mangabaka-seeder

A tool for seeding edits to the MangaBaka manga/comics database, in the spirit of yambs for MusicBrainz.

Status: v0.1 works end to end locally (Tower of God: current and archived covers found, checked and rehosted); not deployed yet. Design: the spec.

Today's goal is one thing done well: given a MangaBaka series link and a Webtoons series link, find every cover the Webtoons series has used, current and historical, and request them added to the MangaBaka series. The current poster becomes the main (default) cover for the edition's language.

Two ways to use it

• Web page (primary). Open the page, paste the two links, review the covers. A small server behind the page reads Webtoons and the Wayback Machine for you, because browsers can't. It runs on your own machine with Bun.
• Userscript. Install mbseed.user.js in Tampermonkey or Violentmonkey. On a MangaBaka series page it adds a Seed covers panel; paste the Webtoons link. It reads Webtoons directly from your browser, and with litterbox or catbox it needs no server at all.

A command-line version (Bun) may follow.

How it works

1. Read both links. The MangaBaka link gives the series id; the Webtoons link gives the title, title_no, language, and official or canvas. If the MangaBaka series has no link to that title_no, you're warned.

2. Collect covers.

   • Current: the portrait poster, the square thumbnail, and the banner and hero art.
   • Historical: cover images in archived copies of the series page on the Wayback Machine, up to one snapshot per month.

3. Check each image. It downloads each image to get its size and hash, classifies it by shape (portrait → volume, square → other, wide → banner), and drops duplicates and images MangaBaka already has.

4. Build the submission. Existing covers are kept and new ones added. The current poster is the default (the square for canvas series, which have no poster). Every new cover gets a note recording where and when it was seen.

5. Rehost the images when you click Rehost selected, to the host you pick:

   Host	Links last
   the server's own storage (default, if configured)	30 days
   litterbox	1 hour – 72 hours
   catbox.moe	permanently
   none (direct): submit the Webtoons URL itself	as long as Webtoons keeps it

   A link must still work when a MangaBaka moderator looks at the request. If it has expired by then, run the tool again.

6. Hand it to you.

   • Without API access (most users): copy the hosted URLs and paste them into MangaBaka's cover form for the series (the page links to it).
   • With a personal access token: the tool shows MangaBaka's preview diff and, after you confirm, submits the request for review.

Nothing is uploaded or sent to MangaBaka without your action, and submissions always go to review. You choose the content rating (default safe); titles Webtoons marks as mature show a warning. Your token is sent only to MangaBaka's API, never to our server.

MangaBaka's submissions API is only open to contributors, or to users with at least 25 approved submissions.

Supported sources

Source	Links	Current covers	Historical covers
WEBTOON (official & canvas)	https://www.webtoons.com/<lang>/…/list?title_no=N, m.webtoons.com	poster, square, banner, foreground	Wayback Machine

Each Webtoons language edition has its own title_no. Run the tool once per edition; the covers are tagged with that edition's language.

Notes and limitations

• Some covers may only exist in the archive. If an old cover is no longer on Webtoons' server, its archive.org copy is used instead.
• Not everything is a cover. Some historical images are promotional or landing-page art. Review the list before submitting.
• Requests are rate-limited to stay polite to Webtoons, the Wayback Machine and MangaBaka.

Running it

Needs Bun 1.3 or newer.

bun install --frozen-lockfile
bun run build            # the page and the userscript into dist/web/
MBSEED_STORAGE_DIR=/srv/mbseed/covers MBSEED_PUBLIC_URL=https://mbseed.example.org bun run start

Open the address it prints. Without MBSEED_STORAGE_DIR the server runs without its own storage and the page offers litterbox, catbox and no rehosting. All settings, and how to put it behind a reverse proxy, are in docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

The userscript

Install /mbseed.user.js from the running server (or dist/web/mbseed.user.js) in Tampermonkey or Violentmonkey. A Seed covers button appears on MangaBaka series pages. To rehost on your server from the userscript, enter its address under Settings in the panel; build with MBSEED_PUBLIC_URL set so the script is allowed to reach it.

Development

Working on this repo, by hand or with an AI agent: start at AGENTS.md. Design: docs/specs/; current architecture: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.