I built an offline document indexer, and Ollama taught me two things I did not expect

Description and use

The tool locally scans, OCRs, and classifies scanned PDFs, producing Markdown indexes and reports without uploading data to the cloud.

Problem

A folder of hundreds of scanned, image‑only documents was unsearchable and could not be uploaded to any service, making manual opening the only way to find information.

Outcome

The tool enables local indexing and classification of scanned documents, producing searchable Markdown outputs and AI‑ready instructions, all without uploading data to external services.

Workflow

• Point tool at a folder
• Scan files and detect pages without text layer
• OCR those pages
• Slice oversized PDFs
• Read every page
• Classify each page into item with type, date, author, summary
• Write four Markdown files (index, timeline, review report, AI instructions) to an output folder
• Leave originals untouched

Evidence

You point it at a folder. It scans, runs OCR only on the pages that have no text layer...

Source

Classification runs on an open model through Ollama, on the machine itself.

Source