Features & Capabilities¶
What does locali actually give you — and why is it different from a Facebook group or a newsletter?
locali is a platform for local information and exchange.
It brings together content from existing sources and delivers it automatically to the right people — complemented by direct contributions from the community. Everything in one place, without commercial engagement logic and without dependency on a central platform.
For orientation, the features can be grouped into six areas:
- Collect information — import RSS, iCal, municipal bulletins, and other sources
- Distribute content — combine places, areas, tags, and routing rules
- Enable community — get-involved posts, calendars, roles, and moderation
- Make knowledge accessible — search, source references, and Ask locali
- Run it yourself — Docker Compose, Keycloak, PostgreSQL, monitoring, optional local AI
- Use it accessibly — PWA, push, multilingual UI, and accessibility
Important local information arrives in one place.¶
Imagine all the relevant updates from your community arriving in one feed automatically. No manually checking different sources. No channel you forgot to look at.
locali connects to official sources — RSS feeds, iCal calendars, municipal bulletins — and imports content automatically. New posts, events, and announcements appear without anyone having to actively publish them.
Supported source types:
- RSS / Atom feeds
- iCal / ICS calendars
- Municipal bulletins (structured PDF content)
Content lands where it belongs.¶
Not every post is relevant to everyone. An event from the Rinklingen local club matters to different people than a job posting from the municipal office.
locali automatically routes incoming content to the right places via a configurable routing engine. Admins define the rules: which source goes to which place? Which keyword sends a post where? It all runs in the background — no manual follow-up needed.
Routing rules can be set up in the admin panel without any programming knowledge. See Routing Rules.
Get involved — when information becomes interaction.¶
locali is not just an information platform — it connects people who want to support each other.
Every place has a Get Involved section. Members can post concrete requests directly in the feed and see who is currently offering or looking for something:
| Type | What it means |
|---|---|
| Help request | You need support — with repairs, transport, company, or anything else. |
| Offer | You are making something available — time, skills, objects. |
| Volunteer need | An initiative or organisation is looking for active support. |
Every Get Involved post carries a category and a coloured badge — so it's immediately clear what it's about. The feed filter separates Get Involved posts cleanly from editorial content.
Places structure what belongs together.¶
locali has no single, overwhelming timeline. Instead: places — by village, club, or topic — each with their own feed, calendar, and member circle.
You belong to multiple places at once and only see what's relevant to you. No commercial algorithm decides what's visible.
Roles: what you can do as a member¶
| Role | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Guest | Read the feed, see events — no posting |
| Member | Create posts, comment, react, report content, RSVP to events |
| Moderator | Everything a member can do + create events, pin posts, mark announcements (max. 3), review and remove reported content, suspend or remove members, manage join requests, manage invite codes |
Which role new members receive when joining is set by moderators in the place settings (default: Member).
Join modes: how membership works¶
| Mode | How it works |
|---|---|
| Open | Anyone can join directly |
| Request | Submit a join request — a moderator approves or declines |
| Invite-only | Join only with a valid invite code |
| Managed | No self-service joining — a moderator adds members directly |
Who can access the hub?¶
Operators define who can register on the hub — independently of membership in individual places:
| Mode | What it means |
|---|---|
| Open | Anyone can register |
| Invite-only | Registration requires a valid hub invite code |
| Closed | No new registrations possible |
Events that actually reach people.¶
locali shows events in a dedicated calendar — within the app and as an iCal feed for Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook. Connect external ICS sources and your events calendar stays up to date automatically.
Events can be imported automatically or created directly within locali by moderators.
Understand content better — with optional AI.¶
locali can automatically enrich imported content: assigning keywords, detecting geographic references, generating short summaries. This improves discoverability and supports the routing engine.
The AI integration is optional and flexible:
| Provider | Best for |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | Simple cloud integration |
| Azure OpenAI | Organisations with Azure environments and data-residency needs |
| Google Gemini | Flexible cloud use within the Google ecosystem |
| Mistral AI | European provider (France), option with EU data processing |
| Ollama (local) | Maximum privacy, no external service |
locali makes local knowledge findable¶
Beyond automatic content enrichment, locali develops a genuine understanding of what is happening in a community: which topics matter, which pieces of content belong together — and what questions people are asking.
The result is four capabilities that turn an information stream into a living, searchable local memory:
Ask locali — Ask a plain question: "When is Bahnhofstraße closing for road works?" — locali searches all imported content and returns an answer with source citations. No keywords needed, no PDF downloads.
Relevant feed — The feed can order content by local and topical relevance — for example based on place, source, tags, and semantic relationships. A new council decision about cycle paths becomes more visible where the topic actually fits.
Smart routing — Incoming content is distributed not just by explicit rules, but by meaning. An article about a new playground on Mozartstraße automatically reaches the families place, the neighbourhood place, and the youth place — even without a specific routing rule.
Local memory — What arrives in locali stays findable — not just while it is visible in the feed. New members can get their bearings; engaged residents can trace what was decided over the past months.
All capabilities are optional. By default, they run entirely on your own infrastructure — no content leaves the hub. If a cloud provider is configured, the relevant content or questions are processed there; legal review and operator responsibility remain with the operator.
→ Learn more about the intelligence features
Notifications that don't annoy.¶
Members are notified about new content via web push directly in the browser. No app installation needed. Whether to enable push notifications is each person's choice — controlled centrally under Settings → Notifications.
Usable everywhere.¶
locali is a Progressive Web App (PWA). It runs in the browser — and can be installed on any device like a native app. Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux. No app store, no external platform.
Your data. Your infrastructure. Designed for data-sovereign operation.¶
All data can stay on your own server — without telemetry, without external services, without vendor dependency. This applies when you run exclusively with Ollama and local sources. Operators who configure cloud providers process data there accordingly; legal review and operator responsibility for that processing lie with the operator. locali is particularly well-suited for organisations and municipalities that want to make conscious decisions about hosting, data flows, and responsibilities.
Because locali is self-hosted, all data can remain under the operator's own control. This significantly simplifies meeting GDPR obligations: subject access requests, deletion requests, records of processing activities — all remain in your hands. Operators can store their imprint, privacy policy, and terms of use directly in the admin area.
Accessible by design.¶
Accessibility is not an afterthought — it is a development goal. locali targets WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the internationally recognised standard for digital accessibility.
In practice, this means:
- Keyboard navigation — every feature is reachable without a mouse. Focus order, visible focus indicators, and focus traps are tested throughout.
- Screen reader support — interactive elements carry meaningful labels. State changes (menu opens, request submitted) are communicated programmatically.
- Sufficient touch targets — interactive surfaces are at least 44 × 44 px so that touch input works reliably.
- Reduced motion — animations respect the system-level
prefers-reduced-motionsetting. If you prefer no motion, you won't see any. - Contrast — colour contrast ratios are checked against WCAG AA thresholds.
Compliance with these goals is verified automatically: the CI pipeline runs an accessibility analysis with axe-core across all main routes on every pull request.
Status
A number of known issues are still being resolved — including missing labels on icon-only buttons and label truncation in the mobile navigation.
locali speaks your language.¶
locali is built for multiple languages. The entire user interface — including error messages, hints, and accessibility attributes — is fully translatable. There are no hardcoded strings that appear in only one language.
Currently available: German, English, Turkish, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, Ukrainian, and more. Additional languages can be added by operators without touching the source code.
The chosen language is per user — independent of the language in which the hub is operated. Each member selects their preferred language in their profile settings.
Continue to Self-Hosting — how to set up your own hub.