Self-Hosted Book Tracking
Replaces: Goodreads, StoryGraph, Amazon reading lists
Self-host BookWyrm to track your reading and reviews with ActivityPub federation, outside Goodreads or Amazon.
big-tech-surveillancetrackingdata-breach
Phase
First Self-Hosting — needs server/hardware, 2-4h
General
Self-hosted book tracking with reading lists, reviews, and ActivityPub federation.
- BookWyrm: Python/Django, Docker. Import from Goodreads/StoryGraph CSV. Track reading status (to-read, reading, finished), rate and review books, organize into shelves/lists.
- Federation: BookWyrm speaks ActivityPub — your reviews and reading activity can be shared with other BookWyrm instances (or kept private). You control what's shared.
- Agent integration: Hermes books-agent skill provides natural language queries ("What did I think of X?", "What's on my to-read shelf?"), reading recommendations based on history, and bulk import/export.
- API: REST API for programmatic access to your library.
- Trade-off: Smaller community than Goodreads. Book metadata from OpenLibrary (free, community-maintained) — less complete than Amazon for some books. Federation is optional — runs fully standalone.
- BookWyrm: Python/Django, Docker. Import from Goodreads/StoryGraph CSV. Track reading status (to-read, reading, finished), rate and review books, organize into shelves/lists.
- Federation: BookWyrm speaks ActivityPub — your reviews and reading activity can be shared with other BookWyrm instances (or kept private). You control what's shared.
- Agent integration: Hermes books-agent skill provides natural language queries ("What did I think of X?", "What's on my to-read shelf?"), reading recommendations based on history, and bulk import/export.
- API: REST API for programmatic access to your library.
- Trade-off: Smaller community than Goodreads. Book metadata from OpenLibrary (free, community-maintained) — less complete than Amazon for some books. Federation is optional — runs fully standalone.
Deployment
Self-Hosted
BookWyrm (federated, self-hosted book tracking)
Prerequisites
file-sync, backup-strategy