Construction Doc Copilot (MVP)

Local RAG app for contractors: drag in PDFs, ask questions, get answers with citations to (filename, page).

One-click run (local)

./run.sh
# Open http://localhost:8501

Docker

docker compose up --build
# UI: http://localhost:8501  API: http://localhost:8000

Static web deployment (GitHub Pages friendly)

The repository ships with a zero-dependency browser client under ui/web. It speaks directly to the FastAPI backend over CORS, so you can expose the full workflow (health check, document ingest, Q&A with previews) from any static host.

Local preview

python -m http.server 8080 --directory ui/web
# Open http://localhost:8080 and point it at your API

GitHub Pages (recommended)

1. Decide where the API will live. When serving the static page from an HTTPS origin (GitHub Pages), the API should also be reachable over HTTPS to avoid mixed-content blocking.
2. Copy the contents of ui/web/ into a docs/ folder (or your gh-pages branch) and enable GitHub Pages for that path.
3. Visit the published page, set the API base URL in the banner (or append ?api=https://your-api.example.com to the URL). The setting is cached in localStorage for returning operators.

The web client mirrors the Streamlit feature set:

• /healthz probe with visual badges for storage/OCR status.
• ZIP or server-folder ingest with OCR toggle.
• Project registry viewer (backed by /projects).
• Retrieval UI that streams /ask answers and renders /page_preview images inline.

OCR (optional)

• macOS: brew install tesseract
• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y tesseract-ocr
• Docker image already includes Tesseract.

Troubleshooting

• API not reachable → check port 8000 in use, see .api.log
• OCR missing → install Tesseract or use Docker
• Empty answers → confirm docs in project_docs/, re-index from UI

Feature matrix

Feature	Status
Citations	✅
Local embeddings	✅
OCR (Tesseract)	⚠️ if not installed
Config panel	✅
Docs table	✅
Export roadmap	📋