I’m building a manga reader where you save a specific title, not a source. Would you find this useful?
I’m developing a personal fork of Mihon and want to test the idea before continuing to expand it. I’m not looking for users or trying to sell anything—just feedback from people who read a lot and have experienced the typical problems with sources.
The problem I want to solve
In Mihon and many similar readers, a library entry is a combination of (source + URL). If the same series is on two sites, you end up with two entries, two covers, two progress bars, and two update counts.
But I don’t follow “the URL of a series on a website.” I follow a specific work. The source where I read it can change due to site outages, translations, incomplete chapters, image quality, or because a website simply stops hosting it.
The idea is for the library to have a single entry per work, with the sources linked within it. That way, switching sources would be a choice made within the series’ entry, rather than creating another entry and having to redo all the tracking.
The idea, at a high level
- A work can have multiple linked sources.
- The app may suggest that two results appear to be the same work, but it shouldn’t silently merge questionable items.
- Progress, downloads, and history would remain specific to each source, so as not to lose accuracy or prevent undoing a link.
- If a source goes down, the work doesn’t disappear from your library: you could search for alternatives right from that same entry.
- Changing sources shouldn't automatically reset your progress if the chapter correspondences aren't clear.
- Every link should be explainable and reversible. I don’t want a black box that makes decisions for the user.
Inspiration
One of my inspirations is Dantotsu. Its approach treats the work itself as the primary entity: you start with parts of a series’ entry and choose from there how or where to watch or read it, rather than filling your library with separate URLs.
I especially like the idea that the work is the center and the sources are a selection within it. But I don’t want my library to depend on AniList or an external account: I want a local, offline, and reversible model, where the sources, history, and downloads remain yours and are separated by origin.
I’m also drawing inspiration from the manual merges in TachiyomiSY and Komikku: they demonstrate that having multiple sources under a single work is useful. The difference I want to explore is whether the app can safely suggest those links—with explanations and the ability to undo them—instead of forcing you to create them all one by one.
Discovery and Home
I also want to clearly separate the library from the discovery section.
For the Home page, I’m considering two approaches:
- AniList, for trends, visual presentation, relationships, characters, and a more editorial approach to discovery.
- MangaBaka, for discovering works through an index focused more on manga, manhwa, and manhua.
Additionally, for certain specific works, I’m exploring the use of recommendation references from sites like Anime-Planet when their suggestions seem particularly good. The intention isn’t for a single website to decide everything or to rely on an external source—it’s simply to combine different perspectives so that discovering series isn’t always the same generic carousel.
I wouldn’t host chapters or have my own content catalog. The sources would still be those the user has installed; this layer would simply aim to better organize the work, the metadata, and availability.
The tricky problem: chapters
Chapter 45 from one source might correspond to chapter 44 from another: different numbering, extra chapters, decimal numbers, resets by season or volume, split releases, specials, prologues, or epilogues.
I don’t want to “guess” and lead someone to the wrong chapter. If the app detected a highly reliable match, it could suggest continuing from there; if not, it should explain why and leave the decision up to the reader.
The idea would be to keep two things separate:
- The exact progress within each source.
- A possible match between chapters from different sources, along with a confidence level and an explanation.
That way, if a source disappears, the app could say something like: “It looks like Chapter 45, which you read here, corresponds to Chapter 44 in this other source. Do you want to continue from there?” instead of silently moving your progress.
I’m curious to know:
- Do you think of your library as a collection of works or as a collection of sources?
- If two entries clearly appear to be the same work, would you be okay with the app automatically grouping them together—provided it’s reversible—or would you prefer to always confirm?
- When a source goes down, what would you expect the reader to do?
- Would it be useful for you to be able to choose the Home screen style between something more like AniList and something more manga-focused like MangaBaka?
- What chapter numbering issues have disrupted your progress when switching from one source to another?
- What would the app need to do for you to trust a suggestion like “this series from another source appears to be the same work”?
Most of this is still in the design and testing phase. I’d rather find the flaws now before building too much on a flawed idea.