Shelvy Books
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Hey HN! I built a little side project I wanted to share.Shelvy is a free, visual bookshelf app where you can organize books you're reading, want to read, or have finished. Sign in to save your own collection.Not monetized, no ads, no tracking beyond basic auth. Just a fun weekend project that grew a bit.Live: https://shelvybooks.comWould love any feedback on the UX or feature ideas!
HN · launched Jan 29, 2026 · 52 upvotes (top 20%) · 0 views
Niche: ebook and reading apps · 190 launches, 18 in the last 7 days ▼ -33% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Vertical SaaS
- B2C
- Not AI
- Commercial product
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 190 launches in ebook and reading apps →
Could you build this?
Yes A visual bookshelf app is a classic CRUD application with user authentication, database persistence, and external book metadata API lookups.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Goodreads, StoryGraph, Delicious Monster's Library app, Obsidian
Concerns raised: Book covers not found for some popular books, AI recommendation feature fails with unauthorized error, Large bounding box triggers unintended book popups, High friction for users with existing collections on other platforms
Feature requests: Add date read or date range/completed date tracking, Allow changing book cover editions, Support bookshop.org links instead of/in addition to Amazon, Clarify if comments/notes are private or social/visible to others, Self-host option or GitHub project availability
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 179 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #39 of 180 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 85 days after the earliest competitor.
- Book Shelved: Self-Hosted Audio & eBook · ph · 2026-09-30 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Shelfies · ph · 2026-09-14 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- See what readers who loved your favorite book/author also loved to read · hn · 2025-12-29 · 134 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- SelfShelf · ph · 2026-11-11 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Off Your Shelf · ph · 2026-11-04 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Brooksie · ph · 2026-10-17 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- bookstack-themed · github · 2026-10-02 · 21 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Borrowable · ph · 2026-11-10 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.43
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.