"Hey, this looks like it was vibe-coded in a few hours!"
First, I am so glad you read until here. Second, it took months of my free time tinkering with LLMs to get exactly what I want.
Yes, HobbyBoard is built with Gemini-3 and Claude and a lot of patience. I did my best to guardrail the LLM models to use idiomatic Rust, resilient operational logic etc. However, HobbyBoard is not handcrafted at code level. It is handcrafted at operational level.
I have 50K images, will HobbyBoard handle it?
What kind of machine do you have? Find out and tell me?
(It probably will, it's Rust).
Why not just use $SaaS?
I am cheap, creative, and an engineer who would rather spend EUR 300 on tools and 1 month of free time to build a desk for kids than going to IKEA to buy a similar looking one for EUR 30.
Can my AI send PRs?
My AI agent will review the PR and run it through a battery of tests first. If my AI deems it worthy, I will manually review it.
How do I pay you?
You don't. HobbyBoard solves my problem. I don't want to turn this into a job. If it solves your problem too, that's cool.
Who are you? What else do you do?
I work a full-time job as Site Reliability Engineer. Dad of two curious and active kids. I do wood working for inner peace.
What AI models does HobbyBoard support?
Any local model via Ollama, Gemini via API, and OpenAI via API.
Can I run HobbyBoard on a NAS or Raspberry Pi?
Sure, run HobbyBoard wherever you can and feed it your media. Access your collection over the web UI or the iOS app (in development).
How do I back up my HobbyBoard library?
HobbyBoard does not modify your original images at raw_images. It stores everything it needs in a directory named dist. Back up the dist directory periodically and you get point-in-time backups.
What data does HobbyBoard send to the internet?
HobbyBoard makes calls to your chosen vision model provider API if you selected one. Otherwise, no data is collected — no telemetry, no profiles, no update checks, not even remote fonts.
Can I import images from Google Photos, Apple Photos, or other apps?
HobbyBoard operates on media at file level. Anything you can drag and drop into its interface, or download as files to a directory on the server, will work with HobbyBoard. The iOS app (in development) will support natively sharing any selection of photos from apps into HobbyBoard.