ProfessorNovaandClaude Opus 5
784b76baf7
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
3.7 KiB
Pablan
Self-hosted knowledge management for SMEs. Employees capture knowledge by writing Markdown directly into a document, with an LLM editor that matures the section at the cursor as they write (onboarding, offboarding, project debriefs and more, started from templates); the results are stored as Markdown documents and questions about the knowledge base are answered via RAG. Everything runs on your own infrastructure. The interface ships in German and English.
The problem it solves: knowledge leaves the company when employees do, and departments solve problems in isolation. Pablan makes writing tacit knowledge down quick and makes it searchable, with permission filtering before the LLM sees anything, drafts that stay private until their author publishes them, and GDPR-friendly retention defaults.
Stack
- Backend — Python 3.12, FastAPI (async), SQLAlchemy 2.0 + Alembic, managed with uv
- Database — PostgreSQL + pgvector: relational data, documents, embeddings, full-text (hybrid search), jobs and sessions in one DB
- Frontend — SvelteKit (Svelte 5) + TypeScript + Tailwind, own components on Bits UI
- LLM — any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (llama.cpp locally, cloud APIs in prod); three independently configured model roles: chat / utility / embedding
- Deployment — Docker Compose: postgres, backend, frontend, Caddy
Development
Prerequisites: Docker, uv, Node 22+.
cp .env.example .env # set DB password and LLM endpoints
make dev # postgres in docker, backend + frontend native with hot reload
make migrate # apply DB migrations
make seed # seed dev data
App: http://localhost:5173 · API: http://localhost:8000/api
| Command | |
|---|---|
make dev / make down |
start / stop the dev stack |
make migrate |
apply Alembic migrations |
make seed |
seed dev data |
make types |
regenerate the typed API client from OpenAPI |
make lint |
ruff + prettier + eslint + token contrast check (same as CI) |
make eval |
LLM eval suite against the configured endpoints |
make e2e |
Playwright end-to-end tests |
Deployment
The customer stack is plain Docker Compose:
cp .env.example .env # set POSTGRES_PASSWORD, PABLAN_DOMAIN, LLM endpoints
docker compose up -d --build
Caddy terminates TLS for PABLAN_DOMAIN automatically and serves frontend and
API on one origin — config in deploy/.
Documentation
| roadmap.md | feature backlog: what's built and what's next, as a rebuild manual |
| architecture.md | deployment model, backend/frontend structure, mode engine |
| data-model.md | tables, permission model, hybrid retrieval, GDPR defaults |
| api-protocol.md | REST + SSE contract |
| authoring-templates.md | declarative Markdown-skeleton template format for capture |
| i18n.md | message conventions, locale resolution, what stays untranslated |
| decisions.md | ADR-style decision log |
| notes.md | durable implementation learnings — calibrations, gotchas, rationale |
| licensing.md | Fair Source licensing model |
License
Pablan is Fair Source: the core is licensed under the
Functional Source License 1.1 with Apache 2.0 future grant
(FSL-1.1-ALv2) — free to read, audit, self-host and use internally; each
release automatically becomes Apache 2.0 two years after publication. The
ee/ directory contains proprietary Enterprise modules under a
separate license.