Show HN: Lalabase, self-hosted project management with an AI that cites sources

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.

A self-hosted project brain for devs and customers. <sub RUBY ON RAILS · POSTGRESQL</sub Tickets, 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. Try the live demo https://demo.lalabase.com : no sign-up, the login is on the page, and everything resets every night. Website https://lalabase.com/en · Self-hosting https://lalabase.com/docs/en/self-hosting/getting-started/overview · Cloud pricing https://lalabase.com/en/pricing · Changelog https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md | 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. | | Tickets as a board or a list, with your own statuses per project. | Time tracking per ticket. Every session billable on its own. | Click a picture for the full size. The pictures show the same invented company as the live demo https://demo.lalabase.com . In production for customers since September 2025. This repository starts with the first public release, 2026.10.0; more under Status status . If Lalabase is useful to you, a star helps others find it. - Clients and projects. One organisation per client, any number of projects below it. Clients get their own access, and roles decide what they see. - Tasks. As a list or a board, with the statuses, priorities and fields you define per project. - Time tracking. Several sessions per ticket, each one billable on its own, with exports for the invoice. - Documentation. Notes and documents in the project, and a folder in your GitHub or GitLab repository becomes the project's docs. - Meetings. Transcript, AI summary and the tasks that follow from it. - AI assistant. One question across tickets, docs, time and meetings, or about the one ticket or meeting you are looking at, answered with its sources. - Your data, your AI. The AI stays off until you switch it on. Then you pick the provider: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini through Vertex AI in the EU, Mistral, IONOS, OVHcloud, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including a model in your own network. No project data goes to a provider you did not choose. - MCP server and REST API. Connect Claude, Cursor or your own agent with a personal access token: list, create and update tickets, comment, log time, search the knowledge base, read the inbox, and look things up in the indexed code of your repositories. Rails 8.1 on Ruby 4, PostgreSQL with pgvector for the assistant's search, Hotwire Turbo and Stimulus with ViewComponent and Tailwind, and no React. Background jobs run on Solid Queue. Non-trivial writes go through command objects app/services/actors/ , tenants are kept apart with acts as tenant , and the project's own rules are enforced by guard specs in CI spec/architecture/ rather than by review comments. More in DEVELOPMENT.md https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/DEVELOPMENT.md . Software 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. Most teams come from Redmine, Jira, OpenProject, Asana or spreadsheets. The website compares Lalabase with each of them https://lalabase.com/en/comparison , starting with what the other tool does well. | | Your own server | Our cloud | |---|---|---| | Cost | Free under AGPL-3.0. You pay for the server. | Monthly, see pricing https://lalabase.com/en/pricing | | Operation, updates, backups | You | Us, hosted in Germany, with a DPA | | Features | All of them, with each release | All of them, always current | | AI | Your own key or your own model | The provider you choose | You 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. git clone https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase.git && cd lalabase git checkout "$ git describe --tags --abbrev=0 " the latest release, not main cp .env.docker.example .env fill in the values it asks for docker compose up -d --build docker compose exec web bin/rails lalabase:setup compose.yml starts the application, a job worker, PostgreSQL with pgvector, Valkey and Caddy, which fetches a TLS certificate for LALABASE HOST . If a proxy of your own terminates TLS, drop the COMPOSE PROFILES=tls line. Build the image on the architecture it runs on. The guide covers installation, configuration, AI keys, backups and updates, in English and German: lalabase.com/docs https://lalabase.com/docs/en/self-hosting/getting-started/overview . We help with the installation on request: hello@lalabase.com mailto:hello@lalabase.com . The same steps work without a server, a domain or a mail account. In .env , fill in the keys and the database password as the file describes, then change three things: LALABASE HOST=localhost:3000 LALABASE FORCE SSL=false and delete the line COMPOSE PROFILES=tls After lalabase:setup , sign in at http://localhost:3000/admin http://localhost:3000/admin and create your first user there. A user created by the admin needs no confirmation mail, so the mail settings can stay as they are. Lalabase 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. Lalabase is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 only SPDX: AGPL-3.0-only . Later versions of the license do not apply unless a release says so. The full license text is in LICENSE https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/LICENSE . Bug reports, ideas and questions are always welcome as issues. Pull requests are not accepted: in other projects we have seen that, since AI coding assistants, outside pull requests take more work to review and fold in than the change itself, so we write every change ourselves. An issue that describes the problem helps most. Details in CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md issues-yes-pull-requests-no . Bundled third-party components keep their own licenses, listed in THIRD PARTY NOTICES.txt https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/THIRD PARTY NOTICES.txt . The license covers the code. It grants no rights to the name Lalabase, and none to Lala, the mascot in .github/readme/lala- .svg : the figure is not covered by the AGPL, all rights are reserved, and it may not be copied, modified or used outside this repository. Working on the code: stack, setup, releases and where things live are in DEVELOPMENT.md https://github.com/lalabase/lalabase/blob/main/DEVELOPMENT.md .