Novela

Novela is a self-hosted web application for managing and reading a personal digital library. It supports EPUB, PDF, and CBR/CBZ, with metadata editing, reading progress tracking, and Dropbox backups.

What Novela Provides

• Library import and indexing for EPUB/PDF/CBR/CBZ
• Home dashboard with continue reading and unread/read sections
• Reader support for EPUB, PDF, and comics (CBR/CBZ)
• Metadata editing (title, author, publisher, series, volume, tags, genres)
• New review workflow with list/grid view, column toggles, and bulk actions
• Reading analytics/statistics dashboard
• Dropbox backup with:
  • versioned snapshots
  • object deduplication
  • retention policy
  • scheduled background runs

Tech Stack

• FastAPI
• Jinja2 templates + vanilla JavaScript
• PostgreSQL 16
• Docker / Docker Compose style deployment

Repository Layout

• containers/novela/ - application code (routers, templates, static assets, migrations)
• stack/ - deployment stack files and environment configuration
• docs/ - technical status and changelog documentation
• build-and-push.sh - helper script for container build/push

Quick Start (Development)

1. Configure environment values in stack/novela.env.
2. Start the stack using your preferred Docker workflow (Compose/Portainer stack).
3. Open the app and complete backup credential setup on /backup if needed.

Key Environment Variables

• POSTGRES_DB
• POSTGRES_USER
• POSTGRES_PASSWORD
• NOVELA_MASTER_KEY
• CONFIG_DIR
• LIBRARY_DIR (optional override)

Documentation

• Technical status: docs/TECHNICAL.md
• Develop changelog: docs/changelog-develop.md

Disclaimer

This project was developed entirely with AI-assisted implementation workflows. Use it at your own discretion and responsibility, and validate behavior, security, and data handling for your environment before production use.

Status

This repository is actively evolving. The develop documentation reflects implemented behavior in the current codebase.