CollabAI is a powerful AI-enhanced collaboration tool designed to bring knowledge management, team productivity, and automation under one roof. Whether you want to build internal knowledge bases, create custom GPT-powered agents, or manage intelligent workflows, CollabAI has you covered.
This guide walks you through self-hosting CollabAI — from prerequisites to complete setup — so you can take full control of your data and environment.
🧠 What is CollabAI?
CollabAI is a two-part application:
- Frontend (Client) – React-based UI for users and admins.
- Backend (Server) – Node.js API handling authentication, AI interactions, database ops, and more.
It uses MongoDB for primary data storage and Pinecone for storing and querying vector embeddings for AI-based search and knowledge retrieval.
🌟 Use Cases
Here are just a few ways teams can benefit from CollabAI:
- 🔍 AI-Powered Knowledge Base: Upload documents, websites, or FAQs and use GPT to answer questions instantly.
- 💬 Smart Agent Assistants: Train AI agents with specific knowledge and deploy them within teams.
- 🛠 Internal Automation: Automate workflows like ticket responses or customer inquiries.
- 📊 Data-Driven Insights: Use vector similarity and semantic search to surface the right content at the right time.
✅ Prerequisites
Before starting, make sure you have:
- ✅ A Unix-based server (Ubuntu/Debian recommended)
- ✅ MongoDB (local or Atlas)
- ✅ A Pinecone account with:
- API Key
- Index for storing embeddings
- API Key
- ✅ Node.js v20+ installed
- ✅ npm or yarn installed globally
📦 Step-by-Step Deployment
1. Clone the Repository
| git clone https://github.com/sjinnovation/CollaborativeAI.git |
Navigate to the project directory
| cd CollaborativeAI |
2. Set Up the Frontend
Navigate to the frontend directory
| cd client |
Run the below command to install node
| curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.2/install.sh | bash |
Export the path
| export NVM_DIR=”$([ -z “${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}” ] && printf %s “${HOME}/.nvm” || printf %s “${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm”)” [ -s “$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh” ] && \. “$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh” # This loads nvm |
Install the node version
| nvm install 20 |
Install the frontend dependencies
| npm install |
Create and Configure the Environment File:
| cp .env.sample .env vim .env |
Update the .env file with the backend URL and port, for example:
| VITE_BACKEND_URL=http://localhost:8011 |
3. Set Up the Backend
| cd ../server npm install |
Prepare Environment Configuration:
| cp .env.sample .env.local vim .env.local |
Here’s an example .env.local configuration:
| JWT_SECRET=dummyJWTSecret123 MONGO_URI=mongodb+srv://<username>:<password>@<cluster-url>/ PORT=8011 CLIENT_URL=http://localhost:4000 [email protected] NODE_MAILER_PASS=myemailpassword [email protected] MAILGUN_API_KEY=dummyMailgunAPIKey123 MAILGUN_DOMAIN=example.com [email protected],[email protected] MONGODB_NAME=mydatabase AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=dummyAWSAccessKey123 AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=dummyAWSSecretKey123 AWS_REGION=us-west-2 PINECONE_API_KEY=your-pinecone-api-key PINECONE_ENVIRONMENT=your-pinecone-environment PINECONE_INDEX_NAME=your-pinecone-index |
💡 Create your vector index from the Pinecone Console
4. Run Both Services Using PM2
Make sure PM2 is installed globally:
| npm install -g pm2 |
Start Backend
| cd server pm2 start npm –name “collab-ai-backend” –namespace collab-ai — start — -p 8011 |
Start Frontend
| cd ../client pm2 start npm –name “collab-ai-frontend” –namespace collab-ai — start — -p 4000 |
Check running services:
| pm2 status |
5. Initialize the Application
Create a Super Admin user via cURL:
| curl -X POST http://localhost:8011/api/init \ -H “Content-Type: application/json” \ -d ‘{ “fname”: “Super”, “lname”: “Admin”, “email”: “[email protected]”, “password”: “Bolbona”, “employeeCount”: 100, “companyName”: “INIT_COMPANY” }’ |
Let’s Explore with the http://localhost:4000 with the above created super admin email and password.
🔒 Security Tips
- Use strong secrets in your .env.local file.
- Never expose your .env.local in version control.
- Set up HTTPS (e.g., using NGINX + Let’s Encrypt).
- Regularly back up your MongoDB and Pinecone index data.
📚 Conclusion
CollabAI is a flexible and powerful tool to supercharge internal knowledge and AI capabilities within your organization. With the steps above, you’ll have a production-ready instance of CollabAI hosted on your own infrastructure — giving you full control and endless customizations.
📬 Need Help?
Have questions or want to contribute? Open issues or submit pull requests via the GitHub repo.
