{"slug": "show-hn-lalabase-self-hosted-project-management-with-an-ai-that-cites-sources", "title": "Show HN: Lalabase, self-hosted project management with an AI that cites sources", "summary": "Lalabase released version 2026.10.0, the first public release of its self-hosted project management tool for software agencies, built on Rails 8.1 and Ruby 4 with PostgreSQL and pgvector. The tool combines tickets, time tracking, documentation and meetings with an AI assistant that answers questions from a team's own project data and cites its sources, and it stays off until an administrator enables it and selects a provider from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini via Vertex AI in the EU, Mistral, IONOS, OVHcloud or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Lalabase is free to self-host under AGPL-3.0 or available as a hosted service in Germany, and it has been in production for customers since September 2025; it also ships an MCP server and REST API for connecting Claude, Cursor or custom agents.", "body_md": "**A self-hosted project brain for devs and customers.**\n\n<sub>RUBY ON RAILS · POSTGRESQL</sub>\n\nTickets, time tracking, docs and meetings for software agencies and their clients, with an AI assistant that answers from your own project data and cites its sources. Free on your own server, or hosted by us in Germany.\n\n**[Try the live demo](https://demo.lalabase.com)**: no sign-up, the login is on the page, and\neverything resets every night.\n\n[Website](https://lalabase.com/en) · [Self-hosting](https://lalabase.com/docs/en/self-hosting/getting-started/overview) ·\n[Cloud pricing](https://lalabase.com/en/pricing) · [Changelog](https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md)\n\n| **Ask about a ticket.** The answer cites the ticket, a comment and a meeting. | **Ask about a meeting.** Summary, action items and transcript next to the answer. | \n| **Tickets as a board** or a list, with your own statuses per project. | **Time tracking per ticket.** Every session billable on its own. | \n\nClick a picture for the full size. The pictures show the same invented company as the\n[live demo](https://demo.lalabase.com).\n\nIn production for customers since September 2025. This repository starts with the first public\nrelease, 2026.10.0; [more under Status](#status). If Lalabase is useful to you, a star helps\nothers find it.\n\n- **Clients and projects.** One organisation per client, any number of projects below it.\nClients get their own access, and roles decide what they see.\n- **Tasks.** As a list or a board, with the statuses, priorities and fields you define per\nproject.\n- **Time tracking.** Several sessions per ticket, each one billable on its own, with exports\nfor the invoice.\n- **Documentation.** Notes and documents in the project, and a folder in your GitHub or GitLab\nrepository becomes the project's docs.\n- **Meetings.** Transcript, AI summary and the tasks that follow from it.\n- **AI assistant.** One question across tickets, docs, time and meetings, or about the one ticket\nor meeting you are looking at, answered with its sources.\n- **Your data, your AI.** The AI stays off until you switch it on. Then you pick the provider:\nOpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini through Vertex AI in the EU, Mistral, IONOS, OVHcloud, or any\nOpenAI-compatible endpoint, including a model in your own network. No project data goes to a\nprovider you did not choose.\n- **MCP server and REST API.** Connect Claude, Cursor or your own agent with a personal access\ntoken: list, create and update tickets, comment, log time, search the knowledge base, read the\ninbox, and look things up in the indexed code of your repositories.\n\nRails 8.1 on Ruby 4, PostgreSQL with pgvector for the assistant's search, Hotwire (Turbo and\nStimulus) with ViewComponent and Tailwind, and no React. Background jobs run on Solid Queue.\nNon-trivial writes go through command objects (`app/services/actors/`), tenants are kept apart\nwith `acts_as_tenant`, and the project's own rules are enforced by guard specs in CI\n(`spec/architecture/`) rather than by review comments. More in [DEVELOPMENT.md](https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/DEVELOPMENT.md).\n\nSoftware agencies, freelancers and small software companies that work on projects for clients and want their project data, and the AI that works on it, under their own control. Lalabase replaces the usual mix of ticket tool, wiki, time tracking, chat and reporting spreadsheets.\n\nMost teams come from Redmine, Jira, OpenProject, Asana or spreadsheets. The website\n[compares Lalabase with each of them](https://lalabase.com/en/comparison), starting with what\nthe other tool does well.\n\n|  | Your own server | Our cloud | \n|---|---|---|\n| Cost | Free under AGPL-3.0. You pay for the server. | Monthly, see [pricing](https://lalabase.com/en/pricing) | \n| Operation, updates, backups | You | Us, hosted in Germany, with a DPA | \n| Features | All of them, with each release | All of them, always current | \n| AI | Your own key or your own model | The provider you choose | \n\nYou need a server with at least 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM and 20 GB disk, Docker 24 or later with Docker Compose v2, and a domain pointing at it.\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase.git && cd lalabase\ngit checkout \"$(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)\"   # the latest release, not main\ncp .env.docker.example .env      # fill in the values it asks for\ndocker compose up -d --build\ndocker compose exec web bin/rails lalabase:setup\n```\n\n`compose.yml` starts the application, a job worker, PostgreSQL with pgvector, Valkey and Caddy,\nwhich fetches a TLS certificate for `LALABASE_HOST`. If a proxy of your own terminates TLS, drop\nthe `COMPOSE_PROFILES=tls` line. Build the image on the architecture it runs on.\n\nThe guide covers installation, configuration, AI keys, backups and updates, in English and\nGerman: [lalabase.com/docs](https://lalabase.com/docs/en/self-hosting/getting-started/overview).\nWe help with the installation on request: [hello@lalabase.com](mailto:hello@lalabase.com).\n\nThe same steps work without a server, a domain or a mail account. In `.env`, fill in the keys\nand the database password as the file describes, then change three things:\n\n```\nLALABASE_HOST=localhost:3000\nLALABASE_FORCE_SSL=false\n# and delete the line COMPOSE_PROFILES=tls\n```\n\nAfter `lalabase:setup`, sign in at [http://localhost:3000/admin](http://localhost:3000/admin) and create your first user\nthere. A user created by the admin needs no confirmation mail, so the mail settings can stay as\nthey are.\n\nLalabase has been developed since October 2024: more than 2,300 commits and about 970 pull requests, in production for customers since September 2025. This repository starts with the first public release, 2026.10.0. The earlier history stays private, because it holds customer data and details of our servers. Development continues here, in the open.\n\nLalabase is licensed under the **GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 only**\n(SPDX: `AGPL-3.0-only`). Later versions of the license do not apply unless a release says so.\nThe full license text is in [LICENSE](https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/LICENSE).\n\nBug reports, ideas and questions are always welcome as issues. Pull requests are not accepted:\nin other projects we have seen that, since AI coding assistants, outside pull requests take more\nwork to review and fold in than the change itself, so we write every change ourselves. An issue\nthat describes the problem helps most. Details in\n[CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#issues-yes-pull-requests-no).\nBundled third-party components keep their own licenses, listed in\n[THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt](https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt).\n\nThe license covers the code. It grants no rights to the name Lalabase, and none to Lala, the\nmascot in `.github/readme/lala-*.svg`: the figure is not covered by the AGPL, all rights are\nreserved, and it may not be copied, modified or used outside this repository.\n\nWorking on the code: stack, setup, releases and where things live are in\n[DEVELOPMENT.md](https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/DEVELOPMENT.md).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-lalabase-self-hosted-project-management-with-an-ai-that-cites-sources", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase", "published_at": "2026-10-22 13:48:43+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-22 14:12:11.140739+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-products", "ai-tools", "agent-protocols", "ai-agents", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Lalabase", "Rails 8.1", "Ruby 4", "PostgreSQL", "pgvector", "OpenAI", "Anthropic", "Google Gemini"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-lalabase-self-hosted-project-management-with-an-ai-that-cites-sources", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-lalabase-self-hosted-project-management-with-an-ai-that-cites-sources.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-lalabase-self-hosted-project-management-with-an-ai-that-cites-sources.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-lalabase-self-hosted-project-management-with-an-ai-that-cites-sources.jsonld"}}