Despenxy — my own pantry and home inventory app, driven by scanning

The challenge

Keeping track of what's actually in the pantry is tedious, so things run out unnoticed. I wanted a low-friction system where stock updates itself as you shop and cook: scan products in when you get home, scan them out as you use them, and never manually maintain a shopping list again.

What I built

I designed and built the whole product:

• React Native + Expo app with native barcode scanning — a new product is defined just once (name, unit and minimum); after that it's only scan-in and scan-out.
• Scanning an unknown barcode auto-creates the product from OpenFoodFacts — name, brand and image — so it's ready in the cart in a single tap.
• Two distinct flows by design: fast bulk scanning when you get back from the shop, and low-friction capture at the moment of consumption, with direct buttons for unpackaged products.
• A three-level stock traffic light so the state of the pantry reads at a glance.
• Automatic shopping list — when stock crosses its minimum threshold, an alert fires and the product moves to the list on its own.
• React + Vite web dashboard and a NestJS backend with MongoDB and Redis.
• Self-hosting with Docker Compose.

Stack

The result

Despenxy runs as a self-hosted product covering the full loop — from scanning a product in to it landing on the shopping list when it runs low. Entry and exit were built as separate flows so each stays fast in its own context.