README.md

metadata

title: Montaigne OpenWebUI
emoji: 🪶
colorFrom: yellow
colorTo: gray
sdk: docker
app_port: 8080
pinned: false

Montaigne OpenWebUI

This Space is the production user interface of the Montaigne chatbot.

https://ask-montaigne.pages.dev redirects here; the admin dashboard (backend user management) lives at https://ask-montaigne.pages.dev/admin.html and uses its own cookie/CSRF auth.

The Space connects to the Montaigne FastAPI backend through an OpenAI-compatible API exposed at /v1.

Auth Model

OpenWebUI runs with authentication disabled (guest-only, features.auth=false):

• Anonymous visitors are mapped to per-IP backend guest accounts with a 5-message limit per IP.
• At the limit, the UI patch shows a "Create free account" modal (POST /auth/claim-guest), which creates a backend account and sets its password at claim time.
• The account token rides on /v1 requests as variables.montaigne_token; conversation continuity is keyed by X-OpenWebUI-Chat-Id / browser fingerprint.
• There are no OpenWebUI accounts, no billing, no conversation sharing, and no OAuth buttons in the UI. The backend /auth/profile and /billing/* endpoints stay dormant.

UI Policy (Minimal Consumer Interface)

Standard users see a stripped-down chat-only interface. The model selector, Controls panel, advanced parameters, voice input/output, Settings menu, and all power-user surfaces are hidden. Only admins retain full access.

This is enforced in two layers:

1. Persistent config — the container entrypoint syncs config/ui_policy.json into OpenWebUI's database on every boot, ensuring permissions and feature flags always match the repo state.
2. Runtime DOM patch — config/minimal_ui_patch.js is copied into the built OpenWebUI app and injected into index.html at container startup. It hides the model selector, settings entry, archived chats, keyboard shortcuts, and other power-user affordances from the public UI, and implements the guest-limit claim modal.

Updating the policy

Edit config/ui_policy.json and redeploy. The entrypoint handles first boot (bootstrap config.json) and subsequent boots (update the config row in webui.db).

Key fields:

Key	Purpose
default_models	Model pre-selected for every new chat
default_pinned_models	Model pinned in the selector
permissions.chat.*	Per-user chat capabilities
permissions.features.*	Per-user feature access
permissions.workspace.*	Per-user workspace access
features.*	Global OpenWebUI feature toggles

Minimal UI patch

config/minimal_ui_patch.js is intentionally lightweight: it uses a small MutationObserver-based DOM patch instead of rebuilding OpenWebUI from source. That keeps the Space repo small, avoids binary asset issues on Hugging Face, and still removes the public-facing controls we do not want to expose.

If you upgrade OpenWebUI and the selectors stop matching, adjust only config/minimal_ui_patch.js and redeploy.

Conversation Starters

Configured in config/prompt_suggestions.json. These Montaigne-style prompts appear on the empty chat screen.

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
OPENAI_API_KEY	Your API key for the backend LLM provider
OPENAI_API_BASE	Backend URL: https://tgrumb-michel.hf.space/v1
DEFAULT_PROMPT_SUGGESTIONS	Optional override for the repo-managed prompt suggestions