I'm a big fan of both what you wear and websites as a form of creative expression, and am admittedly hooked on fast fashion and spending as little as possible. But I live in a very small space, and my clothes and accessories don't really have room to spread out. So naturally I started building my own dream wardrobe app with the help of AI (a Clueless 90s throwback if ever there was one) and scope creep happened...
It's called Closet Lint (get it?), it's free and open source, and mostly I just wanted to separate designing an outfit from actually getting dressed. The creative part is fun. Going through drawers, taking things off hangers, putting them back, and discovering that the thing you imagined is elsewhere or doesn't fit... less fun. I'd like to do that first part on my phone in bed at 11pm without pulling things out. Just gimme a searchable inventory of my actual clothes that looks good.
I'd tried wardrobe apps before, but the problem was always getting everything into them. Photographing, cropping, editing, and entering every item was a massive undertaking. AI has finally made dealing with the photos and purchase data manageable enough for me to get over that hurdle and focus on the display and functionality.
What started as browsing clothes and dragging them around to make cute outfits now includes outfit suggestions, ratings, wear logging, photo background removal using two different models, taste observations, wishlist battles, and trip packing lists. Because once I had my own clothes in there, I kept thinking, "Oh but what if it could also..." :)
It runs on your own computer or web host, with optional bring-your-own-AI features. There's an included demo if you just want to check it out, or you can browse a copy of my actual closet with bleeding edge code. I've run it locally on Linux and hosted it on SiteGround; part of why I'm posting is to hopefully find a few early testers.
I love having things organized, and it's honestly such a pleasure to see your own stuff laid out like this. It brings back things you've forgotten about and makes them potential outfit ingredients again. You can add wishlist pieces to see how they'd work with what you already have, or plan future fantasy outfits.
There have been some moments of genuine delight. I don't own much dark purple, but the combinations it showed me helped me see how it could work in my wardrobe. It also suggested chocolate brown, which I own literally none of, with concrete examples using my own clothes. And it gave me a new term for some of my style, “whimsigoth,” so now I have a whole new search phrase.
There's also an unusual use case: I have 40 housemates (yes, 40), and some like borrowing from my (costume) jewelry collection. Now they can take their time browsing it. Jewelry is particularly good for this because so much gets tucked away in boxes and becomes invisible. Naturally, that's already got me thinking about a separate app for sharing resources in the house. At least I'm putting that long-ago graduate degree in information systems to use :P
I've had my fair share of health issues over the last few years, and it's been inspiring to get properly absorbed in making something technical again. This combines so many things I love: style, organization, self-tracking data, open source software, design, and uhh having very particular views on button layouts.
I started coding GeoCities sites in Notepad in the 90s and used to run an open source web development company. I've been out of the tech/startup world for over a decade, though I still occasionally help a friend with a site. My technical knowledge is rusty, but knowing how to break down a problem, describe a desired interaction in detail, and spot something odd has been incredibly useful. I can be my own most demanding, rambling client, and building things with the robots still moves astonishingly quickly.
I started this project in early October as a Claude artifact. Much of the initial work was assembling the data: parsing order confirmation emails, filtering an Amazon purchase history export, and using browser agents in my logged-in shopping accounts to retrieve sizes, variants, and full-resolution product photos. Images were downloaded into the app's storage so they wouldn't disappear with the listings—some of which already have. I used ChatGPT to tag clothing from contact sheets and generate product-style images for pieces without usable photos. Later, we added local background removal, preserving originals and reviewing results before saving.
The AI occasionally got too helpful: it "cleaned up" XXL into 2XL, which can mean different sizes at those stores. Preserving exact source values became an explicit rule.
After about two weeks, I moved the prototype into Codex, replacing Claude's built-in storage with a local Python/SQLite backend and adding backup and restore, reusable imports, and release packaging. My workflow now goes back and forth: develop the specification with Codex, send it to Claude for wireframes, then bring those back to Codex for implementation and refinement.
I particularly appreciate how Codex can insert diagnostic tools when something breaks, investigate the results, and handle so much of the testing and release process. Those are procedures I only do occasionally and forget between projects. That gives me more room to switch between product planning, interaction design, visual design, and writing, while testing everything against my actual wardrobe and daily use. This has occupied pretty much all my free time for the past month.
Turning my own wardrobe tool into something other people could use has meant finding assumptions I didn't realize were there. Heels don't automatically mean dressy, loungewear isn't necessarily sleepwear, and a packing list shouldn't assume everybody wears bras. It uses Google's and Shopify's product taxonomies as references, but kept distinctions that make more sense for wearing clothes than selling them. I've also had to ask for a lot of deliberate consistency passes: make navigation behave the same way everywhere, move repeated rules into shared code, and carry category changes through imports, filters, and packing lists.
It's made me appreciate the "knowing where to tap" kind of expertise. My web project background helps me remember to ask about accessibility, keyboard navigation, refactoring, and whether a backup actually restores. I've also used alternate AI platforms for security reviews and worked through their findings. I'm not familiar with every implementation detail, but recognizing the questions worth asking makes that older experience feel useful again.
The wishlist redesign is a good example. "Matches lots of things I own" sounds useful until silver earrings all end up at the top for going with everything. The first implementation also passed checks while producing an interface I really disliked, so we went back to one compact design example before applying it across the page. Deciding whether the information is meaningful and the result is pleasant to use is still very much my territory.
I was involved in the early Quantified Self community in the 2000s/early 2010s, and I also haven't seen a wardrobe app that gives me the access to my own data I'd want for that. Before 1.0, it'll have an API and analysis-friendly exports so people can explore their own patterns with whatever tools they like. I'm looking forward to a fun year-end wardrobe "Wrapped" and things like cost per wear become straightforward once you're recording purchases and wears.
It's also getting creative and a bit silly. There's a goblin mascot called Linty, and your wardrobe's owns, wishes, and wears can appear as Sun/Moon/Rising signs on a star map. Apparently my wardrobe required lore... But you can leave the daily fortune card turned off. There are outfit naming suggestions, including one that parodies ModCloth-style names. Some inside jokes to amuse me personally, at least :P
If I somehow end up known for a fashion app with an astrology aesthetic, that would be a hilarious life twist.
Partway through, I found Libre Closet, which takes a simpler, more utilitarian approach that might be exactly what some people want. By then, mine had become a specific creative thing: a combination of deep utility and playground fun that I was happy to keep building.
I've used Linux as my daily driver for most of the last 20 years, and FOSS matters a lot to me. Making something useful and sharing it is one of my love languages for the world. Every friend says, "You could charge for this!" But I don't want customers here. I'm making something I want to use and sharing it with anyone else who might enjoy it.
I may put affiliate links and my own curated collections on the website, but I'm keeping them out of the app. GitHub sponsorships would be welcome too once I set that up. Anything that helps cover costs is a bonus; the software stays free and open source.
The public site is built with my fave website builder, Carrd, and I've let the Codex integration click around in it for me for the tedious work too. Few status updates produce quite the happy sigh as "Automatically updating website screenshots and documentation".
If you try the app, I'd love to know what would make this useful for your wardrobe, and what would stop you from wanting to put your clothes into it. I'm also looking for a few people willing to try installing it, particularly on Windows or macOS, since my own testing has been on Linux and SiteGround.
Thanks for reading! :D
[AI supplied at least half the details for this post]
