source-j-legado: a book source set for the Legado reader, with its own licence rules

What a book source is, and what these JSON files actually contain

The repository describes itself as the book source set made for Legado, a reading application, currently focused mainly on light novels with manga planned for later. The homepage is hosted at source.jwyihao.top, and the project also appears on jsDelivr and carries an AtomGit G-Star badge alongside the GitHub one.

A book source is not a novel and not an ebook. It is a rules file that tells the app how to talk to one particular website: how to search it, how to build the catalogue of a book, how to walk from one chapter to the next, and how to pull the text out of the page. The repository root shows the shape of the collection. There is a JSON file per site, including bilinovel.json, bilinovel-like.json, wenku.json, lk-lightnovel-us.json, rezero.json, fishhawk.json, esjzone.json, fqweb.json, masiro.json and zaimanhua.json, plus a utils/ directory and a CNAME file for the custom domain.

Two of the file names carry a hint about scope. bilinovel-like.json points at a group of sites built on the same underlying source code, and the README notes those have no encryption and are somewhat faster to reach, but update less often. fishhawk.json targets a translation bot project listed in the README as a separate repository. Everything else is a single site.

The primary language is recorded as JavaScript, which fits a rule set expressed largely as script snippets and regular expressions rather than as markup. The last push was on 2026-10-17, so the collection is being updated, and there are no GitHub releases, so there is no version history to track other than the commit log.

An added licence statement that overrides MPL-2.0

The licensing here needs reading carefully, because the repository licence identifier and the repository's own statement do not agree, and the statement says so itself.

The licence recorded for the project is MPL-2.0. But the README carries a section titled the additional statement about the licence, and its first line says that when the licence conflicts with this statement, this statement takes precedence. That line is the whole point of the section. It means the code snippets follow the MPL 2.0 conventions as written, while the complete book sources are governed by the extra rules.

Those rules are specific. To repost or do secondary development on a complete book source from this repository, all of the following must be met. You must open an issue in this repository and state the repost address, the open source address of your reworked source, and any other necessary information. You must then wait for the original author, described as the initial owner and initial code contributor, to review and approve the issue, or to require a change to the repost method or more detailed information. Because the author might abandon the project, the rule provides an automatic approval path: if the author has not replied within 20 working days after a new issue is opened, or has asked for changes and then not replied within 20 working days after those changes, the issue counts as approved. That escape clause only applies to issues opened in this repository that are still open, so replying inside a closed issue does not count.

There are two more conditions. The reposted or reworked source must not be uploaded back to the source repository, and must not be collected into a source collection that is not dedicated to light novels. The definition of light novel given there excludes original Chinese web novels, and a light novel specific collection is defined as one that only people who want to read light novels would add. Manga sources are exempt from the light novel specific restriction. Finally, the repost address must include the full text of the statement in a visible position, and the change history in the original source comments must be preserved.

Three mirrors for every source, because raw GitHub is often unreachable

The import mechanism is the practical part, and it is where the project is most useful. Each book source ships with a Legado import URL that points at a raw JSON file, and the README offers that URL through three different hosts so that at least one of them works from wherever you are.

For the bilinovel source, the three addresses are:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jiwangyihao/source-j-legado/main/bilinovel.json

https://ghp.ci/https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jiwangyihao/source-j-legado/main/bilinovel.json

https://fastly.jsdelivr.net/gh/jiwangyihao/source-j-legado@main/bilinovel.json

The first is GitHub raw, which the README flags as possibly requiring a way around the network restriction. The second routes the same raw URL through a GitHub proxy. The third goes through jsDelivr, which is the CDN that the README also links a badge for, and the CDN acceleration and security protection for the project is sponsored by Tencent EdgeOne.

One click import only works if you open the page from the GitHub Pages site at source.jwyihao.top and your browser allows following a link to a third party domain, because the import links use a custom scheme of the form yuedu://booksource/importonline with the address as a parameter. Otherwise you copy the URL by hand and paste it into the app's import field.

The same three-mirror pattern is repeated for every source in the collection, and the file name changes while the pattern stays the same, so bilinovel-like.json, wenku.json, lk-lightnovel-us.json, rezero.json and fishhawk.json each have a matching set of raw, proxy and jsDelivr addresses.

Each source documents its own login walls and failure modes

The per source notes are the most useful part of the README, because each site imposes its own conditions and the author records them.

Several sources require an account. The bilinovel source recommends logging in, warns that updates are frequent, and points at the author's profile page on Coolapk for news, noting that new changes may sync to this repository later. The wenku source says an account is needed. The lk-lightnovel-us source needs a login before use, and the login page is the desktop web version, so you may have to hunt for the login button; the account also has to pass a verification test, and if clicking login does nothing the likely cause is the IP being banned or the access rate being too high, in which case changing IP is the suggested fix.

Other notes describe behaviour that will otherwise look like a bug. Searching the lk collection only searches the collection itself, so a failure to load the catalogue usually means that collection is empty. That source adds comments to both the synopsis and the body text, which you can remove by editing the relevant code in the source rules. Its default image style is TEXT rather than FULL, which is deliberate so that emoticons inside comments are readable, and a manga reader should switch it to FULL. Long loading times for manga there are attributed to the image host in the original posts being down or blocked, which the author says cannot be fixed.

The rezero source covers a site with only one book, so the search matching is simple and the synopsis is stored directly in the source file, and its catalogue includes only the web edition because the library edition only provides download links.

None of this is a defect list. It is a set of boundaries around what the rules can do, and reading it before importing saves an afternoon.

A version floor for the reader, and a sync delay you have to accept

Two operational facts decide whether any of this works for you.

The first is the reader version. The README marks a note as very important and states that you must update the reader to a version later than 3.24.050215, and that as of 2024/5/2 that version was the latest beta, with the beta download page linked. In other words the sources target a recent beta of the application rather than a stable release, and using an older build of the reader can leave the rules non-functional. The version dated 2024/05/21 in that string is the reference point, and the guidance is to be past it.

The second is timing. The author asks readers to follow the Coolapk profile because the sources update frequently and new changes may reach the repository later than the site changes. That is a pipeline delay between a site changing its HTML and the rules being corrected. When a source stops working, the cause may be either a site change or a pending fix, and the README points at the author's profile as the faster channel for that news than the commit log.

The diagnostics path for a broken source is the same one the rest of the collection uses: open an issue describing the device or site. The repository also asks that the original change history in the source comments be preserved by anyone who reworks a source, which means a fork that cleans up the comments breaks the condition the licence statement imposes.

There is no CI-driven verification of these sources described in the repository, and no release tags to roll back to, so a source that worked yesterday may not work today simply because the target site moved. That is the nature of the format, and it is worth weighing against building the rules yourself if you only need one site.

Editorial conclusion

source-j-legado suits a reader who already runs Legado and wants ready-made rules for light novel sites instead of writing selectors by hand for each site. It does not suit anyone planning to republish the sources or fold them into a general purpose collection, because the additional statement requires an approved issue before a complete source can be reposted or reworked, and requires the statement to be reproduced in full. Before you import anything, read the added licence statement in full, and plan for the sync delay the author describes, since changes to a site reach this repository late rather than immediately.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. jiwangyihao/source-j-legado on GitHub
3. License: MPL-2.0
4. Project website
5. README