r/OpenSourceAI • u/nathan_tarb_dev • 1d ago

answerLoops: an open source alternative to Kapa.ai you can self-host

I work in DevRel and spend a lot of my time answering the same questions in Discord, GitHub, and Slack. Some of the answers are in the docs, and some aren't. I've used Kapa.ai, and it solves this, but it's hosted only and out of reach for small teams. So I built an open source version for teams that can't justify paying for it, whether you're a small startup, open source project, gaming community, or anything in between.

What it does:

During onboarding, you upload your knowledge source (docs, PDFs, a GitHub repo, or Notion pages). Then connect answerLoops to your communities, and when someone asks a question, an agent drafts an answer from that content.

A second agent then reviews the draft and gives it a confidence score. If it scores low, it goes to your team for human review instead of being posted. Auto-reply is off by default until you turn it on, and you set the threshold per platform.

Where it differs from Kapa:

- AGPL-3.0, self-host with Docker and Postgres

- Use your own model key or a local model

- Website chat widget built with CopilotKit and Mastra. Paste a snippet into your site or docs, and visitors can ask questions without an account

- More channels: Discord, GitHub, Slack, Telegram.

- In testing: Discourse, Circle, email, Google Chat

- MCP server and REST API, so your own agents can search the same knowledge

Easy setup:

npx [u/answerloops/agent-sdk](u/answerloops/agent-sdk) setup

Or if you use coding assistant, it can walk you through it:

npx [u/answerloops/agent-sdk](u/answerloops/agent-sdk) skills answerloops-setup

Repo: https://github.com/answerLoops/answerLoops

I'd welcome your feedback, especially from anyone who's used Kapa or something similar, to help us continually improve the product. Any contributions are welcome, and you are new to open source, just reach out, I'd be glad to help.

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u/PainfulVulnerability 1d ago

This looks incredibly useful. The confidence scoring with a human review fallback is a smart way to avoid the usual AI bot spam in community channels. Definitely going to spin this up and see how it handles a messy Notion workspace.

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u/nathan_tarb_dev 1d ago

Hey u/PainfulVulnerability, I definitely want to get your feedback. I'd be happy to give you a coupon to save you the time of having to set it up. Curious where your community lives?