Personal Project2026

Ignatius, a Rare Book Cataloguing App.

The Ignatius.is collection view — a personal library of rare books shown as a grid of cover photos with filters for sort, edition, format, and status.
The Ignatius landing page holds your personal book collection.FIG. 01

A rare book cataloguing app. Snap a photo of the front cover and copyright page and the app tracks down cataloguing information, returns a valuation, and adds the book to a personal collection which is viewable on the go for the next time you're in a bookstore wondering whether you already own that obscure Murakami you're thinking of spending $50 on…

The Client

Me. I'm a rare book collector, but could never find the time or the energy or the right app to properly document my collection. So I built Ignatius.

What I Did

I built Ignatius from start to finish with Claude Code. The app uses a Supabase backend, Vercel hosting, and Reducto for OCR on the cover and copyright page. Once the book is logged, the Brave Search API plus a chain of Sonnet and Opus calls to track down cataloguing data and pricing. I'm most proud of the valuation workflow that we were able to build, since eBay pricing data is severely locked down and most other rare book sites are filled with huge discrepancies in pricing data. A boring but important feature makes it easy to export an Excel spreadsheet of your complete collection for insurance purposes.

Two iPhone screens: the capture flow prompting the user to photograph a book cover and copyright page, and a captured Infinite Jest cover ready to process.
Add a book to your collection with two quick photos.FIG. 02
Two iPhone screens: a catalogued book's details (Infinite Jest, first edition, estimated value) and its edition, printing, and valuation fields.
Ignatius populates relevant details and estimates the value of the book using multiple API calls.FIG. 03
Outcome

Once the tool was stable and ready for testing, I named it after the protagonist of A Confederacy of Dunces (every app needs a good name of course). Then I launched a beta with a group of fellow book nerds from my network. Someday if I find the time, I have requests from several current users of the app to expand the use case for Ignatius into other collectible categories like records and comics.

The Ignatius desktop search view, filtering and sorting a collection of book covers with an option to download the collection as a spreadsheet.
Ignatius makes it easy to search and sort your collection, including the option to download a spreadsheet for fun insurance purposes.FIG. 04
The Ignatius desktop AI Analysis panel, showing appraisal reasoning, edition flags, and a transcription of the copyright page.
Ignatius runs multiple Sonnet and Opus API calls as it analyzes a book's value.FIG. 05
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