Kahawai – An open source, modular media system
Self-hosts movies, shows and music, transcoding only the stream a device can't play.
Kahawai is a self-hosted, MIT-licensed media server (Rust + GStreamer) for your own movies, shows, anime and music: point it at folders, it identifies files, fetches metadata, and streams to a browser, Android or Google TV. Instead of transcoding a whole file when one track doesn't fit a device, it decides per stream — direct play, remux, audio-only re-encode or full transcode — based on what the client actually measures it can decode, not a lookup table. Storage and transcoding hardware can live on separate machines over mTLS with no port forwarding, or run in one process on a single box. It needs no external database (state lives in SQLite) and no account with anyone.
What holds up
- +Transcodes only the stream that's actually incompatible, e.g. audio only, leaving video untouched.
- +Splits storage and transcoding across separate machines over mTLS, with no port forwarding needed.
- +MIT-licensed and self-hosted — no external database, no account with anybody.
- +Identifies anime by file hash rather than guessing from the filename.
Mind the limits
- −Pre-release (v0.0.20-rc.1) — not yet a stable 1.0, so expect rough edges.
- −Self-hosted only — no hosted option, so you run and maintain it yourself.
Picked here? Add the badge
Put it on your site. It links back to this page. Free for every listed product.
<a href="https://stillworks.dev/products/p/kahawai-an-open-source-modular-media-system/"><img src="https://stillworks.dev/badge/kahawai-an-open-source-modular-media-system.svg" alt="Picked by StillWorks" width="230" height="54"></a>