Backpack Code on GitHub

Photograph the pile, get the week.

Backpack reads the papers that come home from school with an open model on your own laptop. You get the dates, the to-dos, and the papers you can throw away.

Install Backpack See how it works
The Backpack page after reading ten school papers: 14 dates from spirit week to parent-teacher conferences with a Download calendar button, then 11 open to-dos such as sign and return the slip by Friday, Oct 30.
Ten invented school papers, read by gemma4:e4b on a laptop. Nothing on this screen came from a cloud service.

How it works

Three steps, no account, no settings.

  1. Papers being read one at a time: one card says Reading, about 10 seconds on this laptop; another waits its turn; one could not be read and offers Read again.

    Drop the photos

    Photograph each paper and drop the photos on the page. Each one takes a few seconds to read.

  2. The list of dates with one date open for editing in a date field.

    Check the guesses

    A date the model had to work out is underlined and marked "check". Click any date or title to fix it.

  3. Eleven open to-dos, each with its due date; the ones the model had to work out are underlined and marked check.

    Take the week

    One button puts every date in your calendar. Tick the to-dos. Papers that need nothing fold into one line.

Your child's papers stay home

The photos carry your child's name, school, teacher and sometimes your address. Backpack keeps all of it on your computer.

The page127.0.0.1:7313, which only this computer can open
Your photosA folder on your disk; delete a paper and its photo goes too
The modelGemma 4 in Ollama, on this computer
Anything elseNothing: no account, no analytics, no update check

Measured, not promised

Ten invented papers, gemma4:e4b, an Apple M5 Max laptop.

13 of 13dates found
8 of 10to-dos found
24 sfor all ten, model cold

It missed "pack a sack lunch" and "send a little money". The larger gemma4:26b found all ten to-dos at about 3.6 seconds a paper. Handwriting and faint copies are harder, which is why every guess is marked for you to check.

Install

On a Mac with Homebrew. The model download is about 7 GB, once.

brew install go ollama && brew services start ollama
ollama pull gemma4:e4b
go install github.com/nazboyko/backpack/cmd/backpack@latest
~/go/bin/backpack

The last command opens the page. The README covers Linux, other models and the flags.