brandpack tools
node express preact vite sqlite
A self-hosted toolkit for the proofing room at work — one dashboard behind a PIN login stores jobs and data that used to be kept untracked: inventory and stock levels, an ink and Pantone book library, a LAB / CMYK / RGB colour converter, maintenance issues and technician visits, equipment records, customer profiles, ink density readings, and shift statistics.
how it works
You log in with a user and PIN and land on a launcher screen, each tool from there is its own self-contained little app. Under the hood, each tool is also built as its own self-contained chunk of code with a clear, checked-over boundary for what data goes in and out — so I can add a brand-new tool, or change an existing one, without the risk of accidentally breaking something unrelated elsewhere in the dashboard.
built with
A Node.js server handles requests from the browser and reads and writes to a SQLite database — a lightweight database that lives in a single file on the server rather than needing separate database software installed. Every piece of data coming in gets double-checked against a strict set of rules before it's accepted, to catch mistakes early. The screens you actually interact with are built with a lightweight cousin of React (a common toolkit for building interactive web interfaces). It runs on a small home server and is made reachable from the internet at tools.rgb-b.com through Cloudflare, without needing to open anything up directly to the wider internet. I'm currently doing a ground-up rebuild to tidy up the code and refresh the look.