This project is configured to use ngrok for exposing your application through a single public domain. The setup uses nginx as a reverse proxy to route traffic to your backend and frontend services.

you will be given a free domain on login and setting up a tunnel

https://dashboard.ngrok.com/login

run this in project root

docker compose up --build -d
docker compose down -v

# or prod build
docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up --build -d
# shutodwn
docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml down -v

Internet → ngrok → nginx (port 80) → {backend:8000, frontend:5173}

• ngrok: Creates a public tunnel to your local application
• nginx: Reverse proxy that routes requests:
  • /api/*, /auth/*, /query, /health, /docs, /redoc → Backend (FastAPI)
  • Everything else → Frontend (Vite)

1. Sign up for a free account at ngrok.com
2. Get your authtoken from the ngrok dashboard

Create a .env file in the project root (if it doesn't exist) and add:

NGROK_AUTHTOKEN=your_ngrok_authtoken_here

Or export it in your shell:

export NGROK_AUTHTOKEN=your_ngrok_authtoken_here

docker-compose up -d

This will start:

• Neo4j (Vector Database)
• Ollama (Embeddings and Generation)
• Backend (FastAPI)
• Frontend (Vite)
• Nginx reverse proxy
• Ngrok tunnel

• Public URL: Check the ngrok web interface at http://localhost:4040 to see your public URL
• Local Access: You can also access via http://localhost (nginx)
• Public Access: You and others can access the app via your ngrok provided domain found here https://dashboard.ngrok.com/domains

If you see CORS errors like "Cross-Origin Request Blocked" when accessing through ngrok:

• Solution: The frontend has been configured to use relative URLs by default, which works with the nginx reverse proxy
• If you need to rebuild the frontend container after changes:

  docker-compose up -d --build frontend

• The frontend uses VITE_API_BASE_URL environment variable (set to empty string in docker-compose for relative URLs)
• For local development without nginx, you can set VITE_API_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8000 in your .env file

If port 80 is already in use, you can change it in docker-compose.yml:

nginx:
  ports:
    - "8080:80"  # Change 8080 to any available port

Then update ngrok/ngrok.yml:

tunnels:
  web:
    proto: http
    addr: nginx:80  # Keep this as 80 (internal port)

• The free ngrok plan provides one domain/tunnel
• The domain changes each time ngrok restarts (unless you have a paid plan with a static domain)
• All backend and frontend services are accessible through the single ngrok URL via path-based routing