Verbatim and yours
Source text is stored and given back word for word, and every result is a citation you can open.
Bibliup
Your library. Searchable. Word for word.
A free Bible study tool you host yourself. Bring your own Bibles, commentaries, books, sermons and quotes, and Bibliup makes the whole shelf searchable from one place.
- Self-hosted with Docker
- Verbatim sources
- Every answer cited*
- Works offline
- Free software, AGPL v3
- Bibles
- Concordances
- Bible dictionaries
- Commentaries
- PDF books
- EPUB books
- Sermon audio
- Quotes
- Your notes
- Bookmarks
- Highlights
01 · Your library
Bring your own everything
Nothing comes bundled, and nothing is on an approved list.
Drop it in, it is in
Files stream straight to disk as they arrive, so a four-gigabyte scanned commentary goes in as easily as a one-page quote file.
- Restart it halfway through a 31,000-verse Bible and it picks up where it stopped
- No converting first: it reads the Zefania, OSIS, PDF, EPUB or audio file you already have
- If a drive goes missing, your library stays put rather than emptying itself
- An update that changes how something was indexed repairs your library in place, rather than asking you to add it all over again
A library you manage
Rename, re-index or remove any source. Delete the file and it drops out of the library on its own.
02 · Search
One query, every source
Ask about welcoming a stranger and you get the passages that use those words, and the ones that say it another way.
Two searches, one ranking
One search matches the words you typed and the other what you meant, and a passage that ranks well in either makes the final list.
- Type Romans 12:13 and you get Romans 12:13, looked up rather than ranked
- Ask for Psalm 23, 121 and 139 and you get all three, not the stretch between them
- Anything an answer can be built from, you can find yourself in the search box
Books open at the right paragraph
A book tells you which page you are on, even where it never had printed ones, and opens at the paragraph that cited what you asked about.
Listen and read along
Drop in a sermon and it is transcribed on your own machine, timestamped and searchable. A result takes you to the moment it is spoken, to read along as you listen.
An empty answer is a claim too
Finding nothing and failing to look are different answers, and Bibliup never gives the first when it means the second. A source that could not be read is not remembered as empty, not counted as empty, and not shown as a blank page of your book. Where Bibliup knows why something is missing, it says which.
03 · Study
Stay on the verse, and bring the library to it
Its cross-references, what your dictionaries and commentaries say, the quotes, books and talks that cite it, your own notes, and the verse in every Bible you own, gathered beside the chapter you are reading.
The panel follows the verse you pick
It stays on the tab you were reading, so you can walk a chapter a verse at a time.
- A reference in the panel previews in the Bible you already have open, and opens in it
- Explanations and devotionals come from your own library and cite it, like every other answer*
- Each is written once and kept, so coming back to the same verse is instant
Read the original, one word at a time
Add an interlinear and the verse is laid out as it was first written, one block per word: its number, how it sounds, the word itself and what it means. Press a block and its entry opens, with the parts the word is built from.
- Hebrew runs right to left, the way it is written
- Pick a word and every other block from the same root lights up
- Words no block covers are listed underneath, so none goes missing
Open it beside the chapter, not instead of it
On a wide screen, a cross-reference, a commentary, a book or a sermon you press in the panel opens in a column between the chapter and the panel, and whatever you press next takes over the column.
- A cross-reference arrives as its whole chapter, with the verse it points at outlined
- Books and PDFs turn to the place that mentions your verse
- On a phone or a tablet, the same view opens over the page instead
04 · Ask
Answers that cite, or say they cannot
Ask in plain words, about a verse, a person or a theme. When your library does not cover the question, Bibliup says so rather than guessing.*
Looked up, not made up
The model chooses what to look up, never what the text says. Every quotation comes from the sources listed under the answer, and every citation points at something Bibliup really retrieved.*
- Search itself writes nothing, so there is nothing for it to invent
- Watch every step as it happens, timed
- Pick the depth per question: one quick pass, or several rounds that weigh each source first
- Choose which steps it reasons through before replying, and how long it may spend
Write a skill of your own
A skill is a way of answering, and yours takes three boxes: a name, when to use it, and how to answer.
- Let yours stand in for one of Bibliup's, in chat and in the study tabs
- Tell it what to lean on: twice as many commentaries, half as many, or none at all
- Or have it answer in the assistant's own words, which quote and cite nothing and say so
- Yours is a small text file you can keep, send on, or paste into another Bibliup
Close the tab, keep the answer
An answer being written finishes whether you are watching or not, and reopening the chat picks it back up, even after a dropped connection.
A skill for every kind of question
Bibliup picks the skill that fits the question: an explanation, a devotional, notes to teach from. Ask for two things at once and you get two, each written the way that suits it. Name the one you want and it wins, or turn the choosing off and get the plain answer every time.
- Explanation
- Devotional
- Summary
- Cross-references
- Word study
- Context
- Positions
- Teaching prep
- Small group
- Prayer
- Quotes
- Comparison
- Objects
- Gospel
- Person
- Your library
- Image
Ask out loud
The same grounded chat sits behind an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so you can wire it into Home Assistant or anything else that speaks it. Spoken answers are phrased to be read aloud, references and all.
Bring your own assistant
Bibliup speaks MCP, so an assistant like Claude can search your Bibles, commentaries and concordances itself and answer from what it finds there. Or it can put the question to Bibliup and hand you back this install's own answer, with the sources it rests on.*
05 · Make
A verse worth putting on a wall
Ask for a picture and Bibliup paints one around a passage it has really looked up, and cites the passage under it, so nothing about it has to be taken on trust.
Say how it should look, or say nothing
Every dial is yours: what it is drawn in, the hour of the day, the colours, the typeface, whether foliage runs round the edge. Touch none of them and Bibliup decides, and decides differently the next time you ask.
- Backgrounds from a photograph to a woodcut to gold leaf, grouped so you can find one
- Describe a look however you like instead, and the picker says that yours is the one in force
- It opens on whatever you last made a picture with, unless a skill of yours says otherwise
- Square for a card, tall for a phone, wide for a screen, as large as your graphics card manages
Who letters the verse is your choice
Overlaid means Bibliup sets the type itself, out of the text your own Bible carries, so a wrong letter is not unlikely but impossible. Hand the lettering to the image model and it can lose a word, so the two that do are gathered under a heading of their own that says as much while you choose.
- Past about a dozen words the caution gets firmer, but it never refuses to go ahead
- Change Bible afterwards and an overlaid verse is drawn again rather than left as it was
- Type over the verse to put your own wording on
Yours the moment it exists
There is nothing to press to save one. It is already in your vault, beside your notes and bookmarks and on every device you sign in from, where you can rename it or file it. Delete the chat and you lose the copy in the chat, not the picture.
Nothing is sent anywhere
The engine that answers your questions draws the picture as well, on hardware you can put a hand on. You switch it on and choose the model yourself, and no outside service is handed the verse or told anything you typed.
Or a picture with no writing on it
Ask about a theme instead of a passage and nothing quotable is drawn at all, which leaves nothing that could come out wrong.
Your assistant can ask for one
Something wired in over MCP can request a picture and get the file straight back, wordless and kept nowhere, as often per hour as the install allows rather than as often as it likes.
06 · Notes and progress
Your notes, your numbers, your call
The part of Bibliup that is about you rather than your shelf.
Two people, one note
Share a note with someone on the same Bibliup and you can both write in it at once. Their cursor shows where they are, with their name on it, and neither of you overwrites the other. If live editing cannot get through, you are told plainly.
Keep going, and see how far you have come
Your home page keeps two numbers: the days in a row you have opened the Bible, and the days in a row you have done a devotional. Settings has the rest, from the time you have spent and the hours you tend to read to how much of the Bible you have opened so far.
- It records counts and times, never what you searched for or asked, or which verses you read
- Turn recording off whenever you like, and delete what it has kept
- No badges, no notifications and no leaderboard, only your own numbers
One vault, one door
Your notes, the passages you save, the notes other people let you into and every picture you have made all sit behind it, filed in folders you colour yourself. Those colours show on the verses themselves, so something you put away is easy to spot on the page.
Share a note, not your notes
You choose the note, the person, and whether they may write in it. It turns up in their shared list with your highlights on it, and nothing else of yours is theirs to see.
Take your data, or delete it
Settings lists everything Bibliup has stored for you, kind by kind, with a count beside each: notes, bookmarks, folders, chats, reading history, themes, skills and the rest. Download any kind to keep, or delete it, on this device and every other one. Your account and what you added to the library are left alone.
07 · Your way
Fits the way you read
Bibliup adapts to the reader and the device, not the other way round.
Keep working with the wifi off
Install it like an app and download Bibles to read and compare with nothing connected. Notes stay editable, wait on the device, and sync the moment you are back.
- A change on your phone reaches your laptop without either one being reloaded
- Something you deleted stays deleted, even if the other device was offline at the time
Colours you choose, light and dark together
Fifteen themes come with Bibliup, each with a light half and a dark half. Pick the look once and light or dark once, so no theme is off limits because of how your phone is set.
- Or make your own, down to the colour each part of the Bible is written in and the mark on a word you searched for
- The app repaints as you drag, and says so when a pairing gets too faint to read
- A theme is plain JSON you can read, keep in a file, or hand to a friend
- Your themes follow you to your other devices, and each device picks its own
The Bible's own text has its own size
Make scripture bigger without the buttons and menus growing with it. Read a chapter as separate lines or as flowing prose. Choose from twenty-nine typefaces, one drawn for dyslexia and one for low vision, all served from your own machine.
- Full-screen when you want nothing else on the glass
- Bibliup offers to pick up where you left off, in every Bible, book and talk
Every book has a picture of its own
All 85 books, the Apocrypha among them, carry a small symbol taken from their own pages: a rainbow for Genesis, a harp for Psalms, an anchor for Hebrews. Each wears its section's colour, so the Law and the Prophets are told apart at a glance.
- Beside a book's name in the passage picker, on headings, in your reading history and on saved verses
- Numbered books carry dots rather than numerals, so they read the same in every language
- Drawn for Bibliup, with no words, no faces and no image of God
Offline, or told why not
Reading offline needs the app itself to open with no signal, which takes an https address the device trusts. Where it can tell, Bibliup says so beside the download rather than leaving you to find out when you need it.
Ready for any language
Every label, date and number goes through a translation catalog, so a new language is one file, and right-to-left layouts, plural rules and local date formats follow on their own. Book names are understood in whichever languages you choose, separately from the one the app is shown in.
Accessible to everyone
Built to WCAG 2.2 AA: full keyboard control, visible focus, screen-reader landmarks and live status. Contrast is measured in every theme that ships, light half and dark half, and nothing important hides behind a hover.
Prints as content, not as a screenshot
A chapter, a note, a cited answer: paper gets the content with the app's own furniture gone, a panel that scrolls on screen printed whole rather than one screenful of it, and your dark colours turned back into ink.
08 · Foundations
The parts nobody demos
What someone running it for a church, a class or a family will want to know before they install it.
See what it is doing
Structured logs, Prometheus metrics and OpenTelemetry traces export to your own collector, so indexing, search and chat turn up on the dashboards you already run.
A documented API
Every endpoint the app itself calls is versioned and checked against a published schema, and that same schema writes the OpenAPI 3.1 reference.
Decide who reaches what
Sign in through your own provider and Bibliup handles the rest: make someone an administrator, or give them only the collections they should reach. Everyone's notes, bookmarks and chats stay their own, and deleting an account takes them with it. Or leave sign-in off and share one local account.
Yours to keep, run and change
Bibliup ships under the AGPL, version 3. Every licence it leans on travels with it and is listed in Settings, down to the runtimes beneath each one, and if you change Bibliup and let other people reach your copy, it offers them your source rather than ours.
Vetted building blocks
Where a problem is already solved well, Bibliup uses the standard tool rather than a home-made one, pinned so every install is the same.
- Docker Compose
- Next.js 16
- React 19
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS 4
- Bun
- Elasticsearch
- MongoDB
- LocalAI
- Whisper
- Your own GPU, or none
- OpenAPI 3.1
- GraphQL
- MCP
- Yjs
- Service worker
- Prometheus
- OpenTelemetry
Up and running in three steps
A study tool that never paraphrases your sources and never invents a citation.* The quick start takes you from an empty folder to your first search.