peter
10c0ca4cf7
Twelve mails carried hardcoded English while the app itself has enforced HU/EN parity since E5.
A mail is the one user-facing surface nobody can re-render by switching the UI language: it arrives
once, in whatever language we picked, and stays that way. That made the epic's own headline mail —
"one mail, one click" — English for a Hungarian reader.
The text moved to a catalog (`mailtext.py`) with a `text(key, lang, **vars)` renderer, and the parity
rule is now a test rather than a habit: every key must carry both languages AND the same
`{placeholders}`. A translation that drops `{link}` sends a mail with no link in it; one that invents
a placeholder raises inside a background task nobody is watching. Both are silent in production.
Every `send_*` takes the language as its second argument, resolved by the REQUEST handler and never
inside the mail — these all run as background tasks, after the request's session is gone, which is
the same reason the approval mail computes its link in the handler.
Where the language comes from, in order: the account's own preference; failing that, the language the
person asked us in; failing that, English. The middle one is new — `invites.lang`, migration `0082` —
because the mails an access request produces go to an address that usually has no account yet, and
the signal does exist: the page their form was submitted from, or the locale Google reported for a
sign-in we refused. Captured rather than derived, for the third time in this epic (`google_email` in
S3, `preferences.language` in S6 taught the same lesson): a signal that exists only in one moment
cannot be backfilled later. So the admin is asked in exactly one place — the invitation to an address
they typed in themselves, where nobody has ever told us anything.
That send is now a dialog rather than a bare click, which is also where the "you already wrote to
them" warning belongs — it used to live only in a tooltip the admin may never hover, guarding the one
action whose failure mode is mailing a real person twice.
S6's registration `lang` field turned out to be dead on arrival: the backend accepted it, the
frontend never sent it, so every account has been storing nothing. The request builders now stamp the
UI language themselves — a signal that has to be passed in by every caller is one every caller can
forget, which is exactly how it shipped unset.
Admins are notified one mail per language group instead of one blast to everyone. They are people
with their own UI language; a single message would have to pick one of them and be wrong for the rest.
Also removes a duplicated `invited_at` column declaration on `Invite` (two identical definitions
landed in S6).
Siftlode
Your YouTube subscriptions, the way a feed should work. Siftlode pulls every upload from the channels you follow into one clean, filterable feed — no algorithm deciding what you see, and no Shorts or livestream noise unless you want it. Self-hosted, multi-user, and private: your data stays on your own server.
Everything expensive (channels, videos, metadata) is fetched from YouTube once and stored locally, so filtering, searching and sorting are instant and don't burn API quota. Click a video to watch it in an in-app player that resumes where you left off — or open it on youtube.com so your own ad blocker and SponsorBlock keep working.
Features
- A readable subscription feed — sort and filter by channel, tag, language, topic, length, upload date or watch state; hide channels without unsubscribing; save filter setups as named views.
- Search all of YouTube from the feed — live results you can play, save or add to playlists like any other video; they stay temporary and out of your catalog unless you keep one.
- Channel pages & a channel manager — per-channel stats and uploads, priorities, and your own tags to slice the feed by.
- Playlists with two-way YouTube sync — build them locally, keep them in sync in both directions.
- In-app player with resume, plus keyboard/scroll controls.
- Download Center — save videos to the server with yt-dlp in a Plex-friendly layout (format presets, per-user storage quota), trim / crop / split & join them in a built-in editor, then save to your device, share with another user, or hand out a public watch link.
- Plex library (optional) — point Siftlode at your own Plex server to browse and play its movies and shows alongside your feed, with watch state kept in sync.
- Multi-user with per-user private state, a shared catalog, and a fair daily API-quota guard.
- Self-hosted & private, with a first-run web setup wizard and the interface in English and Hungarian.
Quick start (self-hosting)
You don't need to build anything — Siftlode runs from a prebuilt public image, and all configuration (your admin account, Google sign-in, email) happens in a first-run web wizard. You need Docker with the Compose plugin.
1. Get the files and run the installer:
git clone https://git.b1fr0st.eu/peter/siftlode.git
cd siftlode
./install.sh # Windows (PowerShell): ./install.ps1
The installer generates a private .env (secrets), pulls the image, starts the app + database, and
prints a one-time setup URL like http://localhost:8080/setup?token=….
2. Finish in your browser. Open that URL and follow the wizard:
- Admin account — the email + password you'll sign in with.
- Google sign-in (optional) — paste a Google OAuth client to enable "Sign in with Google" and pulling your YouTube subscriptions. Skip it to use email + password only.
- Email / SMTP (optional) — for verification/notification emails. Skip it and you (the admin) simply approve new accounts yourself.
Then sign in with your admin account. That's it. See docs/self-hosting.md for the full walkthrough.
Just trying it out? Press Enter at the installer's URL prompt to run on
http://localhost:8080.
Build from source (alternative)
Prefer to build the image yourself instead of pulling it:
git clone https://git.b1fr0st.eu/peter/siftlode.git
cd siftlode
cp .env.example .env
# generate the two secrets and paste them into .env:
python -c "import secrets;print('SECRET_KEY='+secrets.token_urlsafe(48))"
python -c "import base64,os;print('TOKEN_ENCRYPTION_KEY='+base64.urlsafe_b64encode(os.urandom(32)).decode())"
docker compose up --build -d # builds from the included Dockerfile
Open http://localhost:8080 and finish in the setup wizard as above. (Set a POSTGRES_PASSWORD in
.env too.)
HTTPS / public access
Port 8080 over plain HTTP is fine for a LAN or a quick trial. For public access put a reverse
proxy (Caddy, Nginx, Traefik…) in front to terminate TLS, and set the public URL (the installer
prompt, or OAUTH_REDIRECT_URL in .env) to your https://… address — this also marks the session
cookie secure. Add that same …/auth/callback URL to your Google OAuth client's authorized redirect
URIs. Behind a proxy, also set TRUSTED_PROXY_IPS so the rate limiters see the real client IP and
can't be bypassed via a forged X-Forwarded-For — see docs/self-hosting.md.
Updating & backups
docker compose -f docker-compose.selfhost.yml pull # or: docker compose pull
docker compose -f docker-compose.selfhost.yml up -d
Database migrations run automatically on startup. Your data (accounts, subscriptions, playlists, the
video catalog) lives in a Postgres volume — back it up with scripts/backup.sh (or backup.ps1 on
Windows) and restore with scripts/restore.sh.
How it works
- Shared catalog, private state. Channels and videos are stored once and shared; each user's subscriptions, tags, playlists and watch/save/hide state are private.
- Cheap by design. Public reads are cached locally; a shared daily quota budget and a background scheduler keep unattended syncing within YouTube's free API limits. An optional API key lets backfill run without depending on a user's OAuth token.
Tech
FastAPI + PostgreSQL (SQLAlchemy, Alembic) backend; React + Vite + Tailwind + TanStack Query frontend; packaged as a single Docker image with Docker Compose.
Note
This project is developed with AI assistance.