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4 starsRust

Booksearch – fast TUI search for book collections

by rahimnathwani·Apr 30, 2026·2 points·0 comments

AI Analysis

●●SolidDark HorseCozySolve My Problem

Indexes ebooks in place without Calibre's file renaming, shares via magic-wormhole.

Strengths
  • SQLite sidecar index leaves your original folder structure completely untouched.
  • Magic-wormhole integration enables direct P2P sharing without central servers.
  • Native EPUB parsing via rbook avoids Calibre dependency for most files.
Weaknesses
  • Requires Calibre CLI installed for non-EPUB formats like PDF and MOBI.
  • Terminal-only interface limits cover art rendering to specific terminal emulators.
Category
Target Audience

Ebook collectors who hate Calibre's library management

Similar To

Calibre · Kavita · Calibre Web

Post Description

booksearch walks the current directory, builds a local index of every ebook it finds, and gives you instant typeahead search over titles, authors, and filenames.

Pick a book and hit Enter to send it to another device via magic-wormhole without uploading anywhere or signing up for anything.

Written in rust by Claude.

No external dependencies for searching epubs (as it uses the rbook crate).

For other file types (e.g. mobi and pdf) it requires calibre's ebook-meta cli to be installed.

I made this because I wanted to quickly search a folder of epubs, see covers etc.

Before that, I tried:

- Calibre is excellent but makes a copy of every book you add to its library.

- Kavita seems more focused on series than individual books. Plus I had some problems diagnosing problems with the initial library scan.

Of course a tui is not for everyone.

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