Help

What Kobbie Companion does

• Runs on your desktop. Detects a plugged-in Kobo, makes a temporary copy of the Kobo library index, and reads it read-only.
• Never writes to the Kobo, never modifies files on the device, and never uploads your e-book content.
• Holds the scan in memory only. Closing or reloading Companion clears it.

What Companion sends to Kobbie Web

When you choose Open in Kobbie Web, Companion sends a strict metadata payload called kobbie.scan-metadata.v1. It contains per-book fields Kobbie needs to reason about series and progress:

• Title, author string, series name and position (as Kobo has them).
• Read state and progress percentage.
• A stable hash of the Kobo content identifier (not the raw id).

Aggregate diagnostic counts (per-row-shape distributions) may travel with the payload to help us diagnose adapter coverage. Raw firmware values, file paths, and any personal file contents stay on your computer.

What Kobbie Web does with it

• Groups books into series and puts them in reading order.
• Flags missing sequels and books you already own but haven't started.
• Uses a fixed rule of >80% progress = finished for now. A per-account preference will land with the future Web account phase.

What's still simulated

Kobbie is early. Anywhere you see a Demo preview label in the app, that section is running on seeded data, not on a live match against a bibliographic database. Series ordering, missing-sequel detection, and release alerts are polished on demo data first; real-catalogue matching arrives with Phase 3.

Where things live

• Companion (desktop app): local, read-only, stateless. No account, no preferences.
• Kobbie Web (this site): reads Companion's handoff, presents your shelf, will host accounts, preferences and alerts.

Coming soon

• A proper help centre with searchable articles.
• Account-level reading preferences (including the >80% threshold).
• Release alerts by email once a series has a confirmed next book.