Turning a pile of documents into a searchable useable knowledge base

Packaged for Linux (RPM, DEB, tarball), Windows (zip), and macOS (dmg). Interfaces are stable; breaking changes are avoided where possible.

DocuBrowse turns a messy pile of documents into something you can actually search. Point it at your files — PDFs, ebooks, Word docs, notes, whatever — and it builds a smart index that understands not just keywords, but meaning. Ask for "that contract about the lease renewal" and find it even if those exact words never appear. Click any result for an instant AI summary before you even open the file. PII aware and works with multiple document directories.

DocuBrowse runs entirely on your own machine using local AI models — no internet connection required, no accounts, no API keys, and no per-query costs eating into a token budget. Your data. Your AI.

Under the hood: SQLite FTS5 keyword search plus AI-powered semantic similarity and synopsis generation (Ollama + nomic-embed-text + dolphin3). Supports multiple document and source code types.

Keyword Search— fast full-text search via SQLite FTS5 (title, author, subject, tags, snippet)** Semantic Search**— AI-powered similarity via Ollama embeddings (nomic-embed-text:latest)** Hybrid Mode**(default) — 70% semantic + 30% keyword, merged and re-ranked

• Click any document title for a Kindle-style book-jacket synopsis, generated on demand via Ollama ( dolphin3:latest

) and cached in the database after first generation. Semantic search embeddings are produced by a second local model (nomic-embed-text:latest

)

Formats: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, AZW, HTML, TXT, Markdown** PDF intelligence**: pdfplumber (preferred) with pypdf fallback for bloated-object files;layout=False

retry for complex layouts; scanned (image-only) PDFs detected and routed toocr_list_pdfs.txt

Word documents: python-docx extracts paragraphs, tables, and core properties (title, author, subject)** Presentations**: python-pptx extracts slide text, notes, and core properties** Spreadsheets**: openpyxl extracts cell values and sheet names** E-books**: ebooklib for EPUB; mobi package + Calibre fallback for MOBI/AZW3; DRM-encrypted AZW files indexed with metadata only (title/author visible, body not searchable)Metadata: title, author, subject extracted from document metadata fields; auto-generated tags from directory structure and content keywordsPII protection: post-ingest scanner detects SSN, credit card, bank routing/account number, DOB, MRN, driver license, passport patterns; removes matching documents and permanently blacklists them

• Dark/Light theme toggle

• Paginated results (50 docs/page) with Back/Next controls

• Alphabetic index bar (A–Z, 0–9) for quick navigation, with state preserved across page loads; Home button to reset

• Tag cloud for filtering by topic

• Relevance score badges (0–100%) on every result Open button on each result card — launches the file in your default app viaxdg-open

• Click document title for an AI synopsis; 📋 copies path to clipboard; 🗑 deletes file from disk and index (with confirmation)

• Moved/deleted documents: clicking a doc whose file no longer exists shows a dismissable modal (and removes it from the index on dismiss) if its filesystem is mounted, or a toast (no index change) if the filesystem can't be verified (e.g. unmounted drive)

• General panel: document directory (with live directory browser), any number of additional scan directories (added/removed under the same panel — automatically included in scan

/rescan

, no extra command needed), working directory, and port - Ignored Directories panel: browse to add a directory to ignore_dirs.txt

, with a confirmation prompt before purging already-indexed documents under it, and a confirmation before removing an entry

• Search latency: <150ms typical
• Parallel PDF extraction with ProcessPoolExecutor

(physical-core-aware worker count) - Memory-safe: kernel-enforced RLIMIT_AS (6 GB/worker) + /resume on free-RAM threshold

Click any thumbnail to view full size.

Dark Mode	Light Mode

Settings	AI Synopsis

Settings is a standalone page at

/settings

(opened in a new tab via the gear icon). The General panel covers the document directory (with live directory browser, plus any number of additional scan directories), working directory, and port; the Ignored Directories panel manages scan exclusions, each with a directory browser, add/clear controls, and confirmation before removal.

• Python 3.9+ pdfplumber

,pypdf

— PDF extractionpython-docx

— Word documentspython-pptx

— PowerPoint presentationsopenpyxl

— Excel spreadsheetsebooklib

,beautifulsoup4

,mobi

— E-bookspsutil

— cross-platform process and hardware detectionCalibre— E-book metadata and conversion (required for MOBI/AZW3/AZW indexing):sudo dnf install calibre

orsudo apt install calibre

• Ollama — installed automatically by docubrowser start

if missing - Modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)

See INSTALL.md for a full step-by-step guide.

DocuBrowse ships as RPM, DEB, tarball, Windows zip, and macOS dmg packages. Download the appropriate package from the Releases page.

sudo dnf install ./docubrowser-foss-0.9.0-7.noarch.rpm

sudo apt install ./docubrowser-foss_0.9.0-7_all.deb

tar xzf docubrowser-foss-0.9.0-7.tar.gz
cd docubrowser-foss-0.9.0-7
sudo ./install.sh

Windows: Extract the zip, then double-click Install.bat

. Requires Python 3.9+ and Ollama to be pre-installed. Installs to %USERPROFILE%\DocuBrowse

with a Start Menu shortcut — no admin required. You may need to log out and back in for the shortcut to appear.

macOS: Open the dmg, then double-click Install.command

(right-click → Open the first time — the scripts are unsigned). Requires Python 3.9+. Installs to ~/Applications/DocuBrowse/

with a Python virtualenv, CLI wrappers at /usr/local/bin/docubrowser

and /usr/local/bin/docuback

(sudo prompted; falls back to ~/bin/

if declined), and a DocuBrowse.app

launcher that starts the server and opens the web UI in Terminal.

All Linux methods install to /opt/docubrowser/

with a Python virtualenv, CLI wrappers at /usr/bin/docubrowser

and /usr/bin/docuback

, a desktop menu entry under Office, and all Python dependencies from requirements.txt

.

Once installed, the CLI is the docubrowser

command — drop the ./

and .py

from every example below. For example, docubrowser start

and docubrowser rescan

. The ./docubrowser.py <cmd>

form shown throughout the rest of this README is the dev / cloned-repo path (running directly out of a checkout).

To uninstall: sudo dnf remove docubrowser-foss

(RPM), sudo apt remove docubrowser-foss

(DEB), sudo ./uninstall.sh

(tarball), double-click Uninstall.bat

(Windows), or double-click Uninstall.command

(macOS — on the dmg or in ~/Applications/DocuBrowse/

).

cd /path/to/DocuBrowse

./docubrowser.py rescan

./docubrowser.py start

./docubrowser.py open

On an installed system, use the

docubrowser

command instead, e.g.docubrowser rescan

/docubrowser start

/docubrowser open

.

docubrowser.py start

automatically verifies Ollama is installed, running, and has both required models — nomic-embed-text:latest

(embeddings) and dolphin3:latest

(synopsis generation) — installing/starting/pulling as needed.

Usage: docubrowser.py <command> [options]

Command	Description
start
Start the search server (runs Ollama check first)
stop
Stop the server
restart
Stop then start
status
Show server status, document count, embedding count, tag count
scan [TYPE ...]
Scan and index documents (no embedding)
rescan [TYPE ...]
Scan + generate embeddings
scan-file --file PATH
Extract and index a single file, then embed it
embed
Generate/refresh embeddings for un-embedded documents
open
Open the DocuBrowse UI in your default browser
purge
Scan index for PII and remove matching documents
`ignore add	remove
Manage directories excluded from scanning (auto-purges on add)
report
Walk doc directory and show file-type breakdown (no DB changes)
scan-missing [--db PATH] [--dry-run]
Opt-in cleanup: classify every indexed path as present/missing/unmounted, delete missing rows (cascades), leave unmounted rows alone
stopall
Stop all running scans, embeds, and the server
duplist
List duplicate documents (exact SHA256 + optional near-duplicate)
dupclean
Interactive TUI to review and remove duplicate documents

--db PATH      SQLite database path (overrides config)
--port PORT    Server port (overrides config)
--config FILE  Config file path
./docubrowser.py start
./docubrowser.py start --port 9000
./docubrowser.py status
./docubrowser.py stop
./docubrowser.py stopall

./docubrowser.py scan                          # scan all supported types
./docubrowser.py scan pdf                      # PDFs only
./docubrowser.py scan pdf txt                  # PDFs and plain text
./docubrowser.py scan --limit 100              # first 100 unindexed files only
./docubrowser.py rescan                        # scan + embed all types
./docubrowser.py rescan pdf --workers 4        # PDFs only, 4 workers
./docubrowser.py rescan --no-embed             # scan without embedding step
./docubrowser.py rescan --doc-dir /data/docs

./docubrowser.py scan-file --file /path/to/document.pdf
./docubrowser.py scan-file --file /path/with spaces/doc.pdf   # no quoting needed
./docubrowser.py scan-file --file /path/to/doc.pdf --no-embed

./docubrowser.py report                         # file-type breakdown, no DB changes
./docubrowser.py embed                          # embed any un-embedded docs
./docubrowser.py purge --dry-run               # preview PII matches (safe)
./docubrowser.py purge                         # remove PII documents (prompts)

./docubrowser.py ignore add /mnt/data/Documents/myWorkDocs   # exclude + purge indexed docs under it
./docubrowser.py ignore list                                  # show ignored directories
./docubrowser.py ignore remove /mnt/data/Documents/myWorkDocs # re-allow (rescan to re-index)

./docubrowser.py duplist                       # find exact SHA256 duplicates
./docubrowser.py duplist --near-dups           # also find near-duplicates (cosine ≥97%)
./docubrowser.py duplist --near-dups --threshold 0.95
./docubrowser.py dupclean                      # interactive Keep A/Keep B/Keep Both TUI
./docubrowser.py dupclean --near-dups          # include near-duplicates in cleanup

./docubrowser.py scan-missing --dry-run        # report counts only, no DB changes
./docubrowser.py scan-missing                  # delete rows for genuinely-missing files
Types: pdf  txt  md  html  (default: all four)

Examples:
  rescan pdf             PDFs only
  rescan pdf txt         PDFs and plain text
  rescan                 all supported types (prompts if unfiltered)

scan-file

is designed for retrying individual problem files:

• Removes the file from scan_blacklist.txt

if listed (explicit retry) - Refuses files in pii_blacklist.txt

(permanent PII block) - Detects scanned (image-only) PDFs → adds to ocr_list_pdfs.txt

• Paths with spaces work without quoting: --file

accepts multiple tokens and rejoins them

DocuBrowse reads the first config file it finds:

/etc/docubrowse.config

(system-wide)./docubrowse.config

(next todocubrowser.py

)

If neither exists, built-in defaults apply — except doc_dir

, which has no default. Until a document directory is configured (via the Settings gear icon in the web UI, or by setting doc_dir

in docubrowse.config

), the web UI shows a banner prompting you to configure one, and CLI commands that need a document directory (rescan

, report

, scan

) exit with an error explaining how to set it.

doc_dir      = /mnt/data/Documents
db_path      = /home/user/DocuBrowse/du-docs.db
port         = 8643
work_dir     = /home/user/DocuBrowse

Key	Default
doc_dir
(none — must be configured via Settings or docubrowse.config)
db_path
<script dir>/du-docs.db
port
8643
work_dir
<script dir>

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  docubrowser.py  (CLI entry point)  │
│  ensure_ollama.py (prereq check)    │
└──────────┬──────────────────────────┘
           │ subprocess / direct call
           ↓
┌──────────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│  scan_docs.py        │  │  doc_search.py  (HTTP :8643)    │
│  ProcessPoolExecutor │  │  GET /  /api/search             │
│  pdf_extractor.py    │  │  GET /api/stats  /api/tags      │
│  embed_docs.py       │  │  GET /api/open  /api/config     │
│                      │  GET /api/delete  /api/synopsis │
└──────────┬───────────┘  └──────────────┬──────────────────┘
           │                              │
           └──────────┬───────────────────┘
                      ↓
        ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │  du-docs.db  (SQLite FTS5)                       │
        │  Ollama (nomic-embed-text + dolphin3)  │
        └──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Script	Role
docubrowser.py
CLI launcher — all commands
ensure_ollama.py
Checks/installs Ollama binary, service, and required models
doc_search.py
HTTP server; search API and UI
docubrowse_db.py
SQLite schema and migrations
platform_paths.py
Cross-platform path resolution and process management
scan_docs.py
Document discovery, extraction, and DB writes
pdf_extractor.py
PDF-specific extraction with pdfplumber/pypdf
docx_extractor.py
Word document extraction (python-docx)
ebook_extractor.py
EPUB/MOBI/AZW3/AZW extraction (ebooklib + Calibre)
hardware_utils.py
CPU/GPU/RAM detection, worker count formula
embed_docs.py
Sends text to Ollama; stores 768-dim vectors
purge_pii.py
Scans index for PII; removes and blacklists matches
dup_detect.py
Exact (SHA256) and near-duplicate (cosine similarity) detection

File	Purpose	Permanent?
scan_blacklist.txt
Files that failed extraction	No — remove line to retry
pii_blacklist.txt
Files removed for containing PII	Yes — never re-ingest
ocr_list_pdfs.txt
Image-only PDFs needing OCR	N/A — informational
ignore_dirs.txt
Directories excluded from scanning (managed via ignore command)
No — ignore remove + rescan

Base URL: http://localhost:8643

Method	Path	Description
GET
/
Serve index.html (injects a per-process CSRF token)
GET
/settings
Serve settings.html
GET
/api/stats
Total docs, embedded count, unique tag count
GET
/api/tags
Tag list with counts (≥3 occurrences)
GET
/api/search
Search with pagination
GET
/api/letters
First-letter index for the alphabetic bar
GET
/api/synopsis
Generate/return an AI synopsis for a document
GET
/api/config
Current server configuration
GET
/api/ignore-dirs
List excluded directories
GET
/api/scan-dirs
List additional scan directories
🔒 GET
/api/browse
Directory browser for Settings (token-gated)
🔒 POST
/api/open
Open a file with xdg-open/gio (validates against DB)
🔒 POST
/api/delete
Delete a file from disk and remove from index (path must be indexed)
🔒 POST
/api/config
Save server configuration
🔒 POST
/api/ignore-dirs
Add/remove an excluded directory
🔒 POST
/api/scan-dirs
Add/remove an additional scan directory

🔒 = state-changing or filesystem-exposing; requires the per-process X-CSRF-Token

header and a loopback Origin

/Referer

. The token is injected into the served HTML, so only the first-party UI can call these. See Security. All requests are also rejected unless the Host

header is localhost

/127.0.0.1

/[::1]

(DNS-rebinding protection).

If the indexed path no longer exists on disk, /api/open

returns one of:

{"ok": false, "error": "missing", "message": "..."}
{"ok": false, "error": "unmounted", "message": "..."}

missing

means the file's filesystem is mounted and the file is genuinely gone — the UI shows a dismissable modal and deletes the document from the index (and disk-adjacent DB rows) when dismissed. unmounted

means the path's filesystem can't currently be verified (likely an unmounted drive) — the UI shows a toast and makes no DB changes. See scan-missing

for the equivalent batch cleanup.

GET /api/search?q=QUERY&offset=0&mode=both

Param	Values	Default
q
search string	"" (returns all docs)
mode
both	keyword	semantic
both
offset
integer	0

{
  "documents": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "doc.pdf",
      "title": "Document Title",
      "author": "Jane Smith",
      "subject": "Cloud Security",
      "description": "First 500 chars of content...",
      "path": "/mnt/data/Documents/doc.pdf",
      "tags": ["pdf", "security", "cloud"],
      "modified_at": "2026-06-07T14:30:00",
      "score": 0.95,
      "fts_score": 0.8,
      "sem_score": 0.98
    }
  ],
  "query": "cloud security",
  "count": 50,
  "total": 312,
  "offset": 0,
  "has_more": true,
  "mode": "both"
}
curl "http://localhost:8643/api/stats"
curl "http://localhost:8643/api/search?q=kubernetes&mode=both"
curl "http://localhost:8643/api/search?q=&offset=50"

Mutating endpoints (/api/delete

, /api/open

, the POST

config/dir routes) and /api/browse

require the per-process CSRF token and a loopback origin, so they aren't easily exercised with a bare curl

— drive them from the UI, or pass -X POST -H "X-CSRF-Token: <token>" -H "Origin: http://localhost:8643"

where <token>

is read from the <meta name="csrf-token">

tag in /

.

A non-empty query is scored two ways and merged; metadata is then fetched only for the requested page (the whole corpus is no longer loaded per request).

final_score = 0.3 × keyword_score + 0.7 × semantic_score   (mode=both)

• Backed by the SQLite FTS5 index viaMATCH

+bm25()

— not a Python substring scan. - Query tokens are quoted and prefix-matched ( "tok"*

), OR-combined, so arbitrary input (operators, quotes,C++

,&

) can't break the query. - Per-column BM25 weights echo the old field priorities (name 6, title 8, author 7, subject 5, description 3, content_snippet 3, tags 4); the result is normalized to 0–1.

• Orphan doc_fts

rowids (contentless FTS has no FK cascade) are pruned against the live document set so they can't inflate totals.

• Cosine similarity between the query embedding and each document embedding.
• Computed against an in-process, L2-normalized embedding matrix(one vectorized NumPy matrix-vector product), cached and invalidated when the embeddings table changes — instead of re every BLOB per request. - Range 0.0–1.0; minimum threshold (semantic-only mode): 0.30. - Embeddings: 768-dimensional float32 vectors (nomic-embed-text:latest).

DocuBrowse binds to localhost and is intended for single-user local use, but it is hardened so a malicious web page you happen to visit can't reach it:

Host-header allow-list— every request is rejected unlessHost

islocalhost

/127.0.0.1

/[::1]

(optionally with the serving port). Defeats DNS-rebinding against the localhost-bound server.CSRF tokens on mutations—/api/delete

and/api/open

are POST-only; they plus the POST config/dir routes and the filesystem-exposing/api/browse

require a per-processX-CSRF-Token

(injected into the served HTML, so only the first-party UI has it) and a loopbackOrigin

/Referer

.No stored-data injection— document fields are escaped for HTML and card actions usedata-*

attributes + delegated listeners (no inlineonclick

built from document data), closing a stored-XSS vector.PII purge validates structurally before deleting: SSNs against SSA allocation rules, credit cards by length + issuer prefix + Luhn, bank routing numbers by ABA checksum + Federal Reserve prefix — so it both catches more real PII and avoids deleting docs over incidental number groups.

The server is localhost-only — it binds the loopback subnet and rejects all non-loopback connections at the socket level. No authentication is needed because only the local user can reach the server.

DocuBrowse/
├── docubrowser.py          # CLI entry point (all commands)
├── ensure_ollama.py        # Ollama prerequisite checker/installer
├── doc_search.py           # HTTP search server (port 8643)
├── docubrowse_db.py        # SQLite schema and migrations
├── scan_docs.py            # Scanner: discovery, extraction, DB writes
├── pdf_extractor.py        # PDF extraction (pdfplumber + pypdf fallback)
├── docx_extractor.py       # Word document extraction (python-docx)
├── ebook_extractor.py      # EPUB/MOBI/AZW3/AZW extraction (ebooklib + Calibre)
├── hardware_utils.py       # CPU/GPU/RAM detection, worker formula
├── embed_docs.py           # Embedding generation pipeline
├── purge_pii.py            # PII scanner and purge tool
├── dup_detect.py           # Exact (SHA256) and near-duplicate detection
├── platform_paths.py       # Cross-platform paths and process management
├── index.html              # Frontend UI (single-file, dark/light theme)
├── du-docs.db              # SQLite database (gitignored)
├── du-docs.db.example      # Empty schema for new installs
├── scan_blacklist.txt      # Failed-extraction skiplist (gitignored)
├── pii_blacklist.txt       # PII-removed files — permanent (gitignored)
├── ocr_list_pdfs.txt       # Image-only PDFs needing OCR (gitignored)
├── ignore_dirs.txt         # Directories excluded from scanning (gitignored)
├── scan_dirs.txt           # Additional scan directories (gitignored)
├── docubrowse.config       # Local config (optional, gitignored)
├── INSTALL.md              # Step-by-step install guide
├── README.md               # This file
├── LICENSE                 # GPL-3.0
├── packaging/              # RPM spec, DEB control, build scripts, installers
│   ├── build_packages.sh   # Builds RPM, DEB, and tarball (Linux)
│   ├── build_windows_zip.sh # Builds Windows zip
│   ├── docubrowser-foss.spec  # RPM spec
│   ├── docubrowser.desktop # Desktop menu entry (Linux)
│   ├── install.sh          # Tarball installer (Linux)
│   ├── uninstall.sh        # Tarball uninstaller (Linux)
│   ├── windows/            # Windows installer/uninstaller scripts
│   │   ├── Install.bat     # Double-click to install
│   │   ├── Uninstall.bat   # Double-click to uninstall
│   │   ├── install.ps1     # PowerShell installer
│   │   └── uninstall.ps1   # PowerShell uninstaller
│   └── macos/              # macOS installer/uninstaller scripts
│       ├── build_macos_dmg.sh   # Builds the macOS dmg
│       ├── Install.command      # Double-click to install
│       └── Uninstall.command    # Double-click to uninstall
├── systemd/
│   └── docubrowser.service # systemd unit file
├── status_docs/            # Project planning and decision logs
│   ├── project_status.md   # Current version, session history
│   └── DECISIONS.md        # Deferred decisions and known issues
└── test_pdfs_live/         # 100 sample PDFs for testing

Large document collections may trigger:

OSError: [Errno 28] inotify watch limit reached

This is a Linux kernel limit, not a disk space issue. It's safe to ignore these warnings — but if you'd rather not see them, raise the limit for the duration of the scan:

• Edit /etc/sysctl.conf

and find the line:

fs.inotify.max_user_instances=128

• Raise it to 256

or512

:

fs.inotify.max_user_instances=256

• Apply the change without rebooting:

sudo sysctl -p

Once ingestion is finished, you can set the value back to 128

(edit the file again and re-run sudo sysctl -p

) — or just leave it raised.

Some PDFs cause pdfminer to hang. These are auto-detected and blacklisted. If a specific file is causing problems, check:

pdfinfo /path/to/file.pdf | grep -i objects

./docubrowser.py scan-file --file /path/to/file.pdf

Files with >8,000 PDF objects (usually caused by repeated ExifTool metadata updates) are automatically routed through pypdf instead of pdfminer.

PDFs with no extractable text are detected and added to ocr_list_pdfs.txt

. They are indexed with a placeholder ([scanned PDF — OCR required]

) so they appear in browse but won't match keyword or semantic searches until OCR is run.

Check the log:

tail -f /var/log/docubrowser.log
tail -f ~/.local/share/docubrowser/docubrowser.log
ollama serve                       # start manually
ollama list                        # verify both models are present
ollama pull nomic-embed-text:latest              # embeddings, if missing
ollama pull dolphin3:latest                      # synopsis generation, if missing

Limitation	Status
DRM-encrypted AZW not fully searchable	Metadata indexed; DeDRM_tools required for body text
Scanned PDFs not searchable	Listed in ocr_list_pdfs.txt; OCR deferred
Multiple top-level doc directories	Fully supported — configure any number of additional scan directories in the General panel (scan_dirs.txt ); scan /rescan automatically scan all of them into the single shared database
Moved/renamed files	Not detected as moves — old path is removed (interactively or via scan-missing ), new path is picked up on next rescan as a fresh entry; true duplicates are caught by duplist /dupclean
No authentication	Local use only; hardened against cross-origin/CSRF/DNS-rebinding (see

status_docs/DECISIONS.md

)DocuBrowse is now packaged for Linux and Windows with native installers.

RPM, DEB, tarball, and Windows zip packages—build_packages.sh

produces Linux packages;build_windows_zip.sh

produces the Windows zip. Linux installs to/opt/docubrowser/

with a Python virtualenv, CLI wrappers at/usr/bin/docubrowser

and/usr/bin/docuback

, and a desktop menu entry under Office. Windows installs to%USERPROFILE%\DocuBrowse

with a Start Menu shortcut (no admin required).Windows installer—Install.bat

/install.ps1

detects Python, creates a virtualenv, installs dependencies, and creates a Start Menu shortcut.Uninstall.bat

reverses everything.Cross-platform path abstraction— newplatform_paths.py

centralizes all runtime path selection (PID files, log files, backup directory) and process management (kill, find-by-script, kill-port). Linux paths are unchanged; Windows paths use%USERPROFILE%\DocuBrowse\

.Windows compatibility— guarded all Unix-only constructs (resource

,SIGALRM

,os.killpg

,/proc

access) behind platform checks. Process management usespsutil

with/proc

fallback on Linux.Backup/restore—backup_restore.py

supports Windows privilege checks (IsUserAnAdmin

) and handles missingpwd

module gracefully.Desktop menu entry—.desktop

file usesxdg-terminal-exec

for reliable terminal launching across all desktop environments; categorized under Office.Systemd service file— included for system-level deployments on Linux.** dist/ pruning**— build script keeps only the latest 2 releases per format.** macOS dmg installer**—packaging/macos/build_macos_dmg.sh

produces a dmg with double-clickableInstall.command

/Uninstall.command

scripts. Installs to~/Applications/DocuBrowse/

(no sudo for the app itself) with a Python virtualenv, CLI wrappers, and aDocuBrowse.app

launcher whose icon is generated fromicons/icon-512.png

via sips/iconutil.

Removes unused code paths and experimental features that were never part of the FOSS release, leaving a cleaner and more focused codebase.

Leaner server—doc_search.py

reduced by ~300 lines; removed unused network configuration, protocol negotiation, and handler code that had accumulated during development.Leaner CLI—docubrowser.py

reduced by ~240 lines; removed thesetup-tls

command and related helpers that are not applicable to a localhost application.Stale files removed— deletedbranding.json.example

and other development-only files that were never used in production.Documentation updated— README, INSTALL, and architecture notes cleaned up to accurately reflect the current feature set.

Hide documents from view— each card now has a 🙈 Hide icon that tags the document as "hidden" and fades it out of the listing. Hidden documents remain in the database and can be restored at any time."Show 🙈" toggle button— added next to the page count in all views (All Documents, letter filter, search results). Clicking it reveals all hidden cards alongside normal ones; the button label switches to "Hide 🙈" to toggle them back off.Unhide (👀) icon— when hidden cards are visible, they display a 👀 icon instead of 🙈. Clicking it removes the "hidden" tag server-side, swaps the icon back to 🙈, and removes the "hidden" tag chip from the card.New API endpoint:— removes a single tag from a document. Parameters:POST /api/remove-tag

path

(URL-encoded file path),tag

(tag name). Returns the updated tag list. CSRF-protected.Card action icons restyled— all icons (📋 🔖 🙈 ❌) now use solid, colorful emoji at full opacity. No more faded/dim icons in dark mode.↑ Top

Dark & light mode palettes redesigned— new CSS variable theming withdata-theme

attribute switching. Dark mode uses deep navy/purple tones with cyan, orange, and violet accents. Light mode uses clean whites with darkened accent variants for readability. Tag colors cycle through five distinct hues vianth-child

selectors. Score badges, mode buttons, and action buttons all use the new palette.Trash icon now opens a 4-option modal instead of immediately deleting: (1) Remove from index only (file stays on disk, re-scanned next run), (2) Remove & blacklist (file stays, future scans skip it), (3) Remove & delete file from disk (with double-confirmation), (4) Cancel. Server API updated:POST /api/delete?path=...&mode=db_only|blacklist|delete_file

(defaults todb_only

for backward compatibility).Search scoring fixed in "both" mode— keyword matches were previously buried under thousands of low-similarity semantic results. Now applies a semantic floor (SEM_FLOOR=0.30

) and usesmax(fts, sem)

scoring instead of a weighted average that capped keyword-only hits at 0.3.(same asscan

command now embeds by defaultrescan

) — new installations get working semantic search out of the box. Added--no-embed

and--embed-workers

flags for opt-out.Security hardening— CSRF protection added to/api/synopsis

; exception leak to client suppressed.

Open action button replaces the old clickable file path link on each result card — launches the file in your default app viaxdg-open

.Button styling updated — buttons use accent-colored border and text with a filled hover state, replacing the previous dim/greyed appearance.

with current schema — fresh installs no longer hit an HTTP 500 ("no such column: d.subject") on first page load. The old example was built against an older schema (pre-author/subject/synopsis columns and pre-full-FTS5 index), causing the lazy migration to race against the first search request. New example has the correct schema from the start.du-docs.db.example

regenerated

Settings moved to a standalone page(/settings

, opened in a new tab via the gear icon) — replaces the old modal. Full-width layout, a header "Done" button that saves config and returns to the search tab, and a redesigned Ignored Directories panel (description text, "Add a directory to exclude" row, "Currently excluded directories" list with inline ✕ remove buttons, confirm-before-purge on add and rescan-reminder on remove).Alpha index bar (0-9, A-Z) is now a true global filter— clicking a letter queries/api/search?letter=X

forallmatching documents (not just the loaded page), paginated by the existing page-size preference; Next/Back and page-size changes work while filtered, and clicking the active letter again returns to All Documents. A "Home" button (left of "0-9") returns to All Documents from anywhere, and the index bar now persists across every view (All Documents, letter-filtered, search, paginated).Multiple document directories confirmed fully automatic:resolve_doc_dirs()

unifies the configured docPath withscan_dirs.txt

into one ordered list;scan

/rescan

loop over every directory into the single shared database and run embedding once at the end — no manual per-directory rescan needed.- Removed the "N embedded" count from the header stats bar (now "N docs · N tags"). friendlyError()

helper inindex.html

gives a clear "Cannot reach the DocuBrowse service" message (instead of a generic network error) if the server is down while a page is loaded — applied to search, filter, pagination, synopsis, open, and delete.- Synopsis modal's "Generating synopsis..." message now updates at 6s/25s with reassuring text so a slow cold-start Ollama request (up to ~90s) doesn't look hung.

doc_dir

/docPath

no longer default to/mnt/data/Documents

— an unconfigured document directory is now a valid state across the CLI (docubrowser.py

), API (doc_search.py

/api/config

), andinstall.sh

's generated config.- CLI commands that need a document directory ( rescan

,report

,scan

) now exit with a clear error pointing to the Settings gear,docubrowse.config

, or--doc-dir

if none is configured. index.html

shows a banner — "No document directory configured yet. Click the Settings (gear) icon..." — whenever/api/config

reports an emptydocPath

.- Added uninstall.sh

, mirroringinstall.sh

's user/system mode detection: stops/disables/removes the systemd unit, removes the CLI wrapper and install directory, cleans up pid/log files, and (system mode, separate confirmation) can remove the dedicateddocubrowse

user/group.

Installer: rewritteninstall.sh

/uninstall.sh

with a clean user vs. system split — user mode installs to~/.docubrowse

(own venv, wrapper at~/.local/bin/docubrowser

, no root, no systemd); system mode installs to/opt/docubrowse

as a dedicateddocubrowse

user with a (not auto-enabled)docubrowser.service

systemd unit and/usr/local/bin/docubrowser

wrapper.Pre-flight checks: the installer validates all prerequisites up front (python3 ≥ 3.9 + venv/ensurepip, rsync, curl, tar, calibre, ollama, plus getent/useradd/groupadd/systemctl in system mode) and reports everything missing at once before making any changes.CLI: the launcher is now installed as thedocubrowser

command (no.py

).requirements.txt added and installed viapip install -r requirements.txt

— now includes previously-missing deps (numpy, python-pptx, openpyxl) alongside pdfplumber, pypdf, python-docx, ebooklib, beautifulsoup4, mobi.Fresh installs start empty:du-docs.db.example

now ships empty, so new installs begin with no documents indexed.Multiple document directories: Settings now shows a single "Document directories" list (the old separate docPath + "additional directories" panels are merged).rescan

/scan

indexevery listed directory; an explicit--doc-dir

still targets just one.doc_dir

is now optional.

Remediation of a full code-quality + security audit (details in status_docs/DECISIONS.md

). Highlights:

Security: Host-header allow-list (anti DNS-rebinding);/api/delete

and/api/open

moved to POST and, with the POST config/dir routes and/api/browse

, gated by a per-process CSRF token + loopback origin; stored-XSS vector closed (data-attribute + delegated listeners); PII purge now validates with SSA rules + Luhn/IIN.Search: keyword path now uses the FTS5bm25()

index and semantic scoring uses a cached NumPy embedding matrix instead of the whole corpus per request (keyword ~4ms, both ~55ms); server-side semantic search fixed (was silently returning nothing).Reliability:INSERT … ON CONFLICT

upsert (re-indexing no longer wipes tags/embeddings/synopsis); worker-death "suspect isolation" blacklists only the real offender; schema init runs once per process; scan/embed commit on a ~2s time budget so the server isn't blocked;dupclean

no longer corrupts the disk/DB on its main path; precise/proc

-based worker termination; single shared document-delete helper; assorted medium/low fixes.UI: pagination Back/Next correct at all page sizes; a newer search now supersedes an in-flight page load (no stale results).

/api/open

now returns{"ok": false, "error": "missing"|"unmounted", "message": ...}

for files that no longer exist, instead of a generic error.- The UI shows a dismissable modal for missing

files (and removes them from the index on dismiss), or a toast forunmounted

files (filesystem can't be verified, no index change). - New opt-in scan-missing [--dry-run]

CLI command batch-cleansmissing

rows across the whole index without touchingunmounted

rows.

• Fixed "Open file" ( /api/open

) silently doing nothing — the server's environment was missingDBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS

/DISPLAY

/XAUTHORITY

/XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

, soxdg-open

exited successfully without launching the default app.handle_open

now reconstructs the desktop session environment and prefersgio open

for reliable launches.

• ✅ DOCX extractor (python-docx)

• ✅ EPUB/MOBI/AZW3/AZW extraction (ebooklib + Calibre)

• No-extension file classification (magic bytes)

• Scale to 10K+ documents

• ✅ duplist

/dupclean

— exact + near-duplicate detection and interactive cleanup - ✅ Config read/write via Settings UI (port, docPath, workDir)

• Sliding window ETA for progress bar

• File-type filter in search UI

• Config persistence

• Advanced filtering (date range, type, author)

• Result export (CSV/JSON)

• OCR integration for scanned PDFs

• API key authentication

• Document similarity clustering

• Docker deployment

DocuBrowse is developed with Claude as an active coding partner. To resume a session with full context, load these files at the start:

File	Contents
.claude/CLAUDE.md
Project rules, key files, hard-won lessons
status_docs/project_status.md
Version, session history, what's in progress
status_docs/DECISIONS.md
Deferred decisions, known issues, rationale

cat .claude/CLAUDE.md status_docs/project_status.md status_docs/DECISIONS.md

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later).

Copyright (C) 2026 James Sparenberg

See LICENSE or https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html.

DocuBrowse v0.9.0 — Fast, local, AI-powered document search.

source & further reading

github.com — original article