Koha OPAC AI Assistant

Natural-language search inside a library catalogue

Demo — deploying· Render + a demo Koha instanceRead the sourceMostly JavaScript

Results — hover any figure for the baseline and the caveat

Query intents handled

Title, author, ISBN, publisher, barcode, call number, branch, language, year, subject, recommendation, compound filters and general full-text — plus fuzzy fallback for misspellings. Intent detection is regex and keyword based, not a learned classifier.

Overview

A standalone AI chat assistant plugin for the Koha library system, shipped as an installable .kpz package that a librarian drops in without touching the Perl stack or running a separate server. Patrons type what they actually want — 'books by Eric Matthes', 'anything about history', 'Pyton books' with the typo — and get back covers, availability, branch and call number. Supports voice input, book cover scanning, and multiple LLM backends (Groq, Gemini, OpenAI). Built during my internship at COMSATS University Islamabad.

Run it yourself

v1.2.4

Download plugin

41 KB

4 steps

01Enable the plugin system in koha-conf.xml, once.
02Koha Admin → Plugins → Upload Plugin, pick the .kpz.
03Enable it, then Configure and paste a Groq API key.
04The assistant appears on the OPAC search page.

Needs a running Koha 22.11+ instance · plugins enabled · a Groq API key

It needs a Koha to live in — there's nothing to look at without one. The key is yours, not mine: the plugin calls Groq from your server, so requests bill to your account.

Built into it

Ships as a standalone .kpz plugin — no separate server required, just install through Koha's plugin manager
Parameterised SQL against Koha's MariaDB schema — no string-built queries
Voice input and book cover scanning for hands-free catalogue search
Multi-LLM support: Groq, Gemini and OpenAI backends, configurable per installation
Fuzzy fallback corrects misspelled titles and authors instead of returning nothing
Keyboard-operable end to end: Tab/Shift+Tab focus trapping, Escape to close, Enter to send
Per-IP rate limiting at 20 requests per 60 seconds, with a readable in-chat message rather than a raw error
Book covers from the Open Library API by ISBN, with a graceful fallback when there's no image

Built with

FastAPIMariaDBVanilla JavaScriptPythonPerl

Repository

HasnatKhan010/koha-plugin-opac-ai-assistant

Last push 25 Aug 2026

Next projectDiabetes Risk, From Scratch Back outAll 26 projects

Overview

Built into it

Ships as a standalone .kpz plugin — no separate server required, just install through Koha's plugin manager

Parameterised SQL against Koha's MariaDB schema — no string-built queries

Voice input and book cover scanning for hands-free catalogue search

Multi-LLM support: Groq, Gemini and OpenAI backends, configurable per installation

Fuzzy fallback corrects misspelled titles and authors instead of returning nothing

Keyboard-operable end to end: Tab/Shift+Tab focus trapping, Escape to close, Enter to send

Per-IP rate limiting at 20 requests per 60 seconds, with a readable in-chat message rather than a raw error

Book covers from the Open Library API by ISBN, with a graceful fallback when there's no image