Your files. Your rules. Your AI.
Fiely is a modern, open-source alternative to Nextcloud — built for teams, schools, organizations, and anyone who believes their data should stay in their control. No PHP. No bloat. No compromises.
⚠️ Fiely is in early design phase. We're building in public. Stars, feedback, and contributions are welcome.
Nextcloud is powerful — but it's showing its age. A complex PHP stack, an overwhelming UI, and AI features bolted on as an afterthought. SharePoint is Microsoft. Google Drive is not DSGVO-compliant.
There has to be a better way.
Fiely is built from the ground up with a modern stack, a clean UX, and AI that's integrated where it makes sense — not forced where it doesn't.
- 👨👩👧 Families who want a private photo and file storage without Big Tech
- 🏢 Small teams who need secure file sharing and collaboration
- 🏫 Schools and educational institutions looking for a DSGVO-compliant Nextcloud alternative
- 🏛️ Public sector organizations that require on-premise, auditable, and BSI-compatible solutions
- 🧑💻 Self-hosters who care about their data sovereignty
- Upload, organize, and manage files and folders
- Chunked uploads with resume support (powered by tus.io)
- Versioning and trash recovery
- Granular permission and role management
- Share files and folders with public links
- Guest access with optional password protection
- Expiring share links
- Team and organization workspaces
AI is not the product. AI makes the product better.
- Semantic Search — Find files by content, not just filename. "Show me the contract from last March" just works.
- Auto-Tagging — Upload a PDF, Fiely understands what it is. Invoice, contract, photo, code — automatically categorized.
- Chat with Your Files — Ask questions across your documents. RAG-powered, privacy-first.
- Content Generation — Draft emails, summaries, or reports based on your stored files.
AI providers are pluggable — run locally with Ollama or connect to Claude / OpenAI. You choose. You can also run Fiely with AI completely disabled.
- LDAP / Active Directory integration
- SSO / SAML support (Keycloak compatible)
- Audit logs
- Multi-tenancy
- On-premise deployment (no cloud dependency)
- DSGVO / GDPR compliant by design
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Backend | Spring Boot (Kotlin) |
| Frontend | React |
| Mobile & Desktop | Flutter |
| Storage | Local filesystem |
| Database | PostgreSQL + pgvector |
| Chunked Upload | tus.io |
| AI (local) | Ollama |
| AI (cloud) | OpenAI / Claude API (pluggable) |
| Auth | Keycloak / OIDC |
- Simple over complex — If Nextcloud has a setting for it, we ask: does it need to be a setting?
- Privacy first — No telemetry. No phoning home. Your data stays where you put it.
- AI as enhancement — AI features are opt-in and transparent. No black boxes.
- Open by default — Open source, open standards, open APIs.
- Core file management (upload, download, folders)
- User management and authentication
- Basic sharing with public links
- React web UI
- Docker deployment
- Flutter mobile app (iOS + Android)
- Semantic search with pgvector
- Auto-tagging
- Ollama integration
- LDAP / SSO integration
- Multi-tenancy
- Audit logs
- Chat with files (RAG)
- Enterprise admin dashboard
Fiely ships as a single container — backend + frontend baked into one
image. The root Dockerfile is a 3-stage build (Node for the frontend,
Gradle for the backend, slim JRE for the runtime) that embeds the built
React assets into Spring Boot's static/ resources. An SPA fallback
ensures deep links work on refresh.
git clone https://github.com/benjaminledel/fiely
cd fiely
docker compose upThat's it. The compose file pulls the official image from GHCR
(ghcr.io/benjaminledel/fiely:latest, published by CI) and starts:
- PostgreSQL 16 + pgvector (for future semantic search) with a named volume so data persists across restarts
- Fiely on http://localhost:8080
The API is available under /api, the actuator under /actuator, and
everything else falls through to the React SPA.
If the image can't be pulled (new repo, no network, offline dev) compose
falls back to a local build from the root Dockerfile — no extra flags
needed.
docker compose pull # refresh to the latest published image
docker compose up --build # force a build from your local checkout
docker compose down # stop, keep data
docker compose down -v # stop and delete the postgres volumeCopy .env.example to .env to pin a specific image tag, override the
port, or change database credentials. Defaults are safe for local-only dev
— change the password before exposing Fiely to anything real.
If you don't want compose:
docker build -t fiely .
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 \
-e FIELY_DB_URL=jdbc:postgresql://host.docker.internal:5432/fiely \
-e FIELY_DB_USER=fiely \
-e FIELY_DB_PASSWORD=fiely \
fielyA dev overlay gives you a single exposed port (8080) with the frontend rebuilding on every source save. Spring Boot serves both the API and the freshly-built frontend bytes — no second dev server, no proxy, no CORS.
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml up| Service | Role |
|---|---|
fiely |
http://localhost:8080 — API + SPA, reads frontend from a shared volume |
fiely-frontend-watch |
vite build --watch, writes dist/ to the shared volume |
postgres |
PostgreSQL 16 + pgvector |
How it works: Vite runs in incremental watch mode and writes into a
named volume. The backend is configured with
spring.web.resources.static-locations=file:/app/frontend-dist/,classpath:/static/
so it serves the live dist first and falls back to the version baked
into the image. A healthcheck on the watcher blocks the backend until
the first build is done, so you never see a 404 on initial load.
Workflow: edit fiely-frontend/src/… → Vite rebuilds in under a
second → refresh the browser.
Backend code changes still need docker compose build fiely +
up -d to pick up the new JAR.
Want React Fast Refresh with preserved state? That's a full Vite dev server, which can't share a port with Spring. Run
docker compose up postgres fielyfor DB+backend, then on the hostcd fiely-frontend && npm run dev— Vite's proxy (seevite.config.ts) forwards/apito :8080 and you open :5173.
Fiely is in early design phase and we'd love your input.
- 💬 Open an issue to discuss features or ideas
- ⭐ Star the repo to follow progress
- 🛠️ PRs welcome once we have a contribution guide
Fiely is open source under the MIT License.
A future Enterprise Edition with additional features for large organizations is planned, following the open-core model.
"Your files belong to you. Not to a corporation, not to a cloud provider, not to us. Fiely is just the tool that helps you keep it that way."
fiely.cloud · Built with ❤️ in Germany · DSGVO compliant by design