BoAT

Bogazici University Annotation Tool — a collaborative tool for linguistic annotation and treebank management using the Universal Dependencies framework.

• Wiki: gitlab.com/furkan5204/boat/-/wikis

Features

• Sentence-by-sentence annotation (CoNLL-U format)
• Dependency graph visualization
• Multi-user collaboration with inter-annotator agreement
• Treebank management (create, upload, export)
• Advanced search and filtering
• Available as a web app and a desktop app (Tauri)

Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	FastAPI + SQLAlchemy 2.0 (async) + PostgreSQL
Frontend	SvelteKit 2 + Svelte 5 + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS 4
Desktop	Tauri v2 (Rust) — wraps the same SvelteKit frontend
Auth	JWT (python-jose + bcrypt)
Server	Uvicorn + Caddy

Quick Start (Web App)

The web app requires all three services: PostgreSQL, the FastAPI backend, and the SvelteKit frontend.

With Docker (recommended)

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env — set POSTGRES_PASSWORD and SECRET_KEY

# Development (hot reload)
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up --build

# Backend:  http://localhost:8000 (API docs: /docs)
# Frontend: http://localhost:5173

Without Docker

Backend:

cd backend
pip install uv
uv pip install --system -e ".[dev]"

# Start PostgreSQL, then:
alembic upgrade head
uvicorn app.main:app --reload --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

Frontend:

cd frontend
npm ci
npm run dev
# Opens at http://localhost:5173, proxies /api → localhost:8000

Quick Start (Desktop App)

The desktop app wraps the SvelteKit frontend in a Tauri window and works in two modes:

• Offline — open .conllu files from disk, edit, save (no server needed)
• Connected — point at a running BoAT server, login, annotate as if using the web app

Prerequisites

Rust toolchain (rustup.rs):

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

System libraries (Linux/Ubuntu):

sudo apt-get install -y \
  libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev \
  libgtk-3-dev \
  libayatana-appindicator3-dev \
  librsvg2-dev \
  libjavascriptcoregtk-4.1-dev \
  libsoup-3.0-dev

On macOS, Xcode Command Line Tools are sufficient. On Windows, install the Visual Studio C++ Build Tools and WebView2.

Node dependencies:

cd frontend
npm ci

Development

cd frontend
npm run tauri:dev

This starts the Vite dev server with TAURI=1 (using adapter-static instead of adapter-node) and opens the Tauri window with hot reload.

Production build

cd frontend
npm run tauri:build

The output binary is in frontend/src-tauri/target/release/.

Usage

When the desktop app opens:

1. Offline mode — Click "Open CoNLL-U file" to load a .conllu file from disk. Browse sentences, edit annotations in the table, see the dependency graph update live, and save back to disk with Ctrl+S.
2. Connected mode — Click "Connect to server", enter the URL of a running BoAT instance (e.g. http://localhost:8000), login with your credentials. The app then works identically to the web version.

Desktop keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+O (open file), Ctrl+S (save), Ctrl+Shift+S (save as).

Directory Structure

backend/               # FastAPI backend
  app/
    routers/           # API route handlers
    services/          # CoNLL-U parser, agreement calculator
    models/            # SQLAlchemy models
  alembic/             # Database migrations
  tests/               # pytest test suite

frontend/              # SvelteKit frontend (shared between web and desktop)
  src/
    lib/
      api/             # Typed API client (mode-aware: fetch or Tauri invoke)
      components/      # Svelte components (annotation, graph, layout, desktop)
      stores/          # State management (auth, annotation, mode, theme)
    routes/            # SvelteKit pages
  src-tauri/           # Tauri v2 Rust backend (desktop app)
    src/
      commands.rs      # Tauri command handlers (API dispatch, file I/O)
      conllu.rs        # CoNLL-U parser/exporter (Rust port)
      document.rs      # In-memory document state

docker-compose.yml     # Production deployment
docker-compose.dev.yml # Development with hot reload
Caddyfile              # Reverse proxy config

Publications

• Akkurt, F., Marşan, B., & Üsküdarlı, S. (2022). BoAT v2 — A Web-Based Dependency Annotation Tool with Focus on Agglutinative Languages. In Proceedings of ALTNLP 2022. [arXiv] [CEUR-WS]

History

• Original desktop tool: boun-tabi/BoAT (Qt/Python)
• Current version: FastAPI + SvelteKit rewrite with Tauri desktop app