Ember

Self-hosted RSS/Atom reader. A single Go binary serving an embedded Svelte SPA, a JSON API + Fever shim, and a background poller that ingests feeds into SQLite (FTS5). Everything runs in containers.

AI is fully optional. Ember can summarize articles with a small local LLM via Ollama, but it's an opt-out feature, not a dependency. Set EMBER_DISABLE_SUMMARIES=1 (or run the stack without the ollama sidecar) and the reader works exactly the same — no summary card, no model download, no inference, no LLM-related code paths. Even when enabled, everything runs on your own box; no article content leaves the host. Pick the deployment that matches your stance.

Install

Three options, in order of effort. Each has a walkthrough in docs/getting-started.md:

1. Pre-built container (docs) — ghcr.io/brandonhon/ember:vX.Y.Z (also :X.Y, :X, :latest). Multi-arch linux/amd64 + linux/arm64. Either docker run a single container to kick the tires, or swap the build: block in deploy/docker-compose.yml for image: ghcr.io/brandonhon/ember:vX.Y.Z to pull instead of building.
2. Pre-built binary (docs) — download from Releases. Four tarballs (linux-{amd64,arm64}, darwin-{amd64,arm64}) + SHA256SUMS. Includes a sample systemd unit.

   VERSION=v0.6.0
   curl -L -o ember.tar.gz \
     "https://github.com/brandonhon/ember/releases/download/${VERSION}/ember-${VERSION}-linux-amd64.tar.gz"
   tar -xzf ember.tar.gz && ./ember --version

3. From source — see Local development.

Quickstart (Docker)

cd deploy
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env — set EMBER_SESSION_KEY (32+ random bytes) and EMBER_ADMIN_PASSWORD
docker compose up -d

Open https://localhost (Caddy serves the SPA + reverse-proxies the API). Log in with the admin credentials you set in .env.

On first boot:

1. The ollama-pull container fetches the configured model (default qwen2.5:0.5b).
2. The ember container creates the admin user from EMBER_ADMIN_USER / EMBER_ADMIN_PASSWORD.
3. The poller starts on a 60s tick (configurable via EMBER_POLL_TICK).

You'll land on an onboarding panel that points to starter packs or OPML import. Pick a pack and you're off.

Features

Reading

• Three-pane layout (sidebar / list / reader); single-pane drawer on mobile (≤900px).
• Smart views: Today, Fresh, All Unread, Starred, Read Later, Shared with me.
• Folders (categories) with rename, color, drag-to-reorder.
• Mute feeds; per-feed and aggregate unread badges; "!" badge on errored feeds.
• Cross-feed article dedup with "Also in N feeds" pill.
• Article actions: star, save for later, share (user / email / copy link), board pick.
• Reading-time estimate (200 wpm) on cards and in the reader.

AI summaries

• Paragraph + bullet-point summary card in the reader.
• Per-user toggle for the summary card, plus install-time EMBER_DISABLE_SUMMARIES / EMBER_DISABLE_IMAGES.
• Admin-only LLM controls (Settings → Language model):
  • Auto-detected hardware recommendation (ember probe).
  • Switch active model live (no restart).
  • Pull / delete models from Ollama's cache.
  • Tuning sliders for temperature / top_p / num_ctx (persisted).
• AI ad-stripping: the model also returns a CLEANED body with newsletter signups, podcast/app promos, and social follow asks removed. Falls back to the original when the model can't produce a full body.

Search + filters

• FTS5 full-text search; submitting from the topbar opens a dedicated results view.
• Saved searches: persist a query as a sidebar entry.
• Filter rules with mark_read, star, or hide actions.
• "Mute" popover in the reader actions adds a hide-by-keyword rule in one click.
• Per-article user tags, with a ?tag=… filter on the list endpoint.

Onboarding + organization

• Five curated starter packs (Technology, Programming, Security, DevOps & Infra, World News).
• OPML import/export. Optional scheduled OPML export to /data/exports/.
• Subscribe by URL: paste either a feed URL or just the homepage. Ember follows <link rel=alternate> and probes common feed paths (/feed, /rss, /atom.xml, /feed.xml, /index.xml).
• Drag-to-reorder feeds and folders.
• Mark-all-read at view / feed / category scope.

Sign-in

• Password (argon2id) by default.
• Passkeys / WebAuthn: optional. Register from Settings → Passkeys; sign in with Touch ID / Face ID / hardware key. Requires EMBER_PUBLIC_URL.

Daily digest email

• Opt-in nightly email summarizing your chosen view (Fresh / Today / Unread / Starred / Later).
• Pick the hour + minute in UTC, optionally override the From / To address.
• Configured via Settings → Daily digest. Requires the EMBER_SMTP_* env vars.

Notifications + auto-refresh

• 15-second polling for new articles while the tab is visible (also fires on tab refocus).
• Canvas-rendered favicon with a green notification dot when unread items arrive.
• Page-title prefix (N) Ember so narrow tab strips show the count too.
• Installed as a PWA, new articles trigger an OS-level numeric badge on the app icon.

Themes + branding

• 8 themes: Auto (matches OS), Light, Dark, Solarized, Sepia, Nord, Gruvbox, High contrast.
• Custom theme: pick 3 colors (paper/ink/ember); the rest is derived via CSS color-mix().
• Admin branding: app name, browser-tab title, favicon URL.

Admin

• ember probe subcommand reports RAM/CPU/GPU and recommends a model.
• Settings → Database: size, manual backup (VACUUM INTO), manual cleanup, schedules.
• Schedules persist in app_settings and run via an hourly maintenance goroutine.
• User management (create / update / delete / role).
• Resummarize-all to re-process every article after a prompt or model change.

Other

• Reading stats: today/week/30-day, totals, top feeds.
• All confirmations use an in-app modal (no window.confirm).
• Fever-compatible mobile clients via /fever.
• WCAG 2.1 AA passes (axe-core via Playwright).
• PWA: manifest + service worker (cache-first assets, network-first /api).

Configuration

Required environment

Var	Default	Purpose
EMBER_SESSION_KEY	(required)	securecookie key (32+ bytes)
EMBER_ADMIN_PASSWORD	(required first run)	first-run admin password

Optional environment

Var	Default	Purpose
EMBER_ADDR	:8080	listen address
EMBER_DB_PATH	/data/ember.db	SQLite file
EMBER_ADMIN_USER	admin	first-run admin username
EMBER_OLLAMA_URL	http://ollama:11434	summarizer endpoint
EMBER_OLLAMA_MODEL	qwen2.5:0.5b	initial model (admin can swap later)
EMBER_DISABLE_SUMMARIES	0	skip LLM summarization entirely
EMBER_DISABLE_IMAGES	0	drop article hero images at ingest
EMBER_FRESH_WINDOW	6h	"Fresh" cutoff
EMBER_POLL_CONCURRENCY	8	poller workers
EMBER_POLL_TICK	60s	scheduler tick
EMBER_SESSION_TTL	24h	session cookie lifetime (5m–90d); Settings → Sessions overrides at runtime
EMBER_LOG_LEVEL	info	slog level
EMBER_TEST_MODE	0	enables fake fetcher/summarizer for e2e
EMBER_PUBLIC_URL	(unset)	canonical scheme://host users hit; required to enable passkey sign-in
EMBER_SMTP_HOST	(unset)	SMTP host; required to enable daily-digest emails
EMBER_SMTP_PORT	587	SMTP port
EMBER_SMTP_USER	(unset)	SMTP auth user (optional)
EMBER_SMTP_PASSWORD	(unset)	SMTP auth password
EMBER_SMTP_FROM	(unset)	digest From: address
EMBER_SMTP_STARTTLS	1	enable STARTTLS on submission ports

Runtime-tunable settings (Settings UI)

Stored in the app_settings KV; persist across restarts:

• Active LLM model + temperature / top_p / num_ctx
• Branding (name, page title, favicon URL)
• DB backup schedule (off | daily | weekly) + keep-N
• DB cleanup schedule (off | weekly | monthly) + window in days
• OPML export schedule (off | weekly | monthly)
• Session cookie TTL (overrides EMBER_SESSION_TTL)
• SMTP relay (host / port / user / password / from / STARTTLS) for the daily digest
• Initial feed-backlog window (default 48h)

Local development

make web-install     # one-time
make test            # go tests
make web-test        # vitest
make embed           # build SPA + copy to internal/web/dist
make build           # produce ./bin/ember
EMBER_TEST_MODE=1 ./bin/ember   # listens on :8080 with the noop summarizer

Hot reload for the SPA:

cd web && npm run dev      # vite dev server, proxies /api → :8080
EMBER_TEST_MODE=1 ./bin/ember   # in another terminal
# visit http://localhost:5173

Mobile clients

Reeder, FeedMe, and other Fever-compatible apps can connect via /fever. The api_key is md5("<username>:<user_id>") — see /api/me for your user_id. (We can't use the canonical md5("user:pass") because passwords are stored only as argon2id hashes.)

E2E

make embed build              # produce ./bin/ember with the SPA embedded
cd web && npx playwright install chromium
npx playwright test           # spawns the binary in test mode against a temp DB

In test mode (EMBER_TEST_MODE=1) the binary seeds a deterministic admin (admin / admintest) plus 12 fixture articles and a single feed, so every spec has known data to assert against.

Database

SQLite with WAL mode, 64 MiB cache, 256 MiB mmap, busy_timeout=5s, synchronous=NORMAL. Single connection — SQLite serializes writes, and the workload is small enough that the connection pool isn't a bottleneck. PRAGMA optimize runs after every startup migrate. Backups via VACUUM INTO are safe to run live.

Migration files live under internal/db/migrations/ and are embedded into the binary.

Architecture

See docs/architecture.md for the request lifecycle, poller state machine, and summarizer pipeline.