Hello self-hosters,
I have been building Journiv, a self-hosted, privacy-first journaling app for people who want to own their personal memories, journals, mood/activity tracking, photos, and related life data.
A few months ago I added Immich integration, which allows you to browse your Immich library from Journiv and attach photos/videos directly to journal entries. That integration was focused on connecting self-hosted photos and videos to the written story behind them.
I just added the next piece: People Tracking with optional Immich face sync.
The idea is simple:
Immich is great at preserving the photo/video itself. Journiv is meant to preserve the story around it. Now Journiv can also help track who was part of that memory.
With the new People feature, you can create and manage important people in your life family, friends, kids, parents, coworkers, etc. Attach them to journal entries. Later, you can filter your timeline by a person and see the memories you’ve captured with them over time.
If you also use Immich, Journiv can use Immich’s people/face data to make this easier.
When you attach an Immich photo to a Journiv entry, Journiv can check the Immich people/faces associated with that asset. If those Immich people are linked to people you track in Journiv, Journiv can automatically suggest or add them to the journal entry.
The goal is not just to store photos or journal text separately, but to connect them together into a more meaningful personal archive: what happened, when it happened, where it happened, and who was part of it.
Would love feedback from the self-hosted community on this feature.
- Watch the demo video
- Blog post with more context
- Get started: Install Journiv
- Immich integration docs
- Release notes
- Demo images from Pexels
I don’t think there is any amount of explanation or detail that will satisfy everyone’s different views and ideologies around this topic. That is also not where I want to spend my limited time. I would rather focus that time on building and improving the product.
On the AI usage point, I understand why people on Reddit or Lemmy react strongly to it, but I also think the discussion often gets reduced to an extreme and inaccurate generalization. So calling anything which has AI usage "slop" or "vibe-coded" without actually doing any analysis is wrong.
Writing code has never been the hardest or most expensive part of building real software. The harder parts are product design, architecture, long-term maintenance, production readiness, scalability, support, debugging, and making responsible trade-offs over time. Anyone who has built and maintained software professionally knows this already.
AI is a tool that can speed up one part of the software development. That does not replace engineering judgment, experience, ownership, or accountability. A good analogy is a car: if you know how to drive, it helps you get to your destination faster. If you don’t know how to drive, you can hurt yourself and others along the way.
At this point, I don’t think continuing this discussion is useful for me or for the project, so I’ll leave the thread here from my side.
Thank you.
The issue is how you responded to people in this thread ("read the Readme.md) and when reading the readme, it's a vague answer as to how AI is used. Gives off vibe-coded
Scope out how exactly AI used and you will get way less issues.
But being condescending and then being dismissive gets you this reaction. Own the fact that you used AI, scope out how exactly it is used and be on your way.