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Doc Reviewer runs on Windows as a standalone desktop application. The recommended path is to download the pre-built .exe — no Python, no Node.js, no additional setup required. If you want to modify the source or run in development mode, follow the from-source path instead.

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System requirements

Python 3.12 and later are not supported. The PDF parser depends on PyMuPDF 1.23, which is incompatible with Python 3.12+. Use Python 3.11 exactly.
This is a fast way to get started. The .exe bundles the Python backend and the React frontend into a single file.
1

Download doc-reviewer.exe

Download the latest doc-reviewer.exe from the releases page and save it to a dedicated folder — for example, C:\Tools\DocReviewer\.
Keep the .exe in its own folder. Doc Reviewer creates a data\ subfolder next to the executable to store the database and any local configuration files. If you place the .exe on your Desktop, the data folder will appear there too.
2

Run the executable

Double-click doc-reviewer.exe. The app starts a local backend server and opens the Doc Reviewer UI in your default browser automatically.If your browser does not open, navigate to http://localhost:8000 manually.
3

Install Chromium for web page evaluation

The .exe does not bundle Chromium. To load and evaluate web pages by URL, you need to install Chromium once using Playwright.Open a terminal and run:
This downloads Chromium (~150 MB) to %LOCALAPPDATA%\ms-playwright. You only need to do this once per machine.
If you only plan to evaluate uploaded files (PDF, DOCX, Markdown, TXT) and not web pages, you can skip this step.
Your data is stored in data\db.sqlite next to the .exe. The database is created automatically on first launch. To reset all data, stop the app and delete the data\ folder.

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Option 2: From source (developers)

Use this path if you want to modify Doc Reviewer or run it in development mode with hot reload.
1

Clone the repository

2

Install Python dependencies

3

Install Chromium

4

Start the backend

The backend starts on http://localhost:8000 with hot reload enabled.
5

Start the frontend

Open a second terminal window:
The frontend dev server starts at http://localhost:5173. Open that URL in your browser.
In development mode, the frontend runs on port 5173 (Vite) while the backend API runs on port 8000 (FastAPI). The pre-built .exe serves both from port 8000, so this two-port setup is development-only.

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Verify the installation

Once the app is running, confirm the backend is healthy by visiting:
You should receive:
If you see an error or no response, the backend is not running. Try relaunching the .exe or restarting run_dev.py.

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What gets stored locally

Doc Reviewer keeps all data on your machine: No data is sent externally except LLM API calls to the provider you configure in Settings → Models.