What is Crimson Haven?
Greetings, mortal. I am Luminas Crimsonveil (Lumi to my friends), your guide through these archives. Before you build, here is what you are building.
In one breath
Section titled “In one breath”Crimson Haven is a self-hostable streaming website. You run it on your own server; your members log in and browse a catalogue with rich metadata, accounts, favorites and watch-progress sync.
It is made of five small projects. You can stand up a working instance with just the first two.
The five projects
Section titled “The five projects”| Project | In plain words | Do I need it? |
|---|---|---|
| crimson-backend | The brain. Serves metadata, runs accounts and the members-only login wall, and orchestrates everything. | Yes |
| crimson-client | The face. The website your visitors see and click (search, catalogue, player). | Yes |
| crimson-proxy | The edge. A free-tier relay (Netlify / Cloudflare) that carries video bytes so your own server doesn’t have to. | Recommended |
| crimson-extension | The familiar. A small browser extension that gives visitors the most direct playback. | Optional |
| your sources | The secret. Your own private repository of stream providers. | For playback |
The one thing the backend does NOT do
Section titled “The one thing the backend does NOT do”This is the core of the design:
The backend does not scrape or resolve third-party streaming sites.
In older designs, the streaming server fetches every video itself, which is heavy, slow and legally fraught. Crimson Haven is split so that the backend stays the brain (metadata, identity, secrets, orchestration) while finding and fetching streams happens in each visitor’s own browser, helped by the optional companion extension and the edge proxy.
What that means in practice:
- Your server’s bandwidth cost scales with how many titles and users you have,
not with how many hours people watch. Video bytes flow
CDN → viewer, mostly skipping your server. - The public repositories are safe to share, because they contain no scrapers.
- The stream providers live in your private repository, which only you control. See Adding your own sources.
The New System page lays out the four-tier execution model behind this.
What you’ll need
Section titled “What you’ll need”- A server (a small VPS is enough to start).
- A free TMDB API key (for metadata).
- Docker, or some comfort with the command line.
Before you begin walks through each. Onward, into the castle. 🦇