PaperManager

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Requirement Version Notes
Python 3.11+ Use conda or pyenv
Node.js 18+ For the frontend
Neo4j Aura Free tier Cloud-hosted graph DB
Google account — Google Drive for PDF storage
Anthropic API key — Claude for summaries & chat
Ollama (optional) latest Local AI for metadata extraction

Installation

1 — Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/NiklasAbraham/PaperManager
cd PaperManager

2 — Set up the Python environment

conda create -n papermanager python=3.11 -y
conda activate papermanager
pip install -r backend/requirements.txt

3 — Install the frontend

cd frontend
npm install
cd ..

4 — Install Ollama (optional, recommended)

Ollama is used for local metadata extraction (layer 2), tag suggestions, Cypher assist, and figure captions. Without it the system still works using Semantic Scholar and Claude.

# macOS
brew install ollama

# Linux
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

# Pull the model
ollama pull llama3.2:3b

Configuration

Copy the example environment file and fill in your credentials:

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env:

# ── Neo4j ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
NEO4J_URI=neo4j+s://xxxx.databases.neo4j.io
NEO4J_USER=neo4j
NEO4J_PASSWORD=your-password

# ── Google Drive ───────────────────────────────────────────────
# OAuth desktop app credentials from Google Cloud Console
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=xxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=xxxx
GOOGLE_DRIVE_FOLDER_ID=xxxx   # Folder where PDFs will be stored

# ── Anthropic ─────────────────────────────────────────────────
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-xxxx

# Anthropic Foundry enterprise gateway (optional)
ANTHROPIC_WORK_API_KEY=xxxx
ANTHROPIC_WORK_BASE_URL=https://your-foundry-gateway.com/...

# ── App ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
BACKEND_PORT=8000
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5173

# ── Ollama ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
OLLAMA_MODEL=llama3.2:3b

# ── Corporate network (optional) ──────────────────────────────
SSL_VERIFY=true
SSL_CA_BUNDLE=/path/to/corporate-ca.pem

Neo4j Aura setup

  1. Go to https://neo4j.com/cloud/platform/aura-graph-database/
  2. Create a free AuraDB instance
  3. Copy the connection URI, username, and password into .env

Google Drive setup

  1. Go to Google Cloud Console
  2. Create a project and enable the Google Drive API
  3. Create OAuth 2.0 credentials (Desktop application type)
  4. Download the credentials JSON
  5. On first backend start, a browser window opens for OAuth authorisation
  6. Credentials are saved to backend/token.json and reused automatically

Starting the Application

./start.sh

This script:

Open http://localhost:5173 in your browser.

!!! tip “Checking logs” bash tail -f /tmp/papermanager-backend.log tail -f /tmp/papermanager-frontend.log

First Run

On startup the backend automatically:

  1. Verifies the Neo4j connection
  2. Runs schema setup (creates indexes and constraints)
  3. Seeds 157 default tags across source, workflow, content, and domain categories

You should see the library page with a drop zone and a + button to add papers.

What’s Next?