Easel

demo of easel

A self-hosted daily painting viewer built in Go. One public-domain artwork from the Art Institute of Chicago per calendar day, persisted to SQLite.

Single Go binary with embedded assets
One artwork per day, picked from AIC's public-domain collection
Past days browsable via archive; future days unavailable until populated
Atom feed at /feed.xml
JSON API for today, any day, and the full archive
Optional backfill of missing past days on startup
Dark themed UI with Commit Mono font
SQLite for persistent storage

Configure

Environment Variables

Variable	Description	Default
`HOST`	Server bind address	`127.0.0.1`
`PORT`	Server port	`4242`
`EASEL_DB_PATH`	SQLite database file path	`easel.sqlite`
`EASEL_TIMEZONE`	IANA timezone for day boundary	`UTC`
`EASEL_CLASSIFICATIONS`	Comma-separated `classification_title` filter	`painting`
`EASEL_EXCLUDE_TERMS`	Comma-separated phrases excluded across title/description/term/subject/category/classification	`erotic,erotica,shunga`
`EASEL_BACKFILL_DAYS`	On boot, fill missing past N days (0 disables)	`0`
`EASEL_MAX_DEDUP_RETRIES`	Retries when picking a non-duplicate artwork	`10`
`EASEL_BASE_URL`	Public base URL for absolute links in `/feed.xml`	`http://localhost:4242`

Deploy

Railway

The easiest way to deploy Easel is with the one-click Railway template. See the Deploying with Railway guide for a walkthrough of the process.

Docker

cd apps/easel
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up -d

Binary

Install with Homebrew:

brew install stevedylandev/tap/easel

Or grab a prebuilt binary from the releases page.

You can also build from source:

cd apps/easel && go build .

The resulting binary is self-contained with all assets embedded. Copy it to your server with a configured .env file and run it directly.

Use

Visit / for today's artwork. Browse past days at /day/{YYYY-MM-DD} or the full collection at /archive. Subscribe to /feed.xml for an Atom feed of new daily paintings.

Routes

Route	Description
`GET /`	Today's artwork
`GET /day/{YYYY-MM-DD}`	Specific past day
`GET /archive`	Full archive
`GET /feed.xml`	Atom feed
`GET /api/today`	JSON of today
`GET /api/day/{YYYY-MM-DD}`	JSON of specific day
`GET /api/archive`	JSON list

Image source

Images served from AIC's IIIF endpoint:

https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/{image_id}/full/843,/0/default.jpg