Teedy — Lightweight Self-Hosted Document Management System

Introduction

Teedy (formerly Sismics Docs) is a lightweight document management system that runs in a single container. It provides full-text search, OCR, tagging, and workflow automation for organizing documents without the overhead of enterprise DMS solutions.

What Teedy Does

• Stores and indexes documents with automatic full-text search
• Applies OCR to scanned images and PDFs using Tesseract
• Supports custom metadata fields, tags, and relations between documents
• Provides workflow automation with review and approval steps
• Offers a REST API for integration with external applications

Architecture Overview

Teedy is a Java application using the JAX-RS framework, running on an embedded Jetty server. The frontend is built with AngularJS. Document content is indexed with Apache Lucene for full-text search. OCR is performed by Tesseract when enabled. Data is stored in an embedded H2 database by default, with optional PostgreSQL support.

Self-Hosting & Configuration

• Deploy via Docker with the sismics/docs image for zero-config setup
• Set DOCS_DEFAULT_LANGUAGE to configure OCR language (e.g., eng, fra, deu)
• Mount a volume for /data to persist documents and database
• Switch to PostgreSQL by setting the DATABASE_URL environment variable
• Configure SMTP settings for email notifications on workflow events

Key Features

• Full-text search across document content, metadata, and tags
• Built-in OCR converts scanned documents into searchable text
• Custom metadata schemas let you define fields per document type
• Workflow engine supports multi-step review and approval processes
• File versioning tracks changes and maintains document history

Comparison with Similar Tools

• Paperless-ngx — auto-consumption focused; Teedy offers richer workflow automation
• Papermerge — stronger dual-panel UI; Teedy is lighter with a single-container deployment
• Mayan EDMS — heavier with more enterprise features; Teedy prioritizes simplicity
• LogicalDOC — commercial with open core; Teedy is fully open source
• OpenKM — Java-based enterprise DMS; Teedy is far more lightweight

FAQ

Q: What file formats does Teedy support? A: PDF, ODT, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, and common image formats. All are indexed for full-text search.

Q: Can I set up user permissions and roles? A: Yes. Teedy supports user groups with configurable access control per document and tag.

Q: Is Teedy suitable for large document collections? A: Teedy works well for small to medium collections. For very large archives, consider PostgreSQL and dedicated storage volumes.

Q: How do I enable OCR? A: OCR is enabled by default in the Docker image. Set the language via the DOCS_DEFAULT_LANGUAGE environment variable.

Sources

• https://github.com/sismics/docs
• https://teedy.io