diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 8c960ec..3f02ca7 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
 *.jl.cov
 *.jl.*.cov
 *.jl.mem
+Manifest.toml
diff --git a/Project.toml b/Project.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bacb6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Project.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+name = "AssetRegistry"
+uuid = "bf4720bc-e11a-5d0c-854e-bdca1663c893"
+version = "0.1.0"
+
+[deps]
+JSON = "682c06a0-de6a-54ab-a142-c8b1cf79cde6"
+Pidfile = "fa939f87-e72e-5be4-a000-7fc836dbe307"
+SHA = "ea8e919c-243c-51af-8825-aaa63cd721ce"
+
+[extras]
+Distributed = "8ba89e20-285c-5b6f-9357-94700520ee1b"
+Test = "8dfed614-e22c-5e08-85e1-65c5234f0b40"
+
+[targets]
+test = ["Test", "Distributed"]
diff --git a/REQUIRE b/REQUIRE
deleted file mode 100644
index 2265bed..0000000
--- a/REQUIRE
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,3 +0,0 @@
-julia 0.7
-Pidfile
-JSON
diff --git a/src/AssetRegistry.jl b/src/AssetRegistry.jl
index 9f392f1..028b46f 100644
--- a/src/AssetRegistry.jl
+++ b/src/AssetRegistry.jl
@@ -113,9 +113,15 @@ function deregister(path; registry_file = joinpath(homedir(), ".jlassetregistry.
     key
 end
 
-getkey(path) =  baseurl[] * "/assetserver/" * bytes2hex(sha1(abspath(path))) * "-" * basename(path)
+generatekey(path) =  baseurl[] * "/assetserver/" * bytes2hex(sha1(path)) * "-" * basename(path)
 
-isregistered(path) = haskey(registry, getkey(path))
+isregistered(path) = normpath(abspath(expanduser(path))) in values(registry)
+
+function getkey(path)
+    target = normpath(abspath(expanduser(path)))
+    key = findfirst(x -> x == target, registry)
+    key === nothing ? generatekey(path) : key
+end
 
 function __init__()
     baseurl[] = get(ENV, "JULIA_ASSETREGISTRY_BASEURL", get(ENV, "JUPYTERHUB_SERVICE_PREFIX", ""))