Pablan, as it stands

Self-hosted knowledge management for SMEs: a split-screen Markdown editor
whose sections an LLM refines while you write, and RAG question answering
over the documents that result. FastAPI + Postgres/pgvector on the back,
SvelteKit on the front, everything OpenAI-compatible and self-hostable.

Squashed into a single commit; the development history stays local.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01CA43ZJda8Rbp2hKXNy8f6b

backend/app/prompts/defaults.py

@@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
+"""The shipped system prompts, as code defaults.
+
+Every prompt Pablan sends has its base text here, keyed by a stable id. The
+render functions in `app/modes/prompts.py` and `app/authoring/prompts.py` read
+the *effective* value through `app/prompts/overrides.py::get_prompt`, which
+returns an admin's DB override when one exists and this default otherwise.
+
+Kept as pure strings with no imports so both the overrides cache and the render
+functions can depend on it without a cycle. Editing a value here ships a new
+default (and resets restore to it); an admin's live override always wins.
+"""
+
+# The query (RAG Q&A) assistant. Kept byte-identical per turn so the endpoint's
+# prompt cache reuses it — a DB override only changes on an admin write, so that
+# still holds (docs/architecture.md, prompt caching).
+QUERY_SYSTEM = """\
+You are Pablan, this company's internal knowledge assistant.
+
+Answer in the language of the question. Company facts — processes, numbers,
+names, responsibilities — come only from the excerpts you are given; say when
+something is not documented rather than filling the gap. Be brief and concrete.
+"""
+
+# Appended to the final user turn when retrieval found nothing relevant, so the
+# assistant still answers a greeting or general question without pretending the
+# answer is company policy.
+QUERY_NO_SOURCES = """\
+The knowledge base has nothing relevant for this message.
+
+Answer anyway, using your general knowledge, and be genuinely useful — a
+greeting deserves a normal reply, a general question a real answer. The one
+thing you must not do is state anything as if it were this company's
+documented process, policy or data. Where the answer would depend on how
+this company works, say plainly that this is not documented yet.
+"""
+
+# The default persona for section refinement (a template may override it per
+# document); the mechanical rules the refined section must follow.
+REFINE_PERSONA = (
+    "You are a precise technical editor in a knowledge-management tool. You "
+    "turn rough notes into clear, matter-of-fact documentation."
+)
+
+REFINE_RULES = (
+    "Rules: reply in the language the section is written in. Return ONLY the "
+    "refined section as plain Markdown — no preamble, no explanation, no code "
+    "fence around the whole thing, and none of the other sections. Keep a "
+    "heading the section starts with unchanged. Improve clarity, grammar and "
+    "structure (use a list where the content is a sequence of steps), but "
+    "invent no facts: use only what the section already states. If the section "
+    "is already clear, change it little."
+)
+
+# The instruction that frames the retrieved grounding block during refinement;
+# the retrieved excerpts are appended after it.
+GROUNDING_FRAMING = (
+    "Related knowledge already documented elsewhere (use it only to stay "
+    "consistent and to reference where this section connects to it — do not "
+    "copy it in and add no facts from it that the notes above do not already "
+    "state):"
+)
+
+# Condensing a conversation into a short search topic (the topic-summary path).
+TOPIC_SUMMARY = (
+    "You condense a conversation into a short search topic for a knowledge "
+    "base. Reply with a concise noun phrase (a few words) in the language of "
+    "the conversation, naming what it is about. No sentence, no preamble, no "
+    "quotes."
+)
+
+# Suggesting a document title from its content.
+TITLE = (
+    "You suggest a concise, specific title for a knowledge document, in the "
+    "language of the document. Reply with the title only: a short noun phrase, "
+    "no quotes, no trailing punctuation."
+)
+
+DEFAULTS: dict[str, str] = {
+    "query_system": QUERY_SYSTEM,
+    "query_no_sources": QUERY_NO_SOURCES,
+    "refine_persona": REFINE_PERSONA,
+    "refine_rules": REFINE_RULES,
+    "grounding_framing": GROUNDING_FRAMING,
+    "topic_summary": TOPIC_SUMMARY,
+    "title": TITLE,
+}
+
+# Stable display/iteration order for the admin panel.
+PROMPT_KEYS: tuple[str, ...] = tuple(DEFAULTS)

backend/app/prompts/overrides.py

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+"""The effective system prompts, as the process sees them.
+
+Prompts default to code (`app/prompts/defaults.py`); an admin may override any
+of them in `prompt_settings`, applied without a restart. This mirrors the LLM
+settings override pattern, with two simplifications: the reset target is the
+code default (prompts have no `.env` layer), and there is no bootstrap — a
+missing row simply means "use the default".
+
+`get_prompt` is called while rendering a prompt, so it reads a module-level
+cache rather than awaiting a query. The cache is filled at startup and refreshed
+on every admin write. Single-process by design (`--workers 1`); a multi-worker
+deployment would need a notification channel.
+"""
+
+import logging
+
+from sqlalchemy import select
+from sqlalchemy.ext.asyncio import AsyncSession
+
+from app.models import PromptSetting
+from app.prompts.defaults import DEFAULTS
+
+logger = logging.getLogger("pablan.prompts")
+
+# Only holds the keys an admin has actually overridden.
+_config: dict[str, str] = {}
+
+
+async def load_config(db: AsyncSession) -> None:
+    """Re-read every override row into the cache. Call at startup and after any
+    admin write."""
+    rows = (await db.execute(select(PromptSetting))).scalars().all()
+    _config.clear()
+    _config.update({row.key: row.content for row in rows if row.key in DEFAULTS})
+    logger.info(
+        "prompt settings loaded",
+        extra={"event": "prompt_settings_loaded", "overridden": sorted(_config)},
+    )
+
+
+def get_prompt(key: str) -> str:
+    """The effective prompt: an admin override if present, else the code default.
+
+    `key` must be a known prompt (a `KeyError` here is a programming error, not
+    user input)."""
+    return _config.get(key) or DEFAULTS[key]
+
+
+def is_overridden(key: str) -> bool:
+    return key in _config
+
+
+def clear() -> None:
+    """Drop the cache — used by tests between cases."""
+    _config.clear()