Run your own library
A lending library for your street takes about twenty minutes to open, costs US$5 a month and needs no programming. Here it is in a minute.
Read what it says
Somewhere on your street, there's a drill you need once a year, and a neighbour who already owns one.
Community Distributed Library turns that street into a lending library. No building, no central stock: everything stays on its owner's shelf until someone asks.
You can open one for your community. Pick a name, the middle of your neighbourhood, and whether it lends books or things. It runs on a domain you own, in your own Cloudflare account, for five dollars a month, email included.
No programming needed. Open the code in Claude Code and type “open a library”. It walks you through the one key it needs, builds the library, and makes you its first admin.
Give it a description, its languages and a colour. Then invite your first neighbours. It's invite-only, so everyone who joins is vouched for by someone already in.
From there, the library runs itself. Members lend from their own shelves, agree a time, and confirm each handoff at the door with a short code. Reminders chase late returns, so you don't have to.
Ask a neighbour or two to moderate: tags, duplicates, reports. About an hour a week.
No money changes hands, nothing ships, and nobody sits in between. The members and the data stay yours, and the code is public domain. Start one for your street at community-distributed-library.com.
What you need
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A domain on Cloudflare
The library lives at a name under it, such as
our-street.example.org. -
The Workers Paid plan
US$5 a month on your own Cloudflare account. It covers the library's email too: 3,000 a month, then US$0.35 per 1,000.
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About twenty minutes
Once, to open it. After that it runs itself.
Two ways to open one
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Let Claude Code do it
Open the code in Claude Code and type
/open-a-library. It walks you through the one key it needs, builds the library and makes you its first admin. Your key goes into a file on your computer, never into the chat. -
Follow the guide
Make a Cloudflare token, choose a name, an address, the middle of your neighbourhood and whether it lends books or things, and run one command. The self-hosting guide has every step.
After that
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Make it yours
Sign in with your email. In Moderation › Settings, give it a description, its languages and a colour.
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Invite your first neighbours
By email, or with a link to share in your street's group. It is invite-only, so everyone who joins is vouched for by someone already in.
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A neighbour or two to moderate
Tags, duplicates, reports: about an hour a week. Members lend, agree times and hand over on their own, and reminders chase late returns.