Privacy Open Source · 5 min read

Why DokoDocs? Building an Open-Source Scanner That Gives Back to the Community

Every day, millions of people scan passports, citizenship certificates, academic transcripts, contracts, invoices, and medical records with mobile scanner apps. Few stop to ask a simple question: where do those documents actually go?

Illustration of a Nepali man carrying a doko basket full of documents, walking away from a faded cloud toward his own server and phone in the mountains.

The question nobody asks

That question has become increasingly important. In July 2026, Nepal's Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers directed government agencies not to use third-party mobile scanning applications for official documents, citing concerns that sensitive information could be transmitted to or stored on external servers.

The directive reflects a reality that extends far beyond government: when documents contain personal or confidential information, people want greater control over where that data lives.

DokoDocs was born from that idea.
Comparison: a typical scanner app uploads scans to a vendor cloud, while DokoDocs keeps scans on your device with sync as an optional choice. Typical scanner app Your phone scans a document Vendor's cloud servers (upload is the default) Where does it go next? You can't verify. DokoDocs Your phone scans a document Stays on your device local-first, offline, no account Sync only if you choose your server, your cloud, or none
Figure 1 — Most scanner apps make the cloud the default. DokoDocs makes it a choice.

One job, done exceptionally well

We believe a document scanner should do one job exceptionally well: help you capture, organize, and share documents — without making cloud storage or user accounts the default. By default, your scans stay on your device. If you choose to synchronize them, the destination is entirely up to you: your own server, your preferred cloud provider, or no cloud at all.

This local-first approach isn't about rejecting the cloud. Cloud storage is useful for many people. The difference is that it should be a choice, not an assumption.

Verify, don't trust

That philosophy naturally led us to make DokoDocs open source. Privacy is difficult to evaluate when the software itself is hidden. By publishing the source code, we let developers, security researchers, and organizations inspect how documents are processed, how optional synchronization works, and what information leaves the device.

Instead of asking users to trust our marketing, we'd rather give them the opportunity to verify our claims in the code.

Giving back

DokoDocs is also our way of giving back to the open-source community. Every developer has benefited from software built by others, and this project is our contribution in return. Whether someone fixes a bug, improves a translation, designs a better interface, or simply studies the code to learn Flutter — every contribution makes the project stronger.

Although DokoDocs is built in Nepal 🇳🇵, it is designed for anyone who values privacy, transparency, and ownership. Students, freelancers, lawyers, healthcare professionals, small businesses, and organizations around the world all face the same challenge: important documents deserve software that puts users in control.

Fundamentals first

The first release focuses on getting the fundamentals right — fast scanning, clean PDFs, offline operation, and optional synchronization. More advanced capabilities will come over time, guided by community feedback and real-world needs rather than feature checklists.

We're not trying to build the scanner with the longest feature list. We're trying to build one people can trust.

Because your documents are yours.
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