BookStack is an [[MIT License]] licensed [[Self-Hostable]] [[Wiki System]] written in [[PHP]]. - [Website](https://www.bookstackapp.com/) - [Source](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack) - [Documentation](https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/) > BookStack is a simple, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organising and storing information. \- official website # Notability # Philosophy ## Slop There appears to be some attempts by the primary developer to integrate [[Generative AI|Slop]] chatbots into its query system.[^1][^2] This is a good way to get bad answers. They do attempt to reduce[^4] the "chat" component of the standard LLM chatbot, such that in the ideal case it would answer the query and provide supporting documents from the wiki.[^5] However in practice, as has been demonstrated many times,[^6] chatbots will persist in adding irrelevant and fictitious documents. While it seems like the intention would be to support multiple providers, it is currently built 1-to-1 for [[OpenAI]] API and has no support for local models.[^3] What is particularly baffling about their approach is that it is using an LLM to generate related search terms is wildly inefficient. It is probably because they are being pushed to implement *something, anything* by the [[Generative AI|Slop]] companies that have sponsored it.[^7] Perhaps these issues are why it has not been merged into main after many months. ## Dogfooding Curiously, BookStack does not appear to use itself for its own documentation. ## Metaphor BookStack's metaphor is (unsurprisingly) books, shelves, chapters, and pages. This metaphor is so pervasive that there is no "create" button in the header. You can't just create an entry, you must *add* a page to an *existing* book. To create a book you must first go to the book list page, then you can create a new book with the sidebar menu. To create a page, you must go into a book or a page in that book, then you can create a new page with the sidebar menu. Shelves can be created from the shelves page, but books can also be converted into shelves. A book's chapters are converted into books in the new shelf, and any pages not in a chapter are added their own book. The UI looks very nice and clean, but this extremely hierarchical approach is disorienting. From the landing areas and top-level navigation, it presents as read-only and opaque. This isn't necessarily bad, but it does make it more suited to some use-cases over others. As the demo site shows, an employee handbook with internal company documentation editable only certain people, is one possible use case. # Platform Support # Features # Tips # References [^1]: https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/commits/llm_only/ [^2]: https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/compare/llm_only [^3]: https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/compare/llm_only#diff-30cc937cc4bedc1bf8bf49e0089807d660aba8cdfaf33cc8db46725b859e53a9R22 [^4]: https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/compare/llm_only#diff-e86667ba2b1c651d830b5530e7cda1ed26421b94536eb2a33ffbdd0ab9d537dfR53 [^5]: https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/compare/llm_only#diff-e86667ba2b1c651d830b5530e7cda1ed26421b94536eb2a33ffbdd0ab9d537dfR89 [^6]: [[Generative AI#Hallucinations]] [^7]: https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack?tab=readme-ov-file#-project-sponsors