file that runs db + api + web together using images from GHCR:

cd deploy/docker-compose
cp .env.example .env
# edit .env — set JWT_SECRET and POSTGRES_PASSWORD
docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:3000. The API is not published externally — it's reached through the web service's nginx proxy at /api.

Kubernetes

Two options live under deploy/:

• deploy/helm/librarium-api/ — Helm chart built on firelabs-helm-common with a CloudNativePG Cluster for Postgres. Use this if you already run CNPG, or want templated values across environments.
• deploy/kubernetes/ — plain manifests (namespace, StatefulSet postgres, ConfigMap, Secret, Deployment, Service, Ingress). Use these if you want to read every knob before applying, or you don't run CNPG.

For the web UI, apply the matching manifests from librarium-web/deploy/kubernetes/ into the same namespace.

In production, pin the image tag (e.g. ghcr.io/fireball1725/librarium-api:26.4.0) rather than using :latest so upgrades are explicit and rollbacks are possible.

Releasing

Releases are cut from main via the release GitHub Actions workflow (workflow_dispatch). It:

1. Computes the next YY.MM.revision from the latest tag.
2. Updates internal/version/version.go, commits release: <version>, tags v<version>.
3. Builds a multi-arch Docker image and pushes it to ghcr.io/fireball1725/librarium-api:<version> and :latest.
4. Bumps version.go to the next -dev revision, commits, pushes.
5. Creates a GitHub Release with auto-generated notes.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. PRs must sign off on the Developer Certificate of Origin (git commit -s) — a CI check enforces this.

Support

Questions, updates, and works in progress: FireBall Codes on Discord.

If this saved you some time, you can buy me a sushi roll.

License

AGPL-3.0-only. See LICENSE for the full text.

Who builds this

Created and maintained by FireBall1725 in Ontario, Canada. More projects and writing there, including why Librarium exists.

Patches welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md. Everyone who has landed code is on the contributors list.