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08-open-notebook.md

kstack: book: Centerpoint Home Lab chapter: AI & Automation page: Open Notebook tags: [open-notebook, ai, research, surrealdb, rag]

Overview

emptyOpen Notebook is a self-hosted AI research notebook application — a local alternative to Google NotebookLM. It allows structured AI-assisted research sessions where sources (documents, URLs, text) are ingested into a notebook and queried via an LLM for synthesis, summaries, and question-answering.

It uses SurrealDB as its backend database for storing notebooks, sources, and conversation state.

Access

Type URL Notes Internal https://notebook.home.local LAN access via Step-CA TLS External https://notebook.jeeves5454.ddns.net Authentik SSO + GeoBlock + CrowdSec

Containers in This Stack

Container Image Role open-notebook lfnovo/open_notebook:v1-latest Application server (Streamlit) open-notebook-db surrealdb/surrealdb:v2 SurrealDB database backend

Configuration

Compose project: ai-stack

Environment Variables

Variable Value / Notes API_URL https://notebook.home.local CORS_ORIGINS https://notebook.home.local,https://notebook.jeeves5454.ddns.net INTERNAL_API_URL http://localhost:5055 SURREAL_URL ws://open-notebook-db:8000/rpc SURREAL_NAMESPACE open_notebook SURREAL_DATABASE open_notebook SURREAL_USER root SURREAL_PASSWORD REDACTED HOSTNAME 0.0.0.0

Traefik Labels

# External route
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-ext.rule: Host(`notebook.jeeves5454.ddns.net`)
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-ext.entrypoints: websecure
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-ext.tls.certresolver: letsencrypt
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-ext.middlewares: authentik-auth@docker,plex-geoblock@file,crowdsec-bouncer@file
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-ext.service: open-notebook-ui-svc
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-ext.priority: 1

# Internal route
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-int.rule: Host(`notebook.home.local`)
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-int.entrypoints: websecure
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-int.tls.certresolver: step-ca
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-int.service: open-notebook-ui-svc
traefik.http.routers.open-notebook-int.priority: 1

traefik.http.services.open-notebook-ui-svc.loadbalancer.server.port: 8502

Volumes / Bind Mounts

Host Path Container Path Purpose /media/jeeves/1TB_Vol1/docker/open-notebook/notebook_data /app/data Notebook content and uploads (Ceph OSD) /home/jeeves/docker/open-notebook/surreal_data /mydata SurrealDB data files

Notebook data (uploaded sources, generated content) is stored on the Ceph OSD volume (1TB_Vol1) to keep large research files off the system NVMe.

Sub-section: SurrealDB

open-notebook-db runs SurrealDB v2, a multi-model database used by Open Notebook to store all notebook definitions, source metadata, embeddings, and conversation history.

SurrealDB is connected to open-notebook via WebSocket at ws://open-notebook-db:8000/rpc over the ai-internal network. It is not exposed to traefik-net — no external access.

Networks

Network Purpose ai-stack_ai-internal open-notebook ↔ open-notebook-db communication traefik-net Exposes the Open Notebook UI via Traefik

open-notebook-db is on ai-internal only and never on traefik-net.

Dependencies

    open-notebook-db (SurrealDB must be running before the app starts) Ollama or an external LLM API configured within the app settings Authentik for SSO on the external route Ceph OSD volume mounted at /media/jeeves/1TB_Vol1

    Notes / Gotchas

      The v1-latest image tag tracks the latest v1 stable release. Breaking changes between major versions may require a database migration. SurrealDB stores its data in the bind-mounted surreal_data directory. This must be backed up before upgrades to SurrealDB v3+ as schema changes are not automatically reversible. LLM provider settings (which Ollama model to use, API keys for external providers) are configured inside the Open Notebook UI, not via environment variables. CORS_ORIGINS must include both the internal and external URLs — missing one will cause browser CORS errors for the corresponding route.

      Last Updated: 2026-06-16

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