The Mannheim Intelligent Discovery System is an experimental web application that adds AI assisted search to discovery systems like Primo or VuFind®.

The installation is based on macOS, Linux, WSL, or a similar host system with Git and a sufficiently recent Python3.

Clone this repository and run these commands in your local working directory:

# Install required software.
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -U pip -r requirements.txt

Copy the file sample.env to .env and provide your local settings in the .env file.

Then, start one or both of the provided web applications:

# Run web application for Primo search with AI support.
./primo_ai_frontend_flask.py

# Run web application for VuFind search with AI support.

Connect to the running web application in your browser.

• URL for Primo search: http://localhost:5555/
• URL for VuFind search: http://localhost:5001/

This is an experimental proof of concept. It is not intended for production use. Many features are missing, and the software may have bugs and security issues.

maidisco – Mannheim Intelligent Discovery System for AI assisted search

Copyright (C) 2025 Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.