External/NAS Document Library – IMAP-like Indexing of Existing Files In Place

Description Feature Request: External/NAS Document Library – IMAP-like Indexing of Existing Files In Place I would like to suggest an additional document-source mode for Paperless-ngx that works conceptually like an IMAP client connected to a mail server. Today, Paperless's consume workflow works very well when Paperless is intended to become the repository for a document: a file is placed into the consume directory, Paperless processes it, stores the document in its own media structure, and removes the consumed copy. There is another increasingly common use case, however: organizations and individuals already have large, established document libraries on a NAS or file server and want Paperless to provide its excellent OCR, metadata, tagging, correspondence, search, and document-management interface without requiring Paperless to take ownership of or reorganize the underlying files. Conceptually, this would work much like IMAP: The external filesystem remains the …