later-ink 0.4.3

OPDS server that bridges read-it-later services to e-readers

Later.ink

Your Readwise Reader queue, on your e-reader.

Later.Ink is a small server that turns your Readwise Reader account into an OPDS catalog. Point KOReader — or any ebook reader that speaks OPDS, including on iPhone and iPad (Fablum, justRead, PocketBook), Android (Moon+ Reader), or desktop (Thorium Reader) — at one URL and browse your saved articles, downloading any of them as a clean EPUB, generated on the fly from the article HTML that Reader has already cleaned up.

No plugin, no sync daemon, and nothing to install from us — ebook readers already speak OPDS.

Free and open source (MIT), and built to self-host with your own Readwise token. Run it on a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a VPS, or your laptop — it stores nothing, reading your queue live from Readwise.

Scope: later.ink is a reading path, not a sync path. It never writes back to Readwise, so articles stay in your queue as you read them. If you want finished articles archived and removed from the device automatically, the Endle/readwisereader KOReader plugin does that — this project trades write-back for zero install and working on any OPDS client. (Note: Readwise already serves Kindle natively via send-to-Kindle; the sweet spot here is Kobo, Boox, and other non-Kindle e-ink.)

Self-host quickstart

Upgrading from ≤0.3.x? The internal package was renamed for the brand: read_later_opds is now later_ink. Docker users just rebuild (docker compose up -d --build --remove-orphans — the flag retires the container from the old opds service name). If you run without Docker, reinstall (pip install -e .) and use the new module path: python -m uvicorn later_ink.main:app .... Your .env and database are untouched. One cosmetic side effect: EPUB identifiers changed with the rename, so a re-downloaded article registers as a new book in your reader's library rather than an update to the old copy.

Prebuilt image (fastest — no checkout; amd64 & arm64, Pi included):

docker run -d --name later-ink -p 8000:8000 \
  -e READWISE_TOKEN=your_token_from_readwise.io/access_token \
  -e DATABASE_PATH=/data/app.db -v later-ink-data:/data \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/brendanlefebvre/later-ink:latest

(Or pin a version tag, e.g. :0.4.1. Add -e WALLABAG_*=... vars to serve Wallabag too — see .env.example for the full list. The same image drops straight into a Compose file or Portainer stack.)

With Docker Compose, from source:

git clone https://github.com/brendanlefebvre/later-ink.git
cd later-ink
cp .env.example .env
# put your token from https://readwise.io/access_token into .env
docker compose up -d

Without Docker (Python 3.11+):

pip install later-ink
READWISE_TOKEN=your_token python -m uvicorn later_ink.main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

Or from a source checkout:

git clone https://github.com/brendanlefebvre/later-ink.git
cd later-ink
python -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate   # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install .
cp .env.example .env
# put your token from https://readwise.io/access_token into .env
python -m uvicorn later_ink.main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --env-file .env

Your catalog is now at http://your-host:8000/opds/.

KOReader setup: top menu → magnifying glass → OPDS catalog → + → enter the URL. Browse folders (Later, New, Shortlist, Archive, Feed), tap an article to download and read. Images are embedded in the EPUB, so articles read fully offline. Use KOReader's OPDS search box to find articles by title, author, or summary; search scans your most recent saved items (a bounded slice of a very large queue) rather than the entire history.

On iPhone/iPad: use an ebook reader that supports OPDS — Fablum, justRead, or PocketBook — and add the same catalog URL. On desktop: Thorium Reader works too.

What appears: articles, newsletters, PDFs, books (uploaded EPUBs), video transcripts, tweet threads, and podcasts — each delivered as an EPUB, converted from the content Readwise exposes. Multi-section books and long articles are split into chapters with a navigable table of contents, and every EPUB opens on a generated cover. A podcast converts only after you've loaded its transcript in Readwise Reader (until then the API returns a stub, and the download reports that). Configurable via READWISE_CATEGORIES (e.g. article,pdf).

Hosted version

There's no public hosted instance running yet — self-hosting is the supported path today. The server does include an optional multi-tenant mode (short, e-ink-typeable catalog URLs like later.ink/maple-crater-lantern-owl/, with per-user tokens encrypted at rest), so a free hosted instance may come later. If you want to stand one up yourself, see the multi-tenant env vars in .env.example.

Architecture

src/later_ink/
  main.py          # FastAPI routes: OPDS feeds, EPUB downloads, onboarding
  config.py        # env-var configuration
  opds.py          # OPDS 1.x Atom feed builder
  epub.py          # HTML → EPUB (ebooklib + lxml cleanup)
  covers.py        # generated EPUB covers (hero image + typographic fallback)
  store.py         # SQLite user store + word-based secret URLs
  words.py         # wordlist behind the secret URLs (e-ink-typeable words)
  ratelimit.py     # per-IP throttle for unknown-secret probes
  pages.py         # server-rendered HTML pages
  payments.py      # Stripe verification (optional; inactive unless configured)
  connectors/
    base.py        # Connector interface: folders / articles / article HTML
    readwise.py    # Readwise Reader API v3 connector
    wallabag.py    # Wallabag API v2 connector (OAuth2)

Readwise and Wallabag are supported today (set the WALLABAG_* vars in .env.example to enable Wallabag). More connectors (Instapaper) are planned — the connector interface is three methods.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
ALLOW_FREE_SIGNUP=1 python -m uvicorn later_ink.main:app --reload
pytest

Credits

Generated EPUB covers use League Spartan by The League of Moveable Type, bundled under the SIL Open Font License (src/later_ink/assets/fonts/OFL.txt).

License

MIT