But as the project grew, so did the scope.

Beyond cat colonies​

The core problem isn't specific to cats, or to colonies. Anyone responsible for a group of animals — whether that's a feral colony, a shelter, a household, or a neighbourhood community — faces the same challenge: too many animals, too many events, and no good tool to track it all.

So that's what Kinkeep became. Open welfare tracking for colonies, shelters, homes, and more. Any species, any group type, free and open source under the MIT licence.

Where we are now​

Kinkeep is currently in alpha. The core is working — you can create organisations, manage groups of animals, log medical visits, track prescriptions, record weight over time, and browse a unified timeline of everything that has happened. But there's still a lot to build.

Right now we're focused on three things:

• Streamlined tracking workflows — the flows for logging medical visits, attaching media, and recording events are being redesigned around how caretakers actually work, not around what was easiest to build first.
• Inventory management — tracking medicines, supplies, and equipment per group, including quantities and expiry dates.
• Calendar export — exporting any calendar view as an iCal (.ics) file so you can subscribe from whatever calendar app you already use.

What's coming next​

Once those are solid, the next priorities are data import and export (so migrating in or out of Kinkeep is always possible), a full change history for every record, and auto-save across all forms so no data is ever lost to an accidental tab close.

Further out, we want to support offline mode — because some of the places where people care for animals don't have reliable internet coverage, and that shouldn't stop anyone from keeping records.

Stay tuned​

We expect to reach a proper beta in the second half of 2026. If you want to follow along, the source code is on Codeberg and issues and ideas are always welcome.