AI Disclosure: This app was heavily vibe coded with Claude Code over a weekend to see what Claude was all about.

Reading Challenge Tracker (Node.js + React)

A self-hosted reading tracker with a Node.js/Express API, SQLite storage, and a React frontend.

Features

• Year-based reading dashboard per user
• Sections for Finished, Currently Reading, and Want to Read
• Multi-user support with admin panel
• Public shareable profile pages (/u/:username)
• Reading goal + pace tracking
• Cover lookup from Google Books and Open Library
• Book stats (all-time totals, top authors, top genres)
• Drag-and-drop reordering of the Want to Read list
• SQLite persistence (data/books.db)

Tech Stack

• Backend: Node.js, Express, better-sqlite3, express-session, bcryptjs
• Frontend: React + Vite
• Database: SQLite

Requirements

• Node.js 20+
• npm 10+

Quick Start

1. Install dependencies:

npm install

2. Configure environment:

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env with your values

3. Start development mode (API + React dev server):

npm run dev

4. Open:

http://localhost:5173

The API runs on http://localhost:8000 in dev.

First Login

On first startup the server seeds an admin account from your .env values:

• Username: value of USERNAME
• Password: value of APP_PASSWORD

Log in at the root URL (/). After the initial seed those env vars are no longer used for authentication — passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes in the database.

User Management

Admins can manage users at /admin:

• Add users — set a username, password, and optional admin flag
• Reset passwords — set a new password for any user
• Delete users — removes the user and all their books

Each user has a completely isolated reading list, goals, and stats.

Public Profiles

Every user has a public, read-only profile at:

/u/:username
/u/:username/year/:year

Private books are hidden from public views. Copy your public link from the user menu (share icon) in the header.

Production

1. Build frontend:

npm run build

2. Start server:

npm run start

You can use a process manager like PM2, a native systemd service, or Docker to keep the app running in the background.

Option A: Docker

Requires Docker with the Compose plugin.

docker compose up --build -d

To redeploy after pulling changes:

docker compose up --build -d

The --build flag rebuilds the image (including the frontend build step) and restarts the container. The database is persisted via a bind mount to ./data/books.db on the host.

Option B: Using PM2

# Install PM2 globally
npm install pm2 -g

# Start the app with PM2 (uses ecosystem.config.js)
pm2 start

# Save the PM2 config
pm2 save

# Set PM2 to start on system reboot
pm2 startup

Option C: Using systemd

Create a service file:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/reading-challenge.service

Add the following (adjust User and paths to match your setup):

[Unit]
Description=Reading Challenge App
After=network.target

[Service]
User=pi
WorkingDirectory=/home/user/reading-challenge
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node /home/user/reading-challenge/server/index.js
Environment=NODE_ENV=production
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and start the service:

sudo systemctl enable reading-challenge
sudo systemctl start reading-challenge

3. Set up a reverse proxy (optional)

To access your app over HTTPS with a domain name:

1. Point a domain or subdomain (e.g. books.yourdomain.com) to your server's IP.
2. If hosting at home, set up port forwarding on your router for ports 80 and 443.
3. Use a reverse proxy such as Nginx Proxy Manager or Cloudflare Tunnels.
4. Point incoming traffic for your domain to http://<your-server-ip>:8000.

In production, Express serves the built React app from client/dist.

Environment Variables

Variable	Description	Required
SECRET_KEY	Session cookie signing key	Yes
APP_PASSWORD	Initial admin password (first-run seed only)	Yes (first run)
USERNAME	Initial admin username (first-run seed only)	Yes (first run)
GOOGLE_BOOKS_API_KEY	Google Books API key for cover lookup	No
PORT	Backend port (default 8000)	No
CLIENT_ORIGIN	Dev CORS origin (default http://localhost:5173)	No

APP_PASSWORD and USERNAME are only used to seed the first admin account. Once the users table is populated they have no effect.

Data Backup

All reading data is in data/books.db:

cp data/books.db books-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).db