Your files. Your server. Your rules.
A fast, modern, self-hosted file manager built for Docker.

Quick Start · Features · AI Features · Configuration · Screenshots

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📸 Screenshots

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✨ Features

Category	What it does
Browse	Intuitive Grid, Gallery, & List views; breadcrumb nav, semantic search, hidden-file toggle
PWA & Theming	Fluid, installable Progressive Web App with scalable, context-aware SVGs and a dynamic UI theming engine
Transfer	Parallel copy/move with live progress tracking, resume, pause & cancel
Conflict resolution	Per-file collision handling: overwrite / skip / keep-both
Trash	Safe soft-delete with restore mechanics and permanent delete option
Uploads	Drag-and-drop resilience; continues actively in the background
Archives	Create .zip and extract multi-format archives directly as background jobs
Editor	Monospace text editor for 50+ file types with dirty-state tracking
AI (Ollama)	Summarize content, rename sequences, query image metadata, and an autonomous AI task agent
Settings	UI to effortlessly manage themes, icon sizing, credentials, Dozzle URLs, and UI scaling
Notifications	Native Gotify push alerts upon successful completion or failure of background jobs
Logs & Monitor	Structured JSON logs + an independent sidecar container nova-monitor to poll for system interruptions

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🚀 Quick Start

# 1. Clone
git clone https://github.com/just-for-death/nova.git
cd nova

# 2. Configure
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env to set your port, Gotify, Ollama, etc.

# 3. Launch
docker compose up -d

# 4. Open
open http://localhost:9898

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🔒 Security & Credentials

Nova secures all persistent sessions inside its native SQLite database, fortifying against CSRF attacks with strict Double-Submit-Token enforcement on all critical API routes.

Upon first launch, the backend reads these variables in docker-compose.yml to generate your initial secure administrator hash:

      - ADMIN_USER=admin
      - ADMIN_PASS=MySecurePassword123!

IMPORTANT: These environment variables are only read when the database is empty. Once the container successfully secures the initial account, updating these variables in docker-compose.yml has no effect. To update your password later, securely alter it via the Nova UI Settings Panel.

Nova binds the entire host filesystem container path /hostroot as privileged.

Never expose it to the open internet unprotected. It is intended strictly for local home-labbing or heavily-vetted VPN/Proxy environments!

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⚙️ Configuration

All configuration lives in .env:

Variable	Default	Description
HOST_PORT	9898	Host port for the Nova UI
MONITOR_PORT	9091	Health monitor sidecar port
LOG_LEVEL	info	debug / info / warn / error
LOG_FORMAT	json	json (Dozzle) or text (human-readable)
COPY_WORKERS	4	Parallel file copy threads
AUTH_SECRET	nova-persistent	A secure persistent session key mapping
GOTIFY_...	(empty)	Gotify tokens for mobile push notifications
OLLAMA_URL	http://host-gateway:11434	Ollama semantic reasoning path

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🤖 AI Features

Nova natively queries a local Ollama language model pipeline. All AI actions stay within your host.

ollama pull llama3.2:1b          # Text semantic pipelines (renaming, tagging)
ollama pull moondream:latest     # Visual perception framework (images)
ollama pull nomic-embed-text     # Semantic knowledge search

Right-click any folder or document to deploy AI models. The AI Task Agent actively builds logic roadmaps inside your terminal buffer, giving you full sandbox oversight before executing any filesystem commands.

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⌨ Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
Ctrl+C	Copy selected
Ctrl+X	Cut selected
Ctrl+V	Paste buffer
Ctrl+A	Select aggregate
Delete	Move to trash
F5	Hot reload UI state
Backspace	Navigate relative backing
Escape	Dismiss modal
Ctrl+S	Save Editor payload

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📦 Architecture

┌──────────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐
│   nova-filemanager       │◄────│   nova-monitor   │
│   Node.js + Express      │     │   health poller  │
│   WebSocket live updates │     │   Gotify alerts  │
│   Port 9898              │     │   Port 9091      │
└────────────┬─────────────┘     └──────────────────┘
             │ bind mount
         /:/hostroot (read-write)

• Backend: Node.js 20, Express, ws, archiver
• Frontend: HTML5, CSS3 Variables, Vanilla JS (No build pipeline necessary)

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License

MIT © just-for-death