Self Hosted Manga/Comics Downloader
I’m working on a self-hosted project called InkDrop. Small naming caveat: this is unrelated to the commercial Inkdrop notes app, and I may rename it before sharing publicly.
The basic idea is: Kavita is great as a library/reader, but I wanted an Arr-like layer for tracking missing comics/manga, finding candidates, importing files, and explaining what happened.
InkDrop is my attempt at that.
It currently acts as a queue and automation layer around Kavita. It tracks series, issues, wanted items, queue state, source attempts, downloads, imports, provider health, history, and manual-review exceptions. The UI is trying to feel closer to Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr than a pile of scripts: Series, Wanted, Queue, Downloads, Imports, History, Settings, Diagnostics, Activity, etc.
What it does:
Tracks wanted comics/manga using its own state instead of relying on Kapowarr as the source of truth.
Uses ComicVine metadata for series/issue identity.
Checks what Kavita already has before treating something as missing.
Searches configured sources through a source ladder. SLSKD has been a useful integration here.
Hands downloads to qBittorrent/SABnzbd where appropriate.
Handles imports through a verification path instead of blindly copying files into the library.
Keeps manual review for ambiguous/unsafe cases instead of making every miss a user task.
Tracks source attempts, bad candidates, provider health, retries, and history so failures are explainable.
Has early support for pack/weekly comic handling, including trying to map individual wanted issues inside broader packs.
Has a settings-backed provider model, though most providers are intentionally gated/disabled until explicitly configured.
What it is not:
Not a polished public app yet.
Not a Kavita replacement.
Not a universal downloader.
Not designed to bypass paywalls, captchas, Cloudflare, logins, or sketchy source restrictions.
Not currently packaged with a clean installer.
Not something I’d tell a non-technical user to deploy today.
Not trying to loosen title/language/issue matching just to get more hits.
One thing I should be transparent about: I’m leaning heavily on AI while building this. Not in a “vibe-coded and hope it works” way, but as a pair-programming/review/hardening loop. A lot of the recent work has been around making the system more explicit: durable state, smoke tests, source safety gates, better diagnostics, fewer silent failures, and clearer operator surfaces.
The reason I’m posting is to see if anyone else would actually want this.
If there’s interest, I’d spend time turning it from “my homelab tool” into something shareable: Docker setup, installer/bootstrap flow, config docs, safer defaults, screenshots, and a public repo cleanup. If nobody else wants it, I’ll probably keep it as a personal Kavita automation layer and keep iterating privately.
Would anyone here use something like this: an Arr-style acquisition/queue companion for Kavita focused on comics/manga, explainable automation, and conservative source handling?