What is Kinkeep?
Kinkeep is open-source welfare tracking for animal groups. It is a web application for the people who look after animals, volunteers, associations, shelters and households alike, and it gives them one structured place to keep the health history, the treatments and everything else that happened.
It works for a feral colony, a shelter, a household or a neighbourhood, and for any species. Kinkeep began as a tool for managing cat colonies, and what it kept from that is the hard part: a record that belongs to the group rather than to whoever is holding the phone.
You run it. Kinkeep is self-hosted and AGPL. There is no account with us and no data on our servers, which matters more here than it sounds: a group holds volunteer contact details and colony locations, and a colony location in the wrong hands is a risk to the animals themselves.
Key concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Group | A colony, a shelter, a household, a neighbourhood, or any other collection of animals. It is the unit everything is partitioned by, and each group can have its own location on a map |
| Animal | An individual animal of any species belonging to a group |
| Entry | Any record attached to an animal or a group: medical visit, weight measurement, note, photo, or event |
| Organisation | A body several groups affiliate with, such as an NGO, a shelter or a volunteer network. It does not own a group; affiliation is a relationship both sides accept |
Why Kinkeep?
- Any animal, any group. Not limited to a single species or group type. Cats, dogs, or anything else; colonies, shelters, homes, and more.
- Shared, not personal. Several volunteers work the same groups and see the same history, so the record survives somebody moving on.
- The whole story in one place. From a first vet visit to a full course of treatment, on one timeline, with photographs and files attached where they belong.
- Yours to run. AGPL, self-hosted, in English and Spanish, with an API that documents itself.
Ready to get started?
Head to Deployment to get Kinkeep running, on a server with systemd or on one machine with Compose. If you would rather see what it does first, read the features.