Vaultisse for Physical Books and AI-Powered PCB Design

Homelab Highlights for 2026-09-11: self-hosting and homelab notes worth knowing.

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News Roundup

My first ever PCB, entirely designed by Claude

A blog post details a hobbyist’s successful attempt to design a printed circuit board using Claude’s Fable 5 model, where earlier model versions failed at component placement and routing. The author generated manufacturable design files without manual edits.

Why it matters: It’s a tangible, if early, example of AI models potentially lowering the barrier to entry for hardware design, showing a notable improvement in spatial reasoning for a specific task.

Source: Personal Blog

Tool & Software Highlight: Vaultisse – a self-hosted app to track a physical book collection

A developer has released Vaultisse, a self-hosted application for tracking physical book collections. It tracks individual copies by status (available, on loan, damaged, missing), pulls metadata via ISBN scan, manages borrowers, and tracks shelf locations. It offers a Docker Compose setup, supports multiple languages, and is MIT licensed.

Why it matters: For homelab users with physical media collections, this tool addresses a specific gap left by digital-focused apps, providing practical features for lending and organization with a straightforward deployment.

Source: GitHub

One Thing to Try

Sources

Transcript

Host A: Welcome to Homelab Highlights, the show that surfaces practical homelab wins and useful self-hosted tools.

Host A: A developer just shared Vaultisse, a self-hosted app built for tracking physical book collections. They’ve been running it personally for a while and cleaned it up enough to post on GitHub. It’s designed for home libraries, classrooms, or small lending setups.

What makes it stand out is tracking each physical copy independently—not just that you own a title, but the actual status of that specific book: available, on loan, damaged, or missing. You can scan or type an ISBN, and it pulls cover art and metadata from Google Books or the free Open Library API as a fallback. [conversational] There’s a borrower directory so you know who has what and for how long, plus shelf location tracking and barcode label printing for physical rescanning.

Host B: The full-text search and stats dashboard are solid too, and the UI supports English, Spanish, Catalan, and Italian. The stack is Vue 3 with Vuetify on the frontend, Express with TypeScript and PostgreSQL on the backend, using JWT-in-cookie auth.

For self-hosting, it’s a two-container Docker setup with Postgres and the app, or there’s a PM2 deployment path if Docker isn’t your thing. The repo also has a Cloudflare Tunnel guide and a one-click Unraid template, which is a nice touch for different homelab setups.

Host A: That shelf location tracking is a clever detail—so many book apps focus on digital files and forget about actual shelves. The developer provided a read-only demo to poke at before installing, and it’s MIT licensed.

In the comments, someone suggested a Goodreads CSV import feature to save manual entry, and the developer added it to the to-do list. The roadmap also mentions OPDS feed support and Kindle/Kobo sync as future possibilities. For anyone with a physical book collection they lend out, this looks like a genuinely useful niche tool.

Host B: Next, a blog post where someone designed their first printed circuit board entirely using Claude’s Fable 5 model.

The author had tried earlier Claude Opus models for PCB design but found they couldn’t handle component orientation or proper routing. With Fable 5, they generated a complete board design without any manual edits or verification. The board was a simple USB-C power input module with an LED, but the fact it was generated end-to-end is the story.

Host A: That’s an interesting data point on where these models are with hardware design. The author’s experience suggests a jump in capability for that specific use case. They noted previous attempts resulted in components placed off the board, but Fable 5 produced a manufacturable Gerber file on the first try.

Host A: For our tool highlight, let’s dig into Vaultisse’s deployment and operational setup from a homelab perspective.

The Docker Compose route is straightforward: pull the compose file and an example environment file, edit your environment variables, and bring up the two containers. That’s a single Node.js process and a Postgres database exposed on one port. The documentation is clear about needing to set the DATABASE_URL and JWT_SECRET environment variables—use a strong secret for production.

Host B: The repo also documents a PM2 path for those who prefer not to use Docker, which is a nice alternative. The DEPLOYMENT.md file covers Cloudflare Tunnel setups and even includes a one-click Unraid template.

Host A: [thoughtful] Here’s where it gets interesting operationally: the Google Books API key is optional. If you don’t set one, the app falls back to the free Open Library API, but you’re limited to 100 requests per day. That’s fine for personal use—you’re not scanning hundreds of books daily—but it’s worth knowing if you’re planning to bulk-import a collection.

The JWT-in-cookie auth means you’d typically front it with a reverse proxy like Nginx or Traefik, which fits right into most existing self-hosted setups. PostgreSQL is a hard dependency, so you need that container running. One more detail: the developer mentioned they had to tighten database permissions carefully during development to prevent visitors from writing to the demo, but accidentally locked the app out of its own session and audit log writes. That’s a good reminder to test your auth and permissions thoroughly before going live.

Host B: Our community highlight today comes from that personal blog post about designing a PCB entirely using Claude’s Fable 5 model.

The author had tried earlier Claude Opus models, but those couldn’t handle component orientation or proper routing. Disappointed, they assumed the tools weren’t ready yet. [skeptical] Earlier attempts with Opus resulted in components placed off the board or traces that didn’t connect properly.

Host A: Then, with just hours left on their weekly Claude reset, they tried Fable 5. According to the article, it generated a complete board design without any manual edits or verification needed from them. The author uploaded the generated Gerber files to a PCB manufacturer and is waiting for the physical boards to arrive.

Host B: What’s interesting here is the jump in capability between model versions. The author was specific about the earlier models failing at basic spatial reasoning—understanding where components go and how traces route. Fable 5 apparently solved that problem, at least for simple boards. This is one person’s experience, but it’s a concrete example of using an AI model to bridge a skill gap in hardware design for hobbyist projects.

Host A: That’s Homelab Highlights for Friday. Until next time, happy hosting!