In simple English
Qualitative researchers study hours of recorded interviews and notes to find patterns. Commercial tools for this job are expensive and lock data inside closed cloud services. This software gives you a free, self-hosted workspace to run interviews through speech-to-text and AI coding. Every AI suggestion stays under human review until you accept or reject it. An append-only audit trail records every decision made during the study.
What it is
OpenVerbatim is an agent-native qualitative research platform written in TypeScript under the Apache-2.0 licence. It serves as an open-source alternative to proprietary tools like NVivo, ATLAS.ti, and Dovetail.
What it is good for
Researchers, graduate students, and social scientists who need to analyse interview transcripts securely without paying high subscription fees or sending sensitive data to closed cloud platforms.
- Keeps all interview data and transcripts on your own infrastructure and database.
- Requires human sign-off on every AI-generated code, preventing silent automated changes.
- Includes a browser-based sandbox that runs locally without installing software.
- Requires technical setup with Docker, Postgres, and external API keys for AI models.
- Relies on third-party speech and language providers such as Deepgram and OpenRouter.
- Early-stage software under active development, so some interchange features remain on the roadmap.
Proprietary qualitative data analysis software such as NVivo, ATLAS.ti, and Dovetail
PostgreSQL (a robust open-source relational database that stores application data and vector embeddings)
- karakeep-app/karakeep30k stars
A self-hosted bookmarking and research clipping tool that organises web pages and notes using AI.
- Hack-with-Github/Awesome-Hacking123k stars
An index of 81 curated security reading lists, with one line on each.
- Zettlr/Zettlr14k stars
A desktop writing program for Markdown documents, with citation support and export to Word, PDF and LaTeX.
- JabRef/jabref4.8k stars
A desktop citation and reference manager that stores its library as a plain BibTeX file.
docker compose -f infra/docker-compose.dev.yml up -d postgres export DATABASE_URL=postgres://openverbatim:openverbatim@127.0.0.1:55433/openverbatim pnpm install pnpm dev