Add support for searching pdf files in forum topics from AI personas

Feature
1

Current limitation:
• Forum semantic search only indexes post text, not PDF attachments
• PDF files aren’t searchable via /search AI toggle
• To get round this, I had to manually upload PDFs separately to persona RAG

Proposed solution:
• Extract text from PDF attachments during embedding generation
• Index PDF contents alongside post text
• Make PDF-attached topics discoverable via semantic search

Benefits:
• Users find technical documentation via forum search
• No need to duplicate content (forum post + RAG upload)
• Better SEO (PDFs attached to indexed topics)
• Simpler architecture (Search command just works)

If you were to implement this, i could potentially:

  1. Remove forced tools (Search would naturally find PDF contents)
  2. Eliminate RAG uploads entirely (everything in forum topics)
  3. Simplify the system significantly
1 Like
2

There is a similar topic about indexing files for ai-search here: Index File Contents for Search

1 Like
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I think that a plugin might add the text to the cooked post in an optionally hidden details element. That would add it so it would be found, I think. If you’re self hosted I think it’d be a only a few hundred dollars to have developed. Or, if it sounds like they’re interested, submitted as a PR, for about twice as much (to include tests and such).