[FR] Allow to disable (Open)AI integration and provide context about the Appflowy (Open)AI dependency

[almereyda]

Posting this here; would have preferred a discussion, as this seems intentional and probably not considered a fault. #564

1~3 main use cases of the proposed feature

1. As an AppFlowy Cloud self-hoster, I want to be able to run the whole collaboration stack with free software, in order to retain full data autonomy.
2. As an AppFlowy Cloud self-hoster, I want to be able to voluntarily disable AI data processing features, in order to use a less resourceful editing and publishing environment.

what types of users can benefit from using your proposed feature

• environmentally-aware people
• licensing-attentive people separating the distinctions of open source and free software.

Additional context

It's not possible to run the AppFlowy-Cloud stack without providing an OPENAI_API_KEY for the ai container, else it enters a crash loop.

$ docker compose up
…
ai-1                |   Did not find openai_api_key, please add an environment variable `OPENAI_API_KEY` which contains it, or pass `openai_api_key` as a named parameter. (type=value_error) ai-1 exited with code 1

This is referenced from nginx.conf, which in returns lets the nginx container enter a crash loop when accessing the configured system.

nginx-1  | 2024/05/19 15:03:54 [emerg] 1#1: host not found in upstream "ai" in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:97
nginx-1  | nginx: [emerg] host not found in upstream "ai" in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:97

There is no build: section for the ai container in the Compose manifest:

https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy-Cloud/blob/ec7eb54bfca1f43a047cb65406402b9481ed9985/docker-compose.yml#L133-L141

There is a container published to

• appflowyinc/appflowy_ai - Docker Image | Docker Hub

which remains proprietary. No sources can be obtained, which is surprising, given the existing code base is released with one of the most restrictive FLOSS licenses, AGPL.

There is no mention of it in the Cloud or Self-hosting documentation:

• Architecture | AppFlowy Docs
• Deployment | AppFlowy Docs
• Self-hosting AppFlowy with AppFlowy Cloud | AppFlowy Docs
• AppFlowy-Cloud/doc/DEPLOYMENT.md at main · AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy-Cloud

But the general documentation for regular AppFlowy knows about an OpenAI integration:

• AppFlowy + OpenAI | AppFlowy Docs

There does not appear to be further documentation for the ai container and what it does. There are some further AI related developments in the GitHub organisation, which appear to be related concerns:

• [FR] AI Alternative - Anthropic / Self-Hosted · Issue #5236 · AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy
• [FR] Add local AI capability (Windows/MacOS/Linux) · Issue #4981 · AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy
• ai pgvector by speed2exe · Pull Request #560 · AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy-Cloud
• AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy-AI-Client

Where is AppFlowy going with regards to AI and its cloud self-hosting?

Like this it's impossible to replicate the AppFlowy stack without external dependencies.