OpenInventory

Free, local-first inventory & material-issue tracking for small teams.

Track stock, issue materials with a full audit trail, catch low stock before it bites, and let anyone look up an item from their phone over your LAN — all backed by a single local SQLite file. No server, no accounts, no subscription.

Download · Features · Mobile lookup · Documentation · Contributing

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Features

Issue & receive materials with a full audit trail

Every stock movement records who, what, when, and why. Issue against a worker and a reason; on-hand quantities and low-stock alerts update the moment you submit.

Batch issue in a single transaction

Select multiple items, drop quantities into the Issue Cart, and commit them together — one operator, one reason, one atomic write.

Find anything, instantly

Search by name, SKU, or location; filter by stock status; sort and reorder columns. The table stays fast with thousands of movements behind it.

Executive period reports

Month / quarter / half / year summaries with movement value, prior-period and year-over-year deltas, a six-period trend, biggest movers, and CSV / print-to-PDF export.

Scan and look up from any phone

Turn on the built-in LAN server and every item gets a QR label. Scan it from any phone or tablet on the same network for a read-only lookup — current stock, location, reorder level, and price — with no app install and no login.

And everything else

• Item pricing — optional per-item unit price with an app-wide currency (CNY / USD / EUR / GBP)
• Low-stock alerts — raised automatically when quantities drop below reorder levels
• Personnel management — track who performs each stock movement
• Configurable columns — show/hide, resize, and reorder inventory and activity-log columns; layout persists per machine
• QR labels — generate and export labeled QR codes for quick item lookup
• Backup — scheduled and on-demand SQLite backups
• Bilingual — English and Simplified Chinese (zh-CN)
• Dark / Light / Auto themes — industrial design with an amber accent

Download

Grab the latest build from GitHub Releases:

Platform	Format	Auto-update
Windows x64	NSIS installer	✅
Linux x64	AppImage	✅
macOS arm64	dmg / zip	Manual download

Everything runs on your machine — data lives in a local SQLite file (e.g. ~/Library/Application Support/inventory-monitor/data/ on macOS). Windows and the Linux AppImage update in place; the macOS build currently ships unsigned as a manual download (no auto-update yet — code signing is on the roadmap).

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🛠️ For developers

Everything below covers building, testing, and contributing to OpenInventory.

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Desktop shell	Electron 41, electron-vite
Backend (main process)	TypeScript, Effect TS, better-sqlite3
Frontend (renderer)	React 19, Vite, custom CSS
Database	SQLite (local file, zero config)
IPC	Electron contextBridge with typed channels
LAN server	Node.js HTTP with access key auth
Tests	Vitest (unit/integration), Playwright (E2E)

Getting Started

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start in development mode
npm run dev

The app opens an Electron window. The first npm run dev rebuilds native modules for Electron (cached on subsequent runs). Data is stored in ~/Library/Application Support/inventory-monitor/data/ (macOS).

For browser-only development, npm run dev:preview runs the full admin UI against a local unauthenticated API on .dev-data. That preview server is a development tool only. The packaged production LAN server does not serve the admin browser app; it exposes QR item lookup plus authenticated read APIs.

Scripts

Script	Description
npm run dev	Start Electron app in dev mode with HMR
npm run build	Production build (main + preload + renderer)
npm run test	Full Vitest unit/integration suite (renderer + backend)
npm run test:backend	Backend service + integration tests only
npm run test:coverage	Full Vitest coverage report (frontend + backend)
npm run test:e2e	Electron E2E workflow (builds app, runs Playwright)
npm run verify	Lint + full Vitest suite
npm run verify:push	Local pre-push gate: lint, Vitest, full E2E
npm run verify:release	Full release gate: lint, Vitest, coverage, full E2E
npm run lint	ESLint
npm run pack	Package app (unpacked, cleans dist/ first)
npm run dist	Package app for distribution (cleans dist/ first)

Native module rebuilds are cached — repeated dev/dist runs skip the rebuild if nothing changed (Electron version, platform, or lockfile).

Project Structure

src/
  main/               # Electron main process
    services/          #   Effect TS service layer (DatabaseService, etc.)
    infrastructure/    #   SQLite schema, migrations, LAN server
    ipc/               #   IPC handler registration
  preload/             # contextBridge preload script
  renderer/src/        # React frontend
    app/               #   App shell, state hook, i18n, routing
    domain/            #   Business logic, TypeScript models
    services/          #   Gateway abstraction (IPC or HTTP)
    ui/components/     #   React components (panels, tables, modals)
test/                  # Backend test suite
e2e/                   # Playwright E2E tests

Testing

npm run verify         # Lint + renderer/backend Vitest suite
npm run test:coverage  # Combined Vitest coverage report under coverage/
npm run test:e2e       # E2E workflow against a real Electron instance
npm run verify:push    # Same gate enforced by the Git pre-push hook

The E2E suite launches the app with an isolated temporary database and covers the most important product journeys: inventory lifecycle, LAN access, production QR lookup, backup, theme/language, and stock workflows. Retries are treated as failures by default so flaky tests have to be fixed instead of silently passing.

CI Policy

GitHub CI on pull requests and pushes to master runs only the fast lint + Vitest gate (npm run verify) to conserve build minutes. The full test suite, coverage, E2E matrix, packaging smoke tests, and release publishing run from the release workflow on version tags. The full test suite can also be run manually from GitHub Actions with the Test Suite workflow.

Documentation

• docs/inventory-app-architecture.md — system architecture (processes, services, IPC, schema, LAN server)
• docs/production-operations.md — release rule, Windows signing risk acceptance, restore-drill checklist
• docs/production-hardening-todo.md — production hardening tracker
• CHANGELOG.md — release history
• TODOS.md — deferred work
• DESIGN.md — design system

Design

The app follows an industrial/utilitarian design system documented in DESIGN.md. Key choices:

• IBM Plex Sans + JetBrains Mono typography
• Amber accent (not the usual SaaS blue)
• Max 4px border radius
• Dark-first with warm light theme option

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for dev setup, the native-module build notes, and the test gate. Please also read the CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. To report a security issue, follow SECURITY.md (private disclosure, not a public issue).

License

MIT © josephmqiu