paperless-cli

paperless-cli is now a Rust application with three output modes for Paperless-ngx:

• tui: interactive Ratatui dashboard and inspector
• markdown: LLM-friendly summaries for humans and agents
• json: structured machine-readable output

The Rust binary is now the primary runtime and CI target.

Install

cargo build --release
./target/release/paperless --help

Quick start

Configure access with a token:

paperless login --url https://paperless.example.com --token YOUR_TOKEN

Or exchange username and password for a token:

paperless login --url https://paperless.example.com --username admin --password secret

If you omit the URL or auth fields, paperless login will prompt for them interactively.

Launch the TUI:

paperless

Launch the built-in demo mode for fast UI feedback without a live Paperless server or local config:

paperless --demo
paperless --demo document list
paperless --demo --output json status

Request markdown or JSON output:

paperless --output markdown document list --query "invoice 2024"
paperless --output json search query "invoice acme"
paperless status

TUI overview

The default TUI is a two-pane document browser:

• Tab switches focus between the Documents list and the Inspector
• j/k or arrows move within the focused pane
• PgUp/PgDn page through the focused pane
• g/G jump to the top or bottom of the focused pane
• r reloads the document list

For fast iteration on layout and keyboard behavior, use paperless --demo.

Command surface

Area	Commands
top level	login, status, default TUI
config	set-url, set-token
pdf	read, info
project	login, info, ping
document	list, get, content, upload, download, preview, thumb, edit, update, delete, search
search	query, autocomplete
task	list, get
tag	list, get, create, edit, delete
correspondent	list, get, create, delete
doctype	list, get, create, delete
export	bulk

Compatibility

The CLI now includes the main compatibility commands and inputs people expect from julianfbeck/paperless-cli:

• document content <id> for extracted text only
• document edit <id> --add-tag ... --remove-tag ... with exact tag names or IDs
• tag edit <id> --name ...
• pdf read <file> and pdf info <file>
• config set-url ... and config set-token ...
• PAPERLESS_URL and PAPERLESS_TOKEN support
• global --json, -q/--quiet, --no-color, and -u/--url compatibility flags

See docs/cli-parity.md for the current compatibility notes.

Security posture

• Config and session state are stored as TOML under the user config/state directories with restricted permissions on Unix.
• Downloaded filenames are sanitized before writing to disk.
• A background security reviewer polls shared runtime state and feeds findings back to the main app. Its default model profile is gpt-5.4.
• The app avoids shelling out for Paperless operations; all API calls go through the Rust client.

Docs

• Migration notes
• Architecture overview
• Testing strategy
• CLI parity notes
• Release process
• Static docs site

Skills

This repo now ships installable repo-local skills:

• SKILL.md
• skills/paperless-documents/SKILL.md
• skills/paperless-pdf/SKILL.md
• skills/paperless-admin/SKILL.md

Development

cargo fmt
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo test