LedgerDock

LedgerDock is a self-hosted document management system (DMS) for ingesting, processing, organizing, and searching files.

Core Capabilities

• Drag and drop upload from anywhere in the UI
• File and folder upload with path preservation
• Asynchronous extraction and OCR for PDF, images, DOCX, XLSX, TXT, and ZIP
• Metadata and full-text search
• Routing suggestions based on previous decisions
• Original file download and extracted markdown export

Technology Stack

• Backend: FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, RQ worker (backend/)
• Frontend: React, Vite, TypeScript (frontend/)
• Infrastructure: PostgreSQL, Redis, Typesense (docker-compose.yml)

Runtime Services

The default docker compose stack includes:

• frontend - React UI (http://localhost:5173)
• api - FastAPI backend (http://localhost:8000, docs at /docs)
• worker - background processing jobs
• db - PostgreSQL (internal service network)
• redis - queue backend (internal service network)
• typesense - search index (internal service network)

Requirements

• Docker Engine
• Docker Compose plugin
• Internet access for first-time image build

Quick Start

From repository root:

docker compose up --build -d

Before first run, set required secrets and connection values in .env (or your shell):

• POSTGRES_USER
• POSTGRES_PASSWORD
• POSTGRES_DB
• DATABASE_URL
• REDIS_PASSWORD
• REDIS_URL
• ADMIN_API_TOKEN
• USER_API_TOKEN
• APP_SETTINGS_ENCRYPTION_KEY
• TYPESENSE_API_KEY

Open:

• Frontend: http://localhost:5173
• API docs: http://localhost:8000/docs
• Health: http://localhost:8000/api/v1/health

Stop the stack:

docker compose down

Common Operations

Start or rebuild:

docker compose up --build -d

Stop:

docker compose down

Tail logs:

docker compose logs -f

Tail API and worker logs only:

docker compose logs -f api worker

Reset all runtime data (destructive):

docker compose down -v

Frontend-Only Local Workflow

If backend services are already running, you can run frontend tooling locally:

cd frontend && npm run dev
cd frontend && npm run build
cd frontend && npm run preview

npm run preview serves the built app on port 4173.

Configuration

Main runtime variables are defined in docker-compose.yml:

• API and worker: DATABASE_URL, REDIS_URL, REDIS_SECURITY_MODE, REDIS_TLS_MODE, STORAGE_ROOT, PUBLIC_BASE_URL, CORS_ORIGINS, ALLOW_DEVELOPMENT_ANONYMOUS_USER_ACCESS, TYPESENSE_*, APP_SETTINGS_ENCRYPTION_KEY
• Frontend: optional VITE_API_BASE, optional VITE_API_TOKEN compatibility fallback, optional VITE_DEV_PROXY_TARGET

When VITE_API_BASE is unset, the frontend uses relative /api/v1 paths via Vite proxy.

Application settings saved from the UI persist at:

• <STORAGE_ROOT>/settings.json (inside the storage volume)

Provider API keys are persisted encrypted at rest (api_key_encrypted) and are no longer written as plaintext values.

Settings endpoints:

• GET/PUT /api/v1/settings
• POST /api/v1/settings/reset
• POST /api/v1/settings/handwriting
• POST /api/v1/processing/logs/trim

Note: the compose file currently includes host-specific URL values (for example PUBLIC_BASE_URL and VITE_API_BASE). Adjust these for your environment when needed.

Data Persistence

Docker named volumes used by the stack:

• db-data
• redis-data
• dcm-storage
• typesense-data

Validation Checklist

After setup or config changes, verify:

• GET /api/v1/health returns {"status":"ok"}
• Upload and processing complete successfully
• Search returns expected results
• Preview and download work for uploaded documents
• docker compose logs -f api worker has no failures

Repository Layout

• backend/ - FastAPI API, services, models, worker
• frontend/ - React application
• doc/ - technical documentation for architecture, API, data model, and operations
• docker-compose.yml - local runtime topology

Documentation Index

• doc/README.md - technical documentation entrypoint
• doc/architecture-overview.md - service and runtime architecture
• doc/api-contract.md - endpoint and payload contract
• doc/data-model-reference.md - persistence model reference
• doc/operations-and-configuration.md - runtime operations and configuration
• doc/frontend-design-foundation.md - frontend design rules