What is Docling?

Docling is an open-source toolkit (from IBM Research) that converts documents (PDF, DOCX, images, HTML, etc.) into structured Markdown or JSON. It's great for RAG and local document processing.

Highlights

• Multi-format parsing with layout understanding and table extraction.
• Simple API + optional Web UI.
• Runs locally on your Unraid box; keep your data private.

Default Endpoints

• API: http://[IP]:[PORT:5001]
• Docs: http://[IP]:[PORT:5001]/docs
• Web UI: http://[IP]:[PORT:5001]/ui (set DOCLING_SERVE_ENABLE_UI=1)

First-Run Model Download

• On a fresh install the models directory will be empty. Docling must download RapidOCR and other artifacts on first boot.
• Make sure DOCLING_SERVE_ENABLE_REMOTE_SERVICES is set to true for the very first start so downloads can reach upstream model hosts (e.g. modelscope.cn).
• After the first successful start and model cache is populated, you may set DOCLING_SERVE_ENABLE_REMOTE_SERVICES back to false if you prefer a fully local-only deployment.
• Keep DOCLING_SERVE_LOAD_MODELS_AT_BOOT=true so any download failures show up immediately in startup logs rather than at first OCR request.

Persistent Paths

• Models/artifacts are persisted in appdata so restarts do not re-download everything.
• If logs show artifacts_path is set to an invalid directory, verify the models path exists and matches DOCLING_SERVE_ARTIFACTS_PATH.

**CPU-only deployments**
- Select the `cpu` branch (`quay.io/docling-project/docling-serve-cpu`) for CPU-only operation.
- `DOCLING_DEVICE=cpu` is a runtime hint; it does NOT replace choosing the CPU image branch.

**GPU deployments (NVIDIA, optional)**
- Install the NVIDIA Driver plugin and reboot.
- Add `--gpus all` in Extra Parameters.
- If GPU is detected but jobs still run on CPU, try branch `cu126` (better compatibility on some older driver stacks) or update NVIDIA drivers.
- Optional: set `DOCLING_DEVICE=cuda` (or `cuda:0`) to force GPU execution.