INFEREN Documentation

This documentation describes how to use and operate INFEREN (Admin UI + AI Chat), plus a practical API reference for the endpoints those UIs use.

It is written for two audiences:

Admins / Operators: manage knowledge bases and monitor the system.
Developers: configure environments, understand URL/base-path rules, and troubleshoot UI/API behavior.

Note: Superadmin-only tools exist, but the primary focus here is the standard Admin experience.

Quick Links

Getting started: /docs/getting-started
Knowledge bases: /docs/knowledge-bases
AI chat: /docs/chat
Dashboard: /docs/dashboard
Sessions: /docs/sessions
Tracing: /docs/tracing
API reference: /docs/api

System Overview

INFEREN is composed of:

Backend (FastAPI): HTML pages, /static assets, and JSON APIs for admin + public chat.
Frontend (Jinja templates + JS): Admin UI, Chat UI, and Docs UI.
Storage: a database (for configs, sessions, traces, documents) and a vector store (for retrieval), depending on your deployment.

Core Concepts (Glossary)

Knowledge Base (KB)

A knowledge base is a named collection of content that can be searched and used to answer chat queries.

Document

A document is a single ingested source inside a KB (commonly a URL, but may also be an uploaded file). Documents are chunked and indexed.

Scraping / Extraction

The process of fetching a source and extracting text/content in a structured way.

Indexing

The process of chunking extracted content and producing embeddings so retrieval can find relevant chunks.

Session

A conversation thread containing user messages and assistant messages. Sessions power “continue the conversation” behavior.

Trace

A deeper diagnostic record of a pipeline execution (query, retrieved chunks, scoring, timing, and other debug metadata).

URL & Base Path Rules (Very Important)

This project uses two different “bases”:

Navigation & static assets must be same-origin:
Internal page links should be root-relative: /admin/..., /ai-chat/..., /docs/...
Static assets should be root-relative: /static/...
API calls may use window.API_BASE_URL:
JavaScript uses window.API_BASE_URL to build API fetch URLs (for example fetch(${API_BASE_URL}/api/...)).

Why it matters

If templates build links like {{ API_BASE_URL }}/admin/... and your API_BASE_URL points to a different origin/port than the UI, clicking a sidebar item becomes a cross-origin navigation. That typically causes:

slower perceived navigation (full reload + asset re-download)
confusing auth/cookie behavior
different browser storage scopes (localStorage/sessionStorage)

Recommended rule:

Use /admin/... and /static/... in templates.
Use window.API_BASE_URL only for API fetch() calls.