Gorae is a terminal-based document librarian for managing collections of PDFs, EPUBs and Markdown files. It combines document browsing, reference metadata, search and note-taking in a keyboard-oriented interface.
The application is designed for people who maintain collections of research papers and other documents on their own computers. Documents remain as ordinary files, while metadata and search information are stored locally. This approach allows the library to remain accessible outside the application.
Gorae provides a convenient way to locate documents and follow connections between them. An optional AI assistant can also answer questions using information retrieved from the indexed library, either through locally hosted models or a configured external provider. The core document management features do not require AI.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Browse PDFs, EPUBs and Markdown documents with Vim-style keyboard navigation and mouse support.
- File table with sorting by filename, title or publication year.
- Full-text and metadata searching using an SQLite FTS5 index.
- Search by title, author, year, keywords or hierarchical tags.
- Display matching passages with snippets and PDF page references.
- Open PDF documents at matching pages when using supported external viewers.
- Automatically identify DOI and arXiv references in documents and retrieve publication metadata.
- Copy BibTeX information for use in research documents.
- Track reading progress with unread, reading and completed states, alongside a to-read queue.
- Maintain Markdown notes and establish connections between documents using wiki-style links and backlinks.
- Preview bibliographic metadata, extracted document text and PDF first pages in compatible terminals.
- Customisable themes, colours, glyphs and directory-tree layout.
- Optional AI assistant offering document-grounded conversations, paper summaries and saved sessions.
- Integration with Ollama and OpenAI-compatible model providers for AI-assisted document exploration.
- Locally stored configuration and support for precompiled Linux binaries.
Website: github.com/Han8931/gorae
Support:
Developer: Han Cheol Moon
License: MIT License

Gorae is written in Go. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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