Why I made it

I read in English and Vietnamese, mostly paper books. I wanted to know how much I really read, how fast, and when I will finish the book I am holding. A habit tracker only works if logging is quick, so the whole tracker is built around one Start button and one Stop button[src].

What it does

  • A private tracker. It runs only on my computer. I press Start when I open a book and Stop when I close it, and it remembers the page where I stopped.
  • A public dashboard. It shows the current book with an estimated finish range, reading streaks, weekly reading time against a goal, and how pace changes from one kind of book to another. You can try it on this page. For now it shows made-up demo data, clearly labelled[src].
  • My diary stays private. My notes and exact clock times never leave my computer. For each session, the public side sees only the hour it started and how long it lasted[src].

How I built it

It started from a written plan: what the app must do, what data it keeps, and what must stay private. From that plan I built it with Claude Code and had the first version working in a day. Since then I have released two updates: one gave the dashboard the same look as this site, and one stopped its charts from zooming by accident when you drag or swipe. Automated tests run on every change I push, and each update passed them[src].

What's next

Next I will import my real reading history, so the dashboard shows my own habit instead of demo data. After that, I want to write my own way of predicting when I will finish a book, and test it on my past reading[src].

Sources

Each [src] marker cites one of these project records:

  • Reading Tracker: private session logger and public reading dashboard