# open-notebook v1.13.0 — v1.13.0 — Content Core 2.0: Our Biggest Content-Processing Upgrade

- Product: open-notebook (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/open-notebook)
- Vendor: lfnovo
- Date: 2026-07-14
- Version: v1.13.0
- Original notes: https://github.com/lfnovo/open-notebook/releases/tag/v1.13.0
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/open-notebook/releases/v1.13.0

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **added** — Add Docling document engine with OCR for scanned PDFs and images plus layout-aware parsing, available as opt-in via OPEN_NOTEBOOK_ENABLE_DOCLING environment variable
- **added** — Add Crawl4AI URL engine for rendering JavaScript-heavy pages locally or via remote server, available as opt-in via OPEN_NOTEBOOK_ENABLE_CRAWL4AI environment variable
- **added** — Add support for EPUB book format extraction
- **added** — Add automatic extraction of Reddit posts and their comments
- **added** — Add GET /api/capabilities endpoint to report installed extraction engines
- **added** — Add source extraction logging of effective engine (url_engine, document_engine, or docling_ocr) at INFO level before processing
- **added** — Add ability to clear optional model defaults (transformation, tools, large context, TTS, STT) via PUT /api/models/defaults
- **changed** — Rebuild extraction on Content Core 2.0 architecture
- **changed** — Move PDF extraction from PyMuPDF to MIT-licensed pdfplumber
- **changed** — Move audio extraction to direct ffmpeg calls for improved performance
- **changed** — Make heavy runtimes (Docling and local Crawl4AI) opt-in instead of bundled by default, with automatic installation on first container startup
- **changed** — Persisted document and URL engine selections in Settings now take effect instead of silently running auto mode
- **changed** — Change frontend bind override from HOSTNAME variable to new FRONTEND_BIND_HOST variable in Docker images
- **changed** — Reject unsupported uploads instantly at ingestion with 415 status instead of retrying in background for an hour
- **fixed** — Fix renaming a speaker profile breaking episode profiles that reference it by storing references by record ID instead of name
- **fixed** — Fix podcast episode audio paths to be relative to podcasts folder so episodes survive DATA_FOLDER relocation
- **fixed** — Fix episode cards to resolve and show real outline, transcript, and speaker model instead of dashes
- **fixed** — Fix podcast generation to honor an explicitly supplied speaker_profile in the generation command
- **fixed** — Fix clicking chat or Ask citations pointing to deleted sources, insights, or notes to show friendly state in all three dialogs
- **fixed** — Fix source insights to include created and updated timestamps and API to return null instead of string "None" for legacy insights
- **fixed** — Fix audio extraction from MP3 files carrying chapter metadata
- **fixed** — Fix creating a transformation from empty state after deleting all transformations
- **fixed** — Fix source detail view to fetch through shared React Query hook for consistent caching and 404 handling
- **fixed** — Fix settings UI to read provider list from GET /api/providers so new providers require zero frontend edits

**We recommend all users upgrade.** v1.13.0 is our **biggest content-processing upgrade yet**: it rebuilds extraction on top of **Content Core 2.0** (a major architecture release), adds opt-in **Docling** (OCR + layout-aware parsing) and **Crawl4AI** (JavaScript rendering) engines, brings **EPUB and Reddit** support, moves PDF extraction to MIT-licensed pdfplumber, fixes audio extraction, and keeps the default image lean by making the heavy runtimes opt-in. Plus a batch of podcast correctness fixes. Validated with the release confidence process: full backend/frontend suites, the fresh-install + upgrade image gate, and manual verification of the opt-in runtimes, real podcast/TTS and PDF extraction on the pushed image.

##### ✨ A major content-processing upgrade (Content Core 2.0)

Extraction now runs on **content-core 2.x** — a ground-up refactor of the extraction stack. What it means for you:

- **Docling document engine (opt-in)** — real **OCR for scanned PDFs and images** plus layout-aware parsing. Toggle OCR in Settings → Content Processing (on by default; turn it off to speed up text-native docs). (#1104)
- **Crawl4AI URL engine (opt-in)** — renders **JavaScript-heavy pages** locally with no API key, or offloads to a Crawl4AI server (`CRAWL4AI_API_URL`). Selectable alongside Firecrawl, Jina and Simple. And **your persisted engine choice now actually takes effect** — the source-processing graph reads the saved Content Settings and passes them to content-core (it previously always ran `auto` and silently ignored the selection). (#432)
- **New formats** — **EPUB** books are now supported, and **Reddit** links extract the post *and* its comments automatically.
- **Better PDF & audio** — PDF extraction moves to **MIT-licensed pdfplumber** (replacing AGPL PyMuPDF), and audio moves to direct ffmpeg calls — faster, and it **fixes extraction from MP3 files carrying chapter metadata**. (#1103)
- **Faster, clearer failures** — unsupported uploads are rejected instantly at ingestion with a `415` naming the detected type, instead of a background job retrying for ~an hour. (#975)

##### 🪶 Lean by default, powerful on demand

- **The heavy runtimes are opt-in.** Docling and local Crawl4AI are no longer bundled into every image — they install automatically on first container startup when enabled. Set `OPEN_NOTEBOOK_ENABLE_DOCLING=true` and/or `OPEN_NOTEBOOK_ENABLE_CRAWL4AI=true`; downloads are cached on the `/app/data` volume (only the first boot is slow), and a failed install degrades gracefully (the app still starts, the engine is reported unavailable) with loud logs. A new `GET /api/capabilities` probe reports what's actually installed, and Settings → Content Processing disables the Docling/Crawl4AI engines and the OCR toggle (with an env-var hint) until their runtime is available — so the UI never advertises an engine that isn't there. A remote Crawl4AI server needs no local install. Recorded as ADR-007. (#1122)
- Source extraction now **logs the effective engine** (`url_engine` / `document_engine` / `docling_ocr`) at INFO right before it runs, so you can confirm which engine actually processed a source instead of guessing. (#1125)

##### 🐛 Notable fixes

- **Podcast correctness**: renaming a speaker profile no longer breaks the episode profiles using it (references are stored by record ID, not name); episode audio paths are stored **relative** to the podcasts folder so previously generated episodes survive a `DATA_FOLDER` relocation; episode cards resolve and show the real outline/transcript/speaker model instead of "— / —"; and podcast generation now honors an explicitly supplied `speaker_profile` all the way into the generation command. (#630, #1030, #1114, #1058)
- Clicking a chat/Ask citation that points at a **deleted source, insight or note** now shows a friendly "this content no longer exists" state in all three dialogs. (#455)
- Source insights get `created`/`updated` timestamps and the API returns `null` (not the literal s

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://github.com/lfnovo/open-notebook/releases/tag/v1.13.0]_