Solo devs ship comic tools with broken AI-generated frontends
10 posts across 7 communities in the last 30 days; 30% from r/selfhosted.
“there is an issue: [Feature] Komga compatible api · Issue #748 · bookorbit/bookorbit so maybe it will be implemented”
“Full disclosure, I’m working on TankoVault. If self-hosting is an absolute requirement then this won’t tick that box, so ignore me in that case, But the physical manga problem you described is basically exactly what it’s for — tracking individual volumes you own, missing…”
“Yeah I'm not dismissing the fact that there is slop. There absolutely is. There was slop before AI. But I'm a software engineer and basically don't write code anymore. AI is here and its not going anywhere. I think really the issue here is lack of project maturity and maintainer…”
Developers, particularly those working solo or on smaller projects, are facing challenges in creating user interfaces and frontends. They're relying heavily on AI tools like Codex and Claude to assist, indicating a lack of expertise or resources for frontend development.
SOURCES (60)
“Describe your suggested feature It looks like we can't translate English source manga at the moment; it just keeps showing empty Other details No response Acknowledgements [x] I have searched the existing issues and this is a new ticket, NOT a duplicate or related to…”
“I need to make short comic for university assignment, but I don’t have any story for this. I have book ideas, but I wanted something different for a comic. Please help submitted by /u/Odd-Print-7031 [link] [comments]”
“I'm looking for a small group of serious Alpha testers for Loriginary , a browser-based creation platform for comic creators, character designers, writers, worldbuilders, RPG creators, and AI-assisted artists. Loriginary includes: deep character creation visual reference management character consistency tools AI prompt construction character sheets RPG conversion story and production tools cards / collectibles / merch concepts templates universe and worldbuilding tools I'm not looking fo”
“Kavita is the best for comics imo. Organizing the underlying folder structure is a bit of a pain, but once you have that flow set up - everything works perfectly”
“I'm reviving this thread to ask what reader client might access this collection. I know that is not the same project but maybe we have a jellyfin-like project for comics selfhosted? Thanks <3”
“Two years ago, I started working on a comic reader for my own use. I didn't like Kavita's webtoon reader on mobile, so I hacked one together during a vacation. Later I decided to turn that into a full-blown comic, manga and book reading server. After releasing the first public alpha six months ago , Voltis finally transitioned to beta yesterday, with completely revamped docs! It's ready for use, but I'll keep it in beta until it has all the features I want for a full v1. Installa”
“i am trying to read some mangas from comix, but it refuses to load any images no matter what i do. there was some kind of initial loading error or something earlier and i kinda forgot what it said exactly but it wouldn’t even load anything from the source page. it was “fixed” by me redoing the captcha but then i noticed that the images wouldn’t load on what i was trying to read. i have cleared cashes, created extra space on my phone, loading the actual source to try to possibly kickstart it and”
“When you report an issue please be sure to: 1. Include the URL of the manga and specify what its chapter gives the issue 2. Paste/Upload the jvm log.txt file! You'll can find the jvm log.txt file created automatically by the program in the same folder where the program's executable is. Hello. mangatown.com seems to be listed as supported website, but when fetching mangas, JAM displays nothing. I suppose that the website had an update that broke everything at some point? Thank you for your hard,”
“Actually, I could do this! I use mihon for my manga, so I could fork that (build off of it) and make this. Im not exactly sure how to make the spines, i will either go with a slice of the cover with the title on it, idk. Don't expect anything before the end of this year though”
“Hey everyone, Big update on ComicsNow, the self-hosted comic and manga reader I shared here a while back. Since my last post it's had a total redesign, plus a few features I think are worth calling out on their own. **Tagging is now fully built-in.** ComicTagger was a required dependency before; it isn't anymore. I built the metadata search and matching logic directly into ComicsNow, pulling from multiple sources — Comic Vine, Metron, GCD, LCG, and Google Books — so tagging your library”
“Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.”
“I love the last comic!!! Would you mind sharing the prompt??? Edit: They’re all great btw!”
“Hello, Would it be possible to implement functionality from this comic reader https://github.com/batunii/chika ? It could be a setting that the user enables or disables. It is similar to how Kindle handles comic panel reading. From the description: panel by panel comic reader for Android. Open a CBZ/CBR, and Chika finds the panels with an on device ML model and guides you through them one tap at a time. What it does: Tapping the right side of a page steps you into each panel in reading order — p”
“• Problem: Some mangas in this website have 2 different versions of manga (within the same language): the official and unofficial. They're the same chapters, but with different qualities and translations. If I use gallery dl to download them, it'll download both version, unless I go through every page in the website and collect links of each chapter for individual download. • Examples [ you can identify the official version with the green check mark besides the chapter number ] : 1. Gantz: https”
“No dark / navy blue background No burnt orange cta No pulsating circles No emojis as icons Thanks for blessing my eyes today OP”
“I have two websites for tools I give away for free while making a manga ( Mangaplay Studio and Fountain+ ) Long story short. I've started putting in genuine effort to write 100% human written articles to help new comic writers and screenplay writers but it feels like im feeding food to people using machine learning to just copy it, refine the keywords then pump out 5 versions of the same original and drown it in the rankings? Im wondering where the value still is for open human written artic”
“As we discussed in the announcement thread on Reddit, I would like this feature. I know I'm in the minority, but I feel like no other selfhosted comic management app offers this feature. I'm sure it could be set as an optional toggle in the settings panel with warnings around it so no one accidentally enables it. My reasoning is I just don't want to be locked into yet another viewer/reader/manager that could be enshitified later or abandoned and my data be locked into their proprietary formattin”
“I've been working on Librarr for the past few months, along with a bunch of great contributions from the community. It's a self-hosted media (books, manga, and audiobooks) acquisition and management app for the *arr stack, with a particular focus on filling the gap left by the now-deprecated Readarr. I shared this a while ago, but it has gotten far more capable since then so I thought i would reshare this. Librarr: https://github.com/JeremiahM37/librarr I've also been working on Gama”
“I’m the solo developer behind AI MANGA, an 11-language publishing platform for AI-assisted comics. Twelve days ago, another creator-tool founder found one of my Reddit posts and asked for a “Publish to AI MANGA” integration. At that point I had no public API, only the normal browser upload flow. I decided to build the integration as a reusable platform feature instead of a private endpoint. The most interesting technical constraint was package size: a comic can contain up to 100 images, so proxy”
“Would you consider adding MangaBaka as another mapping source for manga? I've been getting repeated 500 Internal Server Error responses from the Hato API while syncing manga, and I noticed that MangaBaka provides an API with IDs from both MyAnimeList and AniList , among other databases. Maybe it could be useful either as a fallback when Hato fails , or even as an optional/main mapping provider , if that makes sense for how the project works. I'm not very familiar with the technical side of these”
“Yeah, I was using mdx manually as well, but it's 2026, we don't have robot-maids yet, at least we can have a manga-maid that remember to check for me and lets me know when stuff is added to my local library!”
“I use it for mangas but I only have two in there right now to test. I had AI build a schedule, scrapper, downloader that puts each chapter in book orbit.”
“bummer. they keep pushing all their good features behind their paid subscription. that was the one thing that helped me go to sleep :( guess im not sleeping tonight!”
“Pretty sure they rolled that into the premium feature set a while back. It was there for free for ages but they keep shuffling little things like that around without saying anything.”
“there is an issue: [Feature] Komga compatible api · Issue #748 · bookorbit/bookorbit so maybe it will be implemented”
“Check out https://github.com/Suwayomi/Suwayomi-Server instead of mylar. just hook it up to a repository and then install readcomicsonline, and there you go.”
“https://komikku-app.github.io/ This. Is an app that makes the experience of reading the comics way nice, if you have a large tablet it even supports dual page, that's all. I hope bookorbit one day will support komga API. Another thing that annoys me on the web view, is that it doesn't have a 'read next issue' for comics..”
“Yes, but does it work with apps like Mihon? I usually connect my Mihon-like apps to "Komga" , never OPDS.”
“A cool tip for everyone: Look up suwayomi-server on google, and set it up so it downloads the comics automatically everyday wednesday. You'll need to add a 'extension repository' so you can hook it up to readcomicsonline, and other manga websites. https://github.com/keiyoushi/extensions https://github.com/Suwayomi/Suwayomi-Server * Note: In order to make it download automatically new releases, create a new library category 'Monitored' (or something) and update your app settin”
“What issues were you having with Komga? I can't say I've ever had any personally but all of my comics get downloaded and sorted into a proper folder structure that works for Komga.”
“I’ve been suggested a few similar things the last few days on here. Yours sounds the best so far, so I’ll definitely give it a look.”
“I just checked number sequence. I didn't even resolved it it just creates a report. Maybe report could be a getcomics search, I guess. Dunno if it's url based. I can find it and send it to you on pvt?”
“Tried it the other day and didn’t like the grouping. Still trying to find something that works how without organizing stuff weird.”
“I personally detest Mylar. So hard to use, interface makes no sense at all, doesn’t clean up files well. I prefer kapowarr. It doesn’t do everything perfect by any means, but it has a better interface and easier to understand. I also prefer komga over kavita, but more personal preference than actual ability.”
“I actually set this up yesterday. I really like it especially for ebooks, but I do find it awkward that it doesn't group comics by run. Have you found a way to get around that, or do you just deal with single issues filling your view?”
“I like komga... And I donwload on getcomics. It helps to have a script that shows what's missing on your collection. So you know where to look. It's easy to find if 05 07, but there should be a catalog you check even the latest (like you have till 08 but title goes to 12). I'm all for partial automation with instructions to use. Better than a janky total automation that gets you frustrated because you need to fix constantly.”
“Hey everyone, I am at a loss with selfhosting comic books. I have a well functioning Calibre / Calibre-Web / Kobo process for selfhosting books and manga but I want to read comics on a different device. Additionally, the way comic books are released is not that great for this workflow (but I will get back to this later). For comics I currently have Komga running with Komelia on my Android tablet. It works - but: The way comic book metadata work (with the xml file inside the cbz/cbr) and the way”
“PWA is special way of creating websites which can be installed as normal apps. Suwayomi doesn't have swipe gestures as far as I know.”
“For sites like Mangadex which have an API, just plain old fetch from Node. Some other sites also work like this. I have the rip spaced out so I am not hammering their API constantly. Don't want to abuse it, and traffic appears more human. I have it set up in my web ui so I get a preview of all of the pages. I can then export and save that as a .pdf or as a folder. I can also flatten the sub-folders and rearrange/remove pages as I want. Previously, this was a process I was doing on my desktop”
“Bro this shit is so ass, it has no plot, no backstory, and took no effort. Please at the very least start fresh and give it an actual chance at succeeding by putting in some work”
“The release number doesn't have a 1 in the numbering system yet but other than that I don't know where they consider it. It isn't as feature rich as a mature program but I've never had any issues with it personally. https://github.com/rodonisi/kover”
“Full disclosure, I’m working on TankoVault. If self-hosting is an absolute requirement then this won’t tick that box, so ignore me in that case, But the physical manga problem you described is basically exactly what it’s for — tracking individual volumes you own, missing volumes, covers/search and upcoming English releases: https://tankovault.com/ I’d only suggest it as a hosted alternative though, not a self-hosted replacement.”
“It used to be better, but since the takedown, it requires everything to be separate”
“I have a local server app that uses Gemma-4 31B to translate japanese web novels to english. I configure it between 10-15 chapters context history, and it also does a lorebook update pass after each chapter which adds characters/concepts/locations etc which includes details like original japanese for the names so name translations can never become inconsistent. I would say it works well enough to produce a robust translation that is consistent for an entire novel if I were to just set the transl”
“tbh I've been meaning to containerize my KCC workflow for ages — constantly fighting with Python envs when I need to batch convert a series. does this handle CBZ/CBR inputs natively or does it expect the raw image folders?”
“i been meaning to make one, i have the code somewhat done but i need alot of help because im lost, can you help me”
“Sutra 2.0 is finally here! It has been a labor of love, and I’m excited to get it in front of you all. What’s new, all free: • Panel-aware comic reading — isolates individual panels on your comics instead of shrinking the whole page to fit a phone screen • Epub auto-scroll — the Marvin feature people have been asking for since it went defunct • Side-loading — read local files with no server needed at all The panel-aware comic reading is the one I’m most proud of — I built a dedicated test suite”
“so I've been looking for a clean solution to not only storing my downloaded comics, but also reading them from my home server. If you guys have any recommendations, please let me know! submitted by /u/Scared_North_1197 [link] [comments]”
“Buggy and extremely vibe coded, got an error pretty much straight away due to dead links https://preview.redd.it/vt455xs00ehh1.jpeg?width=1220&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=518f41fb75bbeec132d8cccd47a927147b273814”
“I actually think the art style could become your biggest differentiator if it's done well. The only thing I'd be careful about is making sure the visuals don't distract from the story. People watch true crime for the storytelling first, so the animation should help create atmosphere, not become the main attraction. Since you're creating everything yourself, I'd start with a few shorter videos to test whether viewers connect with the style before investing weeks into longer pr”