🧪 PIWorkspace

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A lightweight research-workspace web app written in pure Python standard library — zero third-party dependencies, one tiny server, single-page UI, accessible from phone / tablet / desktop browsers.

⭐ The design inspiration and feature architecture come from the open-source project ny12031/research_system (a Tauri-based research workspace desktop app, MIT License). PIWorkspace is an independent Web re-implementation of those ideas — no code was copied. See Credits for details.

Features

• Today dashboard — stat chips (todo / done / papers / projects / open questions) plus a topic-stats card with daily / weekly / monthly / yearly switcher, and a conference countdown card (e.g. CVPR D-41)
• Check-ins — start / end work multiple times a day, leave records, automatic work-hour totals, quick fixes
• Tasks — priority, due dates, overdue badges
• Papers — register papers; click into one to see its data tables and figures
  • grouped table headers; experiment groups (comparison / transfer / visualization…) become horizontal tabs, auto-generated from pushed data
  • editable in place: create/rename experiment groups, build manual tables (name, groups, headers, values, add/remove rows & columns), rename pushed tables — stored in state.json (projects[].workspace), pushed data stays untouched
• Research projects — track engineering projects and status
• Submissions — conference calendar with deadline countdowns + custom targets
• Open questions — note blockers, check them off when solved
• Daily retro — done / blockers / next focus, one entry per day
• Statistics — dedicated page with per-day work-hour bars
• Auto data backup — every save is committed and pushed to a private GitHub repo

Quick Start

Python ≥ 3.8, no pip dependencies:

python3 server/workbench.py --port 8900
# open http://127.0.0.1:8900

Server Deployment (nginx + basic auth)

The app listens on 127.0.0.1 only; nginx provides the public auth_basic entry:

# on the server
rsync the code to /opt/workbench
cp deploy/workbench.service /etc/systemd/system/ && systemctl enable --now workbench
apt install nginx
printf "user:$(openssl passwd -apr1 'your-password')" > /etc/nginx/workbench.htpasswd
cp deploy/nginx-workbench.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/workbench.conf
nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx

Day-to-day updates: scripts/deploy_server.sh user@your-server (rsync + service restart, never touches data).

Data & Auto Backup

All state lives in a few small files under --data-dir (default ./data/):

File	Written by	Purpose
state.json	web UI (POST /api/data)	tasks / targets / questions / check-ins / retros / papers / projects, atomic writes
tables.json	workstation push (read-only)	paper tables; "topic" assigns to a paper, "exp" is the experiment group
conferences.json	manual (read-only)	conference calendar, data from ccfddl
artifacts.json + files/	push_artifacts.py	paper figures, served safely at /files/<name> (path-traversal protected)

Auto backup: wire scripts/data_backup.sh to a systemd timer (templates in deploy/) to commit and push data/*.json to your own private repo; production setups also trigger it from the save hook in server/workbench.py (throttled to 2 minutes).

Pushing tables / figures (from the workstation; the server address lives in .env.local, which is never committed):

echo "WORKBENCH_SERVER=user@your-server" > .env.local
python3 scripts/push_tables.py --file tables.json
python3 scripts/push_artifacts.py --topic "Paper title" --exp "Visualization" fig1.png

tables.json contract (columns[].group for grouped headers, topic / exp for ownership):

{
  "updated": "2026-09-30 21:00",
  "tables": [
    {"id": "cmp", "topic": "Paper title", "exp": "Comparison", "title": "Comparison",
     "columns": [{"key":"method","label":"Method"},
                 {"key":"v5s","label":"YOLOv5s","group":"White-box"}],
     "rows": [{"label":"Ours","cells":{"method":"Ours","v5s":12.3}}]}
  ]
}

Credits

The feature design, information architecture and UI layout of this project are inspired by the following open-source projects:

ny12031/research_system

• Project: 科研工作台 — a local all-in-one academic management desktop tool for researchers (Tauri 2 + Rust + JavaScript)
• License: MIT
• What was referenced:
  • information architecture: today dashboard / tasks / submissions / check-ins / daily retro / statistics
  • check-in interaction (multiple start/end work segments, leave records, work-hour totals)
  • the "daily / weekly / monthly / yearly" switcher of the topic statistics card
  • grouped left sidebar navigation and card-style layout
• Differences: PIWorkspace is an independent Web re-implementation (pure Python stdlib + single-page HTML, multi-device browsers). Modules not implemented by choice: focus timer, self-care, health tracking, advisor management, achievements. Added on top: paper archiving (tables / figures grouped by experiment), conference calendar (ccfddl data), automatic data backup to GitHub.

ccfddl/ccf-deadlines

• Source of the conference deadline data (CVPR / ICLR …), aggregated into conferences.json

License

MIT