Papra v0.8 - Improved webhooks, async task processing, and enhanced migration system - Papra - Simple & Secure Document Archiving for Long-Term Storage

I’m thrilled to announce the release of Papra v0.8! This is a significant technical release that lays the foundation for exciting future features while improving the developer experience.

Enhanced Webhook System

One of the biggest improvements in v0.8 is our completely overhauled webhook system. We’ve made it more powerful, reliable, and standards-compliant.

Standard Webhook Compliance

Breaking change: We’ve updated our webhook format to comply with the Standard Webhooks specification. This brings several benefits, with the main benefit being ecosystem compatibility.

Migration Guide

If you’re currently using webhooks, you’ll need to update your webhook handlers:

Before (v0.7 and earlier):

# Headers
x-signature: P8HFU+6SAJSczKQugKpx7aylbGoNH/RTyvLtgS7jzjA=
x-event: document:created

# Body
{
  "event": "document:created",
  "payload": {
    "documentId": "doc_hlrwbh2jz2gv851wwtib3ler",
    "organizationId": "org_eda48ocnvekbcj8q0enxybty",
    "name": "index (1).js",
    "createdAt": "2025-08-08T18:40:15.210Z",
    "updatedAt": "2025-08-08T18:40:15.210Z"
  },
  "timestampMs": 1754678415223
}

After (v0.8+):

# Headers
webhook-signature: v1,hQvJ5c3gKIx6NBXLXNWfXJgpLymHE+rXjQqML0DlaIA=
webhook-timestamp: 1754678128
webhook-id: msg_pb568hoi1t6n3k3fkfoc4u13

# Body
{
  "data": {
    "documentId": "doc_tny6ix8nort5ip05s6tl2efd",
    "organizationId": "org_eda48ocnvekbcj8q0enxybty",
    "name": "index.js",
    "createdAt": "2025-08-08T18:35:28.941Z",
    "updatedAt": "2025-08-08T18:35:28.941Z"
  },
  "type": "document:created",
  "timestamp": "2025-08-08T18:35:28.966Z"
}

You can now use any standard webhook-compliant library, or our official @papra/webhooks package for easy webhook validation.

New Webhook Events

We’ve expanded the webhook events you can subscribe to:

document:updated - Triggered when document name or content changes
document:tag:added - Triggered when a tag is added to a document
document:tag:removed - Triggered when a tag is removed from a document

Improved Performance

Webhook invocations are now deferred, meaning they no longer block API responses. This significantly improves the responsiveness of all document operations while ensuring reliable webhook delivery.

Task Processing with Cadence MQ

We’ve introduced Cadence MQ, our custom-built task runner designed specifically for self-hosting environments. Unlike traditional solutions like BullMQ that require Redis, Cadence MQ is built to be self-hosting friendly.

What’s Changed

File content extraction (OCR, text extraction) now runs asynchronously, improving upload performance and reducing the format-specific processing time (image vs text for example)
Recurring maintenance tasks (document cleanup, token expiration) are now handled by the task runner

This foundation enables us to add more background processing features in future releases while keeping Papra’s infrastructure requirements minimal.

Learn more about Cadence MQ on GitHub.

Enhanced Migration System

We’ve completely rewritten our database migration mechanism to be more flexible and powerful:

JavaScript migrations instead of SQL-only files
Up and down migrations with full business logic support
Backward compatibility with existing SQL migrations
Future-proof foundation for complex schema changes

This technical improvement ensures Papra can evolve smoothly while maintaining data integrity across updates.

Quality of Life Improvements

Better Error Handling
- Improved feedback for invalid origin config with some documentation
- Added error messages when tag deletion fails
- Fixed tag deletion issue when tags were assigned to documents
Enhanced Internationalization: Added support for Italian and improved Romanian translation
Simplified organization member list with a cleaner, more intuitive design
OCR for scanned pdfs, finally!

Conclusion

Thank you for your continued support and valuable feedback! If you have any suggestions, you can either open an issue on GitHub or join the Discord server.

If you want to support the development of Papra, you can buy me a coffee, or just star the GitHub repository, it’ll help me a lot!

I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Some useful links: