Harbor documentation

Harbor runs as a small stack of containers on one Linux machine, with everything it stores on one encrypted volume. Your household reaches it privately through Tailscale, directly at a domain of your own on the internet, or directly on your own network or a VPN you already run; Tailscale is one option, not a requirement. Paperwork gets in by upload or by email. Harbor extracts searchable text and, with a language model configured, suggests how to organize documents and track their dates. Configure nightly encrypted backups and review the monthly restore-test results in Settings.

Start here#

1. Install: choose where Harbor will run, at home, on a cloud server, or on a server you already have, and follow the guide for it.
2. First run: create your account, add a test document, and check backups.

Before adding important records, configure Backups and The break-glass envelope.

What you are building#

Outside the house

• Your laptop or phonethrough Tailscale, at your domain, or on your own network
• Your mailboxIMAP, read only
• The model you chosetext of each document
• Your backup targetencrypted snapshots, nightly

The box

• tailscaleoptional: serves the app on your tailnettalks to your laptop or phone
• caddyoptional: serves the app at your domain, over HTTPStalks to your laptop or phone
• webthe appinternal only
• apiHTTP API, sessions, migrationsinternal only
• workerOCR and text extraction; the only process that opens a documentno route out
• suggestertitles, categories, dates, summariestalks to the model you chose
• mailfetchreads connected mailboxestalks to your mailbox
• backupnightly dump and snapshot, monthly restore testtalks to your backup target
• postgres · redisstate and queuesinternal only

/data one encrypted volume: documents, database, queues, secrets

Two of those containers are worth knowing by name. The worker extracts text and creates previews, without direct internet access. The suggester is the one that talks to a language model, and it sends text, never files. The language model says exactly what it sends, and What runs describes every container.

Where these pages come from#

They are written from the repository's own docs: deploy.md, restore.md, and the design spec. When troubleshooting a version-specific issue, use the repository documentation for the release you have installed.