Inkubator

Inkubator is a local-first desktop application for managing and cataloging fountain pen and ink collections. It provides a centralized interface for pen, ink, and swatch management, activity tracking, statistics, and static showcase generation from local data.

Live Showcase Demonstration | Latest Releases

Features

Collection Management

• Pen Management: Maintain detailed pen records with structured fields such as manufacturer, model, nib material, tip size, nib type, filling system, condition, status, and additional details.
• Ink Management: Maintain detailed ink records including brand, line, name, color values, bottle and sample metadata, inventory and ownership state, performance characteristics (shading, sheen, shimmer, flow, dry time), and additional details.
• Swatch Management: Attach and manage multiple independent swatches per ink with per-swatch metadata, image support, and separate swatches for different testing conditions.
• Dynamic Filtering: Filter and browse pens, inks, and swatches using their metadata to quickly locate specific items and hide irrelevant or empty views.
• Stats Page: Get a clear overview of your collection with totals, category breakdowns, and activity-based metrics in one place.
• Status and Activity Tracking: Track pen states (Inked, Cleaned, Resting) and keep an automatic log of additions, edits, and inking history, with optional inclusion in static website exports.
• Built-In Color Assistance: Optionally use local image analysis to isolate subjects and extract dominant color values from swatch photos.
• Dark Mode Support: Both the desktop application and the generated showcase include dark mode.
• Local Persistence: All data is stored in a structured data.json file without mandatory account creation or cloud dependency.

Data Integrity & Portability

• Manual and Automated Backups: Create backups on demand or rely on scheduled snapshots for both data and images.
• Full Archive Export: A manual Export/Import feature allows for complete library migration between devices by bundling data and media into a single portable archive.

Static Site Generation (SSG)

• Showcase Export: The application generates a responsive, read-only static website from the local database.
• Deployment: The showcase/ directory is portable and compatible with any static hosting provider (e.g., GitHub Pages, Vercel, S3).

Technical Stack

• Core Runtime: Electron / Node.js
• Frontend: Vanilla JavaScript / CSS3
• Image Processing: Sharp (WebP optimization, metadata-aware rotation)
• ML Inference: ONNX Runtime
• Filesystem: fs-extra for persistent JSON storage

Getting Started

Binary Execution

Pre-compiled binaries for supported operating systems are available via the GitHub Releases page.

Source Build & Development

Prerequisites: Node.js (v18.0.0+) and npm (v9.0.0+).

1. Repository Initialization:

   git clone https://github.com/aloglu/inkubator.git
   cd inkubator

2. Dependency Installation:

   npm install

3. CLI Commands:

   • npm start: Initialize the Electron management interface.
   • npm run showcase: Launch a local development server for the static showcase.
   • npm run build:linux:flatpak: Build a Linux Flatpak package artifact (run on Linux with Flatpak tooling available).

License

Released under the MIT License.