TabulaRAG

A fast-ingesting tabular data MCP RAG tool backed with cell citations.
Upload a CSV or TSV, then query it in natural language. Results include cell-level citations so you can trace exactly where each answer came from. We also have multi-role access where admin users can add, delete, edit datasets as well as invite users to their enterprise/organization via invite codes.

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Features

• CSV/TSV ingestion — upload tabular files with automatic header detection, delimiter inference, and column type recognition (dates, money, measurements)
• Semantic search — each row is embedded via sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2 and indexed in Qdrant for natural-language retrieval with cell-level citations
• Structured queries — filter and aggregate data through the API with SQL over PostgreSQL JSON columns
• Multi-tenant workspaces — enterprises with invite codes, roles (owner / admin / querier), and switchable active workspace
• Folders & access control — public, protected, and private folders with user-group-based permissions
• MCP server — exposes Streamable HTTP + SSE endpoints so AI assistants can use your tables as a retrieval tool
• Auth — Google OAuth and email/password with verification codes and password reset (via Brevo SMTP)
• Background indexing — threaded worker pool for non-blocking embedding and Qdrant upserts with progress tracking

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Architecture

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 19, TypeScript 5.9, Vite 7, React Router 7
Backend	Python 3.11, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy 2.x, Uvicorn
Database	PostgreSQL 16
Vector store	Qdrant v1.13.4 (FastEmbed, 384-dim dense vectors)
Auth	JWT, Google OAuth, bcrypt
MCP	fastapi-mcp (Streamable HTTP + SSE)
Web server	Nginx 1.27 (production frontend)
CI	GitHub Actions (pytest, ESLint, Docker builds)

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MCP integration

TabulaRAG exposes endpoints for AI assistant integration:

Type	URL
OpenAPI	http://localhost:8000/openapi.json
MCP (Streamable HTTP)	http://localhost:8000/mcp

Authentication: use a personal MCP token (generated from the app's MCP section) in Authorization: Bearer <token>, or the server API_KEY for automation. Tokens are scoped per user and workspace.

If your MCP client runs outside the browser (e.g. Docker, desktop app), replace localhost with your machine's IP (ipconfig on Windows, ifconfig on Mac/Linux).

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Local vs. Deployed

Feature	Local (Docker Compose)	Deployed
Database	PostgreSQL in Docker	External PostgreSQL
Vector store	Qdrant in Docker	External Qdrant

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Prerequisites (Local)

Tool	Version	Notes
Docker	Latest	https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/
Docker Compose	v2+	Bundled with Docker Desktop

Docker Compose v2 is required (docker compose, not docker-compose). It ships with Docker Desktop on Mac and Windows. Linux users may need to install it separately.

You do not need to install Python or Node locally — everything runs inside containers.

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Quick start

cp .env.example .env      # create config (edit values as needed)
./scripts/dev-up.sh        # build and start all services

Once running:

Service	URL
Frontend	http://localhost:5173
Backend API	http://localhost:8000
PostgreSQL	localhost:5433
Qdrant	http://localhost:6333

Health checks:

curl http://localhost:8000/health
curl http://localhost:8000/health/deps

Stop / logs:

./scripts/dev-down.sh
./scripts/dev-logs.sh              # all services
./scripts/dev-logs.sh backend      # single service

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Environment variables

Copy .env.example to .env. The key variables:

Variable	Required	Description
POSTGRES_DB	Yes	Database name (default: tabularag)
POSTGRES_USER	Yes	Database user (default: tabularag)
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	Yes	Database password
DATABASE_URL	Yes	PostgreSQL connection string (set in docker-compose)
QDRANT_URL	Yes	Qdrant endpoint (set in docker-compose)
JWT_SECRET	Yes	Secret for signing JWT tokens
PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL	Yes	Backend URL used in email links (default: http://localhost:8000)
PUBLIC_UI_BASE_URL	Yes	Frontend URL used in email links (default: http://localhost:5173)
API_KEY	No	Optional static key for script/API access
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID	No	Google OAuth client ID
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET	No	Google OAuth client secret
SMTP_HOST	No	Brevo SMTP relay for verification/reset emails
SMTP_PORT	No	SMTP port (default: 587)
SMTP_USER	No	SMTP login
SMTP_PASSWORD	No	SMTP key
SMTP_FROM	No	Sender email address

SMTP is optional for local development. If SMTP_HOST is empty, verification and reset codes are written to the backend logs instead of being emailed. For any real deployment, configure SMTP so users receive emails.

The remaining variables in .env.example control embedding model tuning, Qdrant HNSW parameters, batch sizes, and indexing concurrency. The defaults work for local development.

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License

MIT