DocManFu

The story

I built DocManFu for a very practical reason: I wanted to cancel my Evernote subscription. I had documents to keep and wanted to find them again, without paying rent on my own filing cabinet.

My workflow is simple. The ScanSnap drops a PDF into my Downloads folder, a small docmanfu CLI notices it and sends it to the server, and I never touch it again. OCR makes the words inside the scan searchable, and optional AI analysis gives the document a sane name, extracts details, adds tags, and works out whether it is a bill.

Bills were the surprise. Recognized bills show up on a bills page with any payment link the AI found, so the page has become my to-do list for what I owe. DocManFu is MIT-licensed and self-hostable, and a hosted version may come for people who would rather not run a server.

Highlights

Scan and walk away

A CLI watches a folder and uploads new scans automatically. No second chore.

OCR + full-text search

Image-only scans become searchable. Find documents by content, name, type, tags, or date.

AI organization

Classifies documents, suggests names, extracts metadata, and adds tags. Optional, and works with OpenAI, Anthropic, or local Ollama.

Bill tracking

Bills get amounts, due dates, payment links, and a paid/unpaid status, so nothing slips.

Self-hosted & open source

MIT-licensed and shipped with Docker Compose. Your documents stay on your hardware.

Multi-user

JWT authentication with admin and user roles for households and small teams.