Village Tool Library

A cooperative tool cabinet for the workshop everyone uses. Store six real tools, let friends borrow them, and see who took what and how much wear it gained when returned. No currency, fines, magical repossession or replacement tools generated from receipts.

Getting started

Craft a Village Tool Cabinet with six planks, two iron ingots and a chest:

Plank  Plank  Plank
Iron   Chest  Iron
Plank  Plank  Plank

• Both hands empty + sneak-right-click: cycle your selected slot and inspect stock, outstanding loans and return history in chat.
• Empty main hand + right-click: borrow from your selected slot.
• Hold a tool + right-click: donate it or return a borrowed tool into your selected empty slot. Anyone can return a friend's borrowed tool.

Selection is per player and starts at slot 1 after reconnecting. The item tooltip and chat explain the controls. This is a small interaction-based cabinet, not a large chest screen.

Accepted tools

Vanilla pickaxes, axes, shovels, hoes and swords made from wood, stone, iron, gold, diamond or netherite; shears, fishing rods, brushes, bows and crossbows. Only single tools are accepted. Names, enchantments and durability stay on the actual item.

Records and boundaries

Returns record extra wear, unchanged durability or repairs. Each cabinet keeps up to 64 outstanding receipts and 12 recent history entries. Lost, broken or receipt-stripped tools remain unresolved; older receipts can be archived as the bounded history fills. Unmatched receipts become new donations with an explicit note.

Cabinets are public: no private locks, hopper access, offline inventory searches or automatic penalties. Breaking a cabinet drops actual stock according to vanilla rules, discards records, and leaves borrowed tools with borrowers. Receipts never create replacement tools.

Stock and records save with the world. As with vanilla containers, abrupt crashes or mismatched backup restores are not guaranteed transactional across player and chunk files. Keep backups.

Installation

Install the exact matching JAR on both server and all clients. Forge 1.20.1 uses Java 17; NeoForge 1.21.1 uses Java 21; NeoForge 26.3 uses Java 25. Do not mix variants. No extra gameplay library mods are required.

Beta notice

New beta release; bugs may remain. Dedicated-server tests cover interactions, transfers and restart persistence. Graphical client rendering and real network-disconnect timing have not been verified. Report issues in comments with version and loader.

Original code and artwork by RickCode. MIT license. Unofficial project, not affiliated with Mojang or Microsoft.