Open source · Evidence, not badges

Try and trust open-source tools before you install them.

Browse, search, preview and fork self-hostable tools, each on one standard page. See what a tool does, whether it's safe to run, and who stands behind it.

Get early access See sample tools

Not open yet. The sample tools below show real, dated facts. We haven't evaluated or scanned any of them yet.

We never award a "safe" badge. We show what each check found, with the logs, and you decide.

How it works

Three layers of evidence for every tool.

1 · Does

What it does

Task evals per category, like AI evals: good at search, not at highlights. Each result links to a recording.

Install facts: does it start on a clean box, how fast, in how much RAM.

2 · Safe

Is it safe to run

Shared checks, run once per release instead of by everyone who installs it:

Known vulnerable dependencies (OSV-Scanner, Trivy)
Leaked secrets (gitleaks)
OpenSSF Scorecard
Risky install settings: privileged containers, Docker socket mounts, host networking, default passwords
What it connects out to, run in a sandbox

Rerun on every release, with the diff.

3 · Who

Who stands behind it

Publisher and account age. Maintainers. A large code dump from one person.

Signed releases. How past security reports were handled.

Every tool gets the same page layout, so two tools compare side by side. Fork any tool from its page.

Sample tools

Eight tools from one HN thread.

All eight came up in "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?". Each card uses the standard layout.

Fetched 12 Oct 2026 from the GitHub, Codeberg and OpenSSF Scorecard APIs, and from the HN thread (656 comments). Nothing here has been evaluated or scanned by us yet.

Immich

Photos

Back up and browse your photos and videos, with phone apps.

Licence: AGPL-3.0
Stars: 116,062
Last commit: 12 Oct 2026
Contributors: 462
Publisher: immich-app, org since Jul 2022
OpenSSF Scorecard: None published
In the thread: 17 comments

Try their demo As of 12 Oct 2026, GitHub API

Jellyfin

Media server

Stream your own films, shows and music to your devices.

Licence: GPL-2.0
Stars: 58,011
Last commit: 9 Oct 2026
Contributors: 370
Publisher: jellyfin, org since Dec 2018
OpenSSF Scorecard: 7.2 / 10, scored 5 Oct 2026
In the thread: 21 comments

Try their demo As of 12 Oct 2026, GitHub API

Readeck

Read-it-later

Save web pages as clean, readable text to keep and search.

Licence: AGPL-3.0
Stars (Codeberg): 1,145
Last commit: 29 Sep 2026
Contributors: No count from Codeberg
Publisher: readeck, org since Mar 2021
OpenSSF Scorecard: None published
In the thread: 3 comments

No official demo found As of 12 Oct 2026, Codeberg API

Beszel

Server monitoring

Lightweight server monitoring with history, Docker stats and alerts.

Licence: MIT
Stars: 26,122
Last commit: 11 Oct 2026
Contributors: 170
Publisher: henrygd, user since Aug 2014
OpenSSF Scorecard: None published
In the thread: 3 comments

No official demo found As of 12 Oct 2026, GitHub API

Uptime Kuma

Uptime checks

Check sites and services on a schedule and alert when one goes down.

Licence: MIT
Stars: 92,342
Last commit: 11 Oct 2026
Contributors: 399
Publisher: louislam, user since Jan 2012
OpenSSF Scorecard: None published
In the thread: 5 comments

Try their demo As of 12 Oct 2026, GitHub API

Gitea

Git hosting

Git hosting with code review, issues, packages and CI.

Licence: MIT
Stars: 58,449
Last commit: 11 Oct 2026
Contributors: 399
Publisher: go-gitea, org since Jun 2015
OpenSSF Scorecard: 7.1 / 10, scored 5 Oct 2026
In the thread: 14 comments

Try their demo As of 12 Oct 2026, GitHub API

Syncthing

File sync

Keep folders in sync directly between your own devices.

Licence: MPL-2.0
Stars: 89,316
Last commit: 12 Oct 2026
Contributors: 350
Publisher: syncthing, org since May 2014
OpenSSF Scorecard: 5.8 / 10, scored 5 Oct 2026
In the thread: 10 comments

No official demo found As of 12 Oct 2026, GitHub API

Headscale

Mesh VPN

A self-hosted control server for Tailscale clients.

Licence: BSD-3-Clause
Stars: 44,543
Last commit: 9 Oct 2026
Contributors: 254
Publisher: juanfont, user since Jan 2010
OpenSSF Scorecard: 5.3 / 10, scored 5 Oct 2026
In the thread: 10 comments

No official demo found As of 12 Oct 2026, GitHub API

Contributors: GitHub's count of linked accounts. It links at most 500 commit emails, so big projects read low.
In the thread: comments that name the tool. Demos: only ones the project's own README or site links.

What an eval looks like

Tasks, not star counts.

Each category gets a fixed set of real tasks. Every tool runs the same tasks on a clean box, and every cell links to the proof.

Illustration: not real results. Tools A, B and C are made up.

Read-it-later apps (illustration)
Task	Tool A	Tool B	Tool C
Save 20 articles, clean text extracted	✓Pass	◐Partial	✓Pass
Full-text search	✓Pass	✓Pass	✗Fail
Highlights	✗Fail	✓Pass	◐Partial
Export your data	✓Pass	✗Fail	✓Pass
Share from phone	◐Partial	✓Pass	✓Pass
Install on a clean 1 GB box
Time to first page	41 s	3m 12s	58 s
RAM after start	96 MB	610 MB	140 MB

✓ Pass · ◐ Partial · ✗ Fail · Every cell links to its proof

Read it like an AI eval. Tool A is good at saving, search and export, but has no highlights.

Tool B is good at search, highlights and sharing, but can't export your data. Tool C is light on RAM and has no search.

On a real tool page, each cell opens the recording and log of that run. Here they open this note, because the results are made up.

Verified on launch day

Checked within the hour of its Show HN.

New self-hostable tools show up on Show HN every day. The plan: when one is posted, we check it within the hour and publish the report.

PostedA tool hits Show HN
We pick it up from the Show HN feed.
Within the hourWe run it
Clean-box install, shared security checks, outbound connections, who published it.
ThenThe report goes up
Logs and recordings in the standard layout. Rerun, with a diff, on each release.

This is planned, not running yet. Want the first reports?

Why we're building it

We want this for our own boxes.

The idea came from an Ask HN thread about what people run on a $5 VPS. Hundreds of replies, and more tools on Show HN every day.

Picking one still means reading READMEs, scanning releases yourself and hoping. We self-host too, so we'll use it first.

Our own app suite will be the first thing through this pipeline. You can try its live demo now.

A stook is a group of sheaves stood upright together in a field: many small things, standing together.

Early access

Get early access.

Leave your email and we'll write when the catalog opens, with the first tool reports.

Privacy. This is all we store:

Waitlist: your email, which form you used, the time, your country and a one-way hash of your browser's user agent.
Live demo feedback: your message, an optional email, the page you were on, the time, your country and the same hash.
Visits, here and in the live demo: our server adds one to daily totals of the page, the site that linked you (its name only, never the full link), your country, phone or computer, and clicks on the live demo link. Nothing tells one visitor from another.
No IP addresses, no cookies or scripts for analytics, no third-party trackers. Cloudflare Turnstile checks for bots and loads only when you use a form.
To see or delete your data, email hello@stook.dev.