jf-barcode-search: Scanning Barcodes to Query Jellyfin — and a Checklist for Open-Sourcing a Homelab Repo

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a problem specific to people who rip their own discs: you’re standing in a thrift store holding a $3 Blu-ray, and you genuinely cannot remember whether it’s already in your library. Pull out your phone, squint at a media app, type the title, hope you spelled it like the metadata does… by which point you’ve put it back.

So I built jf-barcode-search: point your phone camera at the barcode on the case, and it tells you instantly whether that title is already in your Jellyfin library. It’s a small Flask app, and this post covers both what it does and — because I decided to open-source it — the pre-flight review that makes a homelab repo safe to publish, which is a checklist worth having regardless of what you’re releasing.

Open-Source on Linux Colorado

jf-barcode-search: Scanning Barcodes to Query Jellyfin — and a Checklist for Open-Sourcing a Homelab Repo