openplate

An open-source, self-hosted food tracker with BYOK (bring-your-own-key) AI plate identification. Snap a photo of your plate and your own AI provider — OpenRouter, Mistral, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or Anthropic — estimates the macros. Your key, your provider, your data.

There are no accounts. No sign-up, no login, no password: open the app and start logging. Your diary lives in your browser's own IndexedDB on the device you use, and the app server has no database at all — one stateless container, no secrets, nothing to provision. Optional end-to-end-encrypted sync between devices is a separate service you can ignore forever.

Try it without installing anything

https://openplate.lowcarbcheck.org runs this code. There is nothing to sign up for — open it and start logging, the same as a local install.

It is a demo instance, so treat it as one: no uptime promise, no support, and nothing there is backed up for you. Your diary lives in that browser's storage, and clearing the browser clears it. Self-hosting is the equally supported option, and it is the one below.

Quickstart

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LowCarbCheck/openplate/main/docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d

That is the whole setup — one container, no database, no .env step, no secret to generate. The app is reachable at http://localhost:3000.

Upgrading is docker compose pull && docker compose up -d. There is no server-side state to migrate or lose.

Run the full stack (with sync)

If you also want end-to-end-encrypted sync across devices, docker-compose.full.yml brings up the app, the openplate-sync service, and the Postgres that sync — and only sync — needs:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LowCarbCheck/openplate/main/docker-compose.full.yml
echo "SERVER_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)" >> .env
docker compose -f docker-compose.full.yml up -d

Full walkthrough: docs/self-hosting.md and docs/sync.md.

Using it

1. Open the app and go through the short onboarding — there is nothing to sign up for.
2. Go to Settings → AI and connect an AI provider with your own API key. The fastest path is Connect with OpenRouter (one-click OAuth, no key to copy-paste). The key is stored only in that browser and is sent to nobody but the provider you chose.
3. Use Scan Plate to upload a photo and get an AI-estimated macro breakdown, or Add to log entries manually.
4. Profile → Your data downloads a full JSON backup and imports one. Your diary lives on this device, so that file is how you move it and how you keep it safe. Plate photos stay on the device that took them — they are never exported or synced.

The components

Run any subset. Only the first one is required.

Component	What it is	Needed?
openplate (this repo)	The app. Accountless, local-first, stateless, boots with no secrets.	Yes — it is the product.
openplate-sync	An account service whose first feature is end-to-end-encrypted sync. Stores an email address and ciphertext it holds no key for.	No. Everything works without it.
openplate-inference	A self-hosted, OpenAI-compatible plate-photo endpoint — open-weight models, your own hardware.	No. BYOK cloud providers work without it.
openplate-gateway	A small multi-tenant proxy: one upstream AI key shared across several people, with a per-member token and a daily quota.	No, and probably not — provider sub-keys solve most of this.

Documentation

• docs/self-hosting.md — compose walkthroughs, first run, HTTPS, backups, upgrading.
• docs/configuration.md — every environment variable, the Content-Security-Policy, custom and instance-provided AI endpoints, the OpenRouter flow.
• docs/sync.md — enabling sync across devices and how the encryption works.
• docs/family-setup.md — sharing one AI bill across a household, with a spend limit and revocation per person.
• .adr/ — architecture decision records. Start with ADR-0006 for why this server has no accounts.
• AGENTS.md — coding guidelines for this repo; CLAUDE.md imports it.
• CONTRIBUTING.md — how to send a pull request.
• SECURITY.md — reporting a vulnerability.

Development

Requires Node.js ≥ 22 and pnpm. There is no database to install and no service to start alongside it.

git clone https://github.com/LowCarbCheck/openplate.git
cd openplate
pnpm install
pnpm dev            # http://localhost:3000 — nothing to provision first

pnpm typecheck      # react-router typegen && tsc
pnpm lint           # eslint --max-warnings 0
pnpm test:unit      # node --test against tests/unit/**
pnpm build          # react-router build (NODE_ENV=production)
pnpm start          # tsx ./server.ts (NODE_ENV=production)

Built with React Router v8, Express, and IndexedDB in the browser. Every environment variable is optional tuning — copy .env.example to .env if you want to change one. The image is built from Dockerfile.pnpm; its entrypoint just starts the server, with no migration or provisioning step.

License

openplate is open source under the MIT License (SPDX: MIT), as is openplate-sync. Run it, read it, change it, fork it, redistribute it, host it for others — commercially or not — with no restrictions beyond keeping the copyright and license notice attached to any copy you distribute.