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Owlculus is a forever free, open-source, self-hosted OSINT investigation platform for individuals and teams. It brings case management, evidence collection, entity tracking, and investigative tools into one browser-based workspace.
- Manage Cases: Organize investigations, assign team members, and track work with Tasks.
- Track Entities: Record people, companies, domains, IP addresses, and vehicles, with notes and supporting information.
- Organize Evidence: Store investigation files and browser captures within a Case.
- Run OSINT Plugins: Use integrated tools and external data providers from your browser.
- Build automated Hunts: Combine investigative steps into reusable workflows.
- Find connections: Use correlation tools to identify relationships across Cases you can access.
- Collaborate: Work with a team, assign tasks, and control access through Admin, Investigator and Analyst roles with case membership.
- Capture from the browser: Save page HTML or a screenshot of the visible tab as evidence using the Owlculus browser extension.
Feature availability and interface details depend on the version you install. Development-branch features may not yet be available on main.
Start with Getting Started for installation and an introduction to the application.
A typical investigation follows this path:
- Sign in and create or select a Case.
- Add the Entities relevant to your investigation.
- Collect Evidence and record Notes.
- Run Plugins or Hunts available to your role and installation.
- Review results and use Tasks to track follow-up work.
Some Plugins and Hunts require external services or provider API keys.
The current development implementation runs Plugins and Hunts as background executions associated with a Case. Work can be queued or running, and retained execution history lets you return to status and results after navigating away.
Access to execution history does not automatically grant permission to submit Hunts. Available controls depend on your role and Case access.
- Getting Started — Installation and introductory workflows.
- Repository README — Project overview and repository documentation.
- Browser Extension — Extension source and installation information.
- Source Code — Application code, deployment configuration, and contributor resources.
Owlculus is under active development. Use main for production and reserve dev for development and testing.
Before upgrading, review the instructions and configuration for your target version. Back up PostgreSQL data and uploaded Evidence, preserve existing configuration and volumes, and coordinate updates across the application and background execution services.
Pulling new source code alone does not complete an upgrade. Destructive clean/reset options are not an upgrade procedure.
Owlculus stores application data on the infrastructure where you deploy it. Plugins, Hunts, and optional integrations may send queries or selected information to external services.
- Grant users only the access they need for their investigations.
- Review provider requirements before submitting investigation data.
- Keep passwords, API keys, setup tokens, and authentication tokens out of public logs and screenshots.
- Review browser captures before sharing them; captured content may contain sensitive information.
- Maintain backups and protect access to your deployment.
- GitHub Issues — Report bugs and request features.
- GitHub Discussions — Ask questions and share ideas that are not bugs.
For contributions, read CONTRIBUTING.md in the repo root.