Repository: https://github.com/papermerge/papermerge-core

Papermerge-Core is an open-source Document Management System (DMS) designed for storing, OCR processing, and searching scanned documents.

In simple terms:

Think of it as Google Drive + powerful search + searchable scanned PDFs.

🚨 What Problem Does It Solve?

Imagine a real-life scenario:

• You have 500 receipts
• All scanned and saved as PDFs
• You want to search for words like "VAT" or "Company A"

The Problem

Scanned PDFs are just images
→ You cannot search text inside them

Papermerge’s Solution

• OCR → converts images into text
• Indexing → enables full-text search
• Folders + metadata + tags → organize everything

In short

It turns:

a messy pile of files

into

a clean, searchable document system like Google Drive

🧱 Tech Stack

Backend

• Python
• Django
• REST API (OpenAPI)
• Async workers for OCR and indexing

Frontend

• React
• Single Page Application (SPA)
• Communicates with backend entirely via API

Infrastructure

• Docker-friendly
• Redis (task queue)
• Search engines:
  • Elasticsearch
  • Xapian
  • Whoosh
  • Solr
• Tesseract OCR

✨ Features Developers Will Like

📁 Document System

• Folder tree structure
• Drag & drop uploads
• Versioning
• Page reorder / delete / extract

🔍 OCR + Full Text Search

• Scanned files become searchable
• Instant word search inside documents

🏷️ Metadata / Tags

• Custom fields
• Document types
• Great for invoices, contracts, receipts

👥 Multi-User

• Users / groups / permissions
• Document sharing

🔌 API-First Design

• Everything exposed via REST API
• Easy integration with other systems

⚡ Quick Summary

Papermerge = Google Drive + OCR + Search + Self-hosted

Stack: Django + React + Workers + Search Engine

Great for learning:

• Real-world backend architecture
• Async workers
• Search systems
• Document processing pipelines
• API-first design

This is a solid, production-grade project — not just a demo app.
Perfect for architecture study or internal knowledge sharing.