StorageWorkbench

Turn a storage room into a crafting station.

StorageWorkbench is a server-side Paper plugin that lets players craft using items from their own inventory and nearby chests.

Place a crafting table in your storage room, sneak-right-click it, and craft from a vanilla-compatible storage crafting menu. Ingredients are consumed directly from nearby storage. Players do not need to carry every plank, ingot, stick, stone, and gem in their inventory first.

It is built for servers that want powerful storage crafting without client mods, resource packs, custom textures, or Java-only UI tricks.

Companion Plugins

StorageWorkbench works especially well with:

Plugin	What it adds
ExpandedChests	Adds huge server-side storage containers. StorageWorkbench can craft from their contents when both plugins are installed.
OpenChestSorter	Automatically sorts ordinary chest contents when players open chests.

Together, they turn a storage wall into a practical workshop: sort ordinary chests, store bulk materials in expanded chests, and craft from the whole room through one crafting table.

The Experience

Before	After
Move ingredients from chests into your inventory.	Craft directly from nearby storage.
Stop crafting because your inventory is full of materials.	Keep ingredients in storage and craft from the menu.
Search through multiple chests manually.	Use recipe categories, sorting, pagination, and refresh.
Bedrock players can be excluded by client-side mods.	The menu uses normal server inventory screens and vanilla items.
Storage rooms only store items.	Storage rooms become real crafting rooms.

How It Works

1. Place a crafting table near your chests.
2. Sneak-right-click the crafting table.
3. Pick a recipe from the Storage Crafting menu.
4. StorageWorkbench consumes ingredients from the player inventory and nearby chests.
5. Crafted output goes to the player inventory when possible.

Regular right-click still opens the normal vanilla crafting table.

Players can also look at a crafting table and run:

/swb open

Features

Feature	Details
Storage crafting menu	Server-side inventory GUI opened from normal crafting tables.
Nearby chest support	Uses items from the player inventory and nearby vanilla chests.
ExpandedChests support	Also reads nearby ExpandedChests storage when that optional plugin is installed.
Direct chest consumption	Chest ingredients are consumed directly from storage, not moved into the player inventory first.
Full inventory support	Crafting still works when the player inventory is full.
Categories	All, Building, Tools, Combat, Redstone, Food, Transport, Ingredients, Misc.
Sorting	Name, Available, Output, Category.
Max crafting	Shift-left-click crafts the maximum available amount.
Controller-friendly max mode	A max-mode button helps Bedrock/Xbox players use maximum crafting.
Chest highlights	Included chests get lightweight vanilla particle highlights while the menu is open.
Multiplayer-aware sessions	Each player has an independent crafting session.
Server-side only	No client mod, no resource pack, no custom UI assets, no custom packets.
Standalone-first design	Works without companion plugins; integrations are optional.

Compatibility

Target	Support
Platform	Paper
Minecraft versions	1.21.x and 26.1.x
Java for 1.21.x servers	Java 21
Java for 26.1.x servers	Java 25 or newer
Client-side install	Not required
Resource pack	Not required
Dependencies	None
Optional integrations	ExpandedChests, OpenChestSorter
Geyser/Floodgate	Designed around vanilla server inventory screens for better cross-client behavior.

StorageWorkbench is a server-side Paper plugin. It is not a Fabric, Forge, or NeoForge client mod.

Chest Search Range

Default range around the crafting table:

Direction	Blocks
North	5
South	5
East	5
West	5
Up	5
Down	0

Horizontal directions use world axes because crafting table blocks do not have a facing direction. Diagonal chests inside the resulting rectangular area are included.

Server operators can change the range through commands or in plugins/StorageWorkbench/config.yml.

Commands

Player command:

Command	Permission	Description
/swb open	storageworkbench.use	Opens the storage crafting menu while looking at a crafting table.

Admin commands:

Command	Permission	Description
/swb status	storageworkbench.admin	Shows plugin status and active sessions.
/swb range show	storageworkbench.admin	Shows the current chest search range.
/swb range default	storageworkbench.admin	Restores the default range.
/swb range horizontal <blocks>	storageworkbench.admin	Sets all four horizontal directions at once.
/swb range set <north|south|east|west|up|down> <blocks>	storageworkbench.admin	Sets one direction.
/swb reload	storageworkbench.admin	Reloads the plugin config.

Permissions

Permission	Default	Purpose
storageworkbench.use	Everyone	Allows using StorageWorkbench crafting.
storageworkbench.admin	Operators	Allows changing StorageWorkbench settings in game.

Installation

1. Stop the Paper server.
2. Back up the server folder, especially world, world_nether, world_the_end, plugins, and config files.
3. Copy storage-workbench-1.0.1.jar into the server plugins folder.
4. Start the server.
5. Adjust plugins/StorageWorkbench/config.yml if needed.

Default configuration

enabled: true

storage-range:
  north: 5
  south: 5
  east: 5
  west: 5
  up: 5
  down: 0

storage-menu-enabled: true
highlight-chests-enabled: true
highlight-batch-size: 12
highlight-ticks-between-batches: 2
highlight-refresh-ticks: 20
borrow-custom-chest-items: false
debug-logging: false

Performance

StorageWorkbench is built to avoid repeated expensive world scans:

• Chest discovery runs per player storage crafting session.
• The plugin scans loaded chunk tile entities instead of every block in the search volume.
• Recipe availability is based on a compact material index built from current inventory contents.
• Chest particles are batched and only active while the storage crafting menu is open.
• Item consumption checks the current chest slot state before taking items.
• No database, telemetry, external network calls, or world data migrations.

Safety

StorageWorkbench does not generate chunks, edit blocks, rewrite world files, migrate world data, use a database, or make external network calls.

It does move items between player inventories and chest inventories during crafting, so test it before installing on a valuable live world.

Recommended rollout:

1. Make a full server backup.
2. Test on a copied world or separate test server.
3. Test normal crafting table behavior.
4. Test sneak-right-click storage crafting.
5. Test full inventory behavior.
6. Test two players crafting from the same nearby chest area.
7. Install on the live server only after the copied-world test looks correct.

Companion Plugin Compatibility

StorageWorkbench is designed to coexist with OpenChestSorter.

OpenChestSorter reacts to normal chest inventory opens. StorageWorkbench uses its own storage crafting menu and reads nearby chest inventories directly. The plugins do not share UI state, and opening the StorageWorkbench crafting menu does not open chest inventories through OpenChestSorter.

StorageWorkbench also integrates with ExpandedChests. When ExpandedChests is installed, nearby expanded chest contents can appear in the storage crafting menu and can be consumed as crafting ingredients. If ExpandedChests is not installed, StorageWorkbench simply works as a normal nearby-chest crafting plugin.

This integration is optional and reflection-based, so the plugins can be installed together or separately.

Known Limitations

• A server plugin cannot add new tabs to the client-side vanilla recipe-book panel in a Java/Bedrock-compatible way without a client mod or resource pack.
• StorageWorkbench uses a server-side inventory menu with vanilla item buttons instead.
• The legacy vanilla recipe-book preview mode exists as a fallback but is disabled by default.
• Some unusual custom recipes or heavily customized item metadata may not behave like simple vanilla shaped and shapeless recipes.

License

StorageWorkbench is released under the MIT License.