llms.txt
# freedam
> freedam is an open, self-hostable digital asset management (DAM) system: one library for every brand asset, with AI tagging, semantic and visual search, rights tracking, brand portals, and a full REST API + MCP server for AI agents.
## Product
- [What freedam does](https://freedam.io/): product overview
- [Features](https://freedam.io/features): 80+ capabilities by category
- [Pricing](https://freedam.io/pricing): transparent plans, free tier included
- [Self-hosting](https://freedam.io/product/self-hosting): run freedam on your own infrastructure
- [Developers](https://freedam.io/developers): REST API, webhooks, MCP server, embeds, TypeScript SDK
- [API reference](https://freedam.io/docs/api): OpenAPI documentation
## Solutions
- [Digital asset management](https://freedam.io/digital-asset-management): find, govern, and deliver approved brand assets
- [Brand portals](https://freedam.io/brand-portal): approved self-service access for teams and external partners
- [DAM for growing brands](https://freedam.io/digital-asset-management-for-small-business): move beyond shared folders without enterprise overhead
- [Brand asset management](https://freedam.io/brand-asset-management): manage brand identity files, usage rights, and approved versions
- [SharePoint vs DAM](https://freedam.io/sharepoint-vs-dam): a balanced category decision for marketing assets
- [SharePoint alternative for marketing](https://freedam.io/sharepoint-alternative-for-marketing): keep Microsoft 365 while moving brand assets into a focused DAM
- [SharePoint digital asset management guide](https://freedam.io/sharepoint-digital-asset-management): practical limits, configuration, and coexistence guidance
- [Localized campaigns](https://freedam.io/localized-campaigns): turn one campaign PSD into local versions with each dealer's products and language
- [Dealer and distributor content](https://freedam.io/use-cases/distribute-marketing-assets-to-dealers): keep external sales networks on the current materials
## Tools
- [Free tools](https://freedam.io/tools): free tools for brand and marketing teams, no account needed
- [Brand Center Generator](https://freedam.io/tools/brand-center-generator): paste a website and get a brand center homepage designed around that brand's logo, colours and current campaign, in about a minute
- [DAM Setup Advisor](https://freedam.io/setup-advisor): answer a few questions and get a tailored rollout plan for a digital asset management system
- [Brand center gallery](https://freedam.io/brand-centers): thirty-five brand centers across fashion, finance, travel, food and industry
## Compare
- [Compare Freedam](https://freedam.io/compare): honest feature-by-feature comparisons, including when the other tool is the better choice
- [Freedam vs Google Drive](https://freedam.io/compare/freedam-vs-google-drive): where Drive breaks down for media libraries, and when it doesn't
- [Freedam vs Dropbox](https://freedam.io/compare/freedam-vs-dropbox): file sync vs a system of record for approved assets
- [SharePoint vs DAM](https://freedam.io/sharepoint-vs-dam): for teams already on Microsoft 365
- [Freedam vs Notion](https://freedam.io/compare/freedam-vs-notion): knowledge base vs media library — most teams keep both
## Guides
- [Digital Asset](https://freedam.io/glossary/digital-asset): Any file with value to an organization plus the metadata that makes it usable — the combination of content and context that a DAM system manages.
- [MCP for AI Agents (Claude, ChatGPT & more)](https://freedam.io/integrations/mcp-ai-agents): Let Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI assistants work directly in your freedam library through a built-in MCP connection - safely, with the permissions you choose.
- [What is digital asset management?](https://freedam.io/guide/what-is-digital-asset-management): Learn what digital asset management does, how teams use it to organize and share files, and how to decide whether your library needs a DAM.
- [Metadata](https://freedam.io/glossary/metadata): Structured information describing a digital asset — what it shows, who made it, how it may be used — that makes files findable and governable in a DAM.
- [REST API](https://freedam.io/integrations/rest-api): Connect your own software to your freedam library with a stable, secure API: assets, collections, uploads, metadata, shares, and webhooks.
- [What can AI do for your asset library?](https://freedam.io/guide/ai-digital-asset-management): Learn how AI tagging, transcription, and image search work in a DAM, where they make mistakes, and which decisions your team should still review.
- [Taxonomy](https://freedam.io/glossary/taxonomy): A hierarchical classification scheme that organizes assets into broader and narrower categories, giving a DAM library consistent, browsable structure.
- [Webhooks](https://freedam.io/integrations/webhooks): Get real-time notifications from freedam: when assets, collections, or shares change, your systems hear about it within seconds - securely and reliably.
- [What can C2PA Content Credentials prove?](https://freedam.io/guide/c2pa-content-credentials-dam): C2PA Content Credentials explained: what a manifest contains, what a verifier checks, who signs today, and what freedam does with credentials on upload.
- [Controlled Vocabulary](https://freedam.io/glossary/controlled-vocabulary): An agreed, managed list of terms used to tag assets consistently, so everyone in a DAM describes the same thing with the same words every time.
- [How much does digital asset management cost?](https://freedam.io/guide/digital-asset-management-cost): Compare DAM pricing models and budget for setup, storage, and ongoing support. Work through the costs of a hosted service or running the system yourself.
- [TypeScript SDK](https://freedam.io/integrations/typescript-sdk): Build on freedam from your own JavaScript or TypeScript application with @freedam/sdk - an official client that handles the plumbing for you.
- [Brand Portal](https://freedam.io/glossary/brand-portal): A curated, self-service site where partners, press, and teams find and download approved brand assets without needing access to the full DAM library.
- [DAM requirements checklist](https://freedam.io/guide/dam-requirements-checklist): A free DAM requirements checklist covering ingestion, metadata and search, rights, sharing, integrations and adoption. Set priorities, then export as CSV.
- [S3-Compatible Storage](https://freedam.io/integrations/s3-compatible-storage): Sync S3, MinIO, or Wasabi buckets into your freedam library as a read-only import source - or use S3-compatible storage as the asset backend.
- [Brand Guidelines](https://freedam.io/glossary/brand-guidelines): The documented rules for how a brand looks and sounds — logo usage, colors, typography, tone — kept alongside the approved assets that embody them.
- [DAM RFP template](https://freedam.io/guide/dam-rfp-template): A free, copy-ready DAM RFP template: project background prompts, functional requirements tables, security questions, a scoring method, and a timeline.
- [WebDAV](https://freedam.io/integrations/webdav): Sync existing network folders into freedam: point a read-only source at your NAS or WebDAV server, map folders to collections, and refresh on a schedule.
- [Digital Rights Management (DRM)](https://freedam.io/glossary/digital-rights-management): Recording and enforcing what may be done with digital content — who can use an asset, where, how, and until when — inside the system that serves it.
- [Google Drive](https://freedam.io/integrations/google-drive): Import Google Drive folders into your freedam library with a read-only source connector - and use a Google Sheet as the catalog that drives mapping.
- [Should you host your own DAM?](https://freedam.io/guide/self-hosted-dam-guide): Compare hosted and self-hosted DAM options. Learn what your team needs to manage infrastructure, backups, updates, and day-to-day maintenance.
- [How to implement a DAM](https://freedam.io/guide/dam-implementation-guide): How to implement a DAM in phases: inventory, a small metadata model, a pilot team, migration in slices, training, and the metrics that prove it works.
- [Sign in with Google](https://freedam.io/integrations/sso-google): Let workspace members sign in to freedam with their Google account: one less password, verified identities, and per-workspace control.
- [Usage Rights](https://freedam.io/glossary/usage-rights): The specific permissions attached to an asset — where, how long, and by whom it may be used — derived from licenses, contracts, and consent records.
- [DAM metadata best practices](https://freedam.io/guide/dam-metadata-best-practices): Choose metadata fields your team can maintain. Learn how to use tags, embedded file information, and AI suggestions to make assets easier to find.
- [Embargo](https://freedam.io/glossary/embargo): A rule that keeps an asset hidden or locked until a set date and time, so campaign material cannot be seen or used before its official release.
- [Sign in with Microsoft](https://freedam.io/integrations/sso-microsoft): Give your team Microsoft sign-in for freedam: one less password, works with Microsoft 365 accounts, enabled per workspace.
- [How to build a DAM taxonomy](https://freedam.io/guide/dam-taxonomy-guide): A practical guide to DAM taxonomies: controlled vocabularies, hierarchy vs flat lists, facets, governance, and a worked example for a consumer brand.
- [Video Embeds](https://freedam.io/integrations/video-embed): Embed any video from your freedam library on your website or intranet: smooth adaptive streaming, plays only on domains you allow, revocable anytime.
- [Watermarking](https://freedam.io/glossary/watermarking): Overlaying a visible mark — a logo, name, or notice — on asset previews and downloads to signal ownership and discourage unapproved use of files.
- [Canva](https://freedam.io/integrations/canva): Browse, search and insert approved images and videos from your freedam library with a click or a drag, without leaving the Canva editor.
- [Rendition](https://freedam.io/glossary/rendition): A derived copy of an asset generated for a specific purpose — a thumbnail, web preview, or resized download — created automatically from the original.
- [What is a brand portal?](https://freedam.io/guide/brand-portal-guide): Learn what to put in a brand portal, how to give partners access, and how to keep logos, guidelines, and campaign files current for everyone using them.
- [Chrome Extension](https://freedam.io/integrations/chrome-extension): Search your freedam library from the Chrome side panel and copy, download or drop approved images and videos into the page you are working on.
- [How to design a brand center](https://freedam.io/guide/how-to-design-a-brand-center): How to design a brand center: the audiences it serves, the anatomy of the homepage, the collections and search that make it usable, and how to keep it current.
- [Ingestion](https://freedam.io/glossary/ingestion): The process of bringing files into a DAM — upload or sync, then automatic scanning, format identification, metadata extraction, and preview generation.
- [Can SharePoint work as a DAM?](https://freedam.io/guide/sharepoint-dam-limitations): Review how SharePoint handles images, video, and design files. Check its media features and limits, with links to the relevant Microsoft documentation.
- [Version Control](https://freedam.io/glossary/version-control): Keeping every revision of an asset under one record with full history, so teams always find the current file and can trace or restore earlier versions.
- [Is SharePoint cheaper than a DAM?](https://freedam.io/guide/sharepoint-vs-dam-cost): A worked cost model for SharePoint as a media library versus a DAM: Microsoft 365 licences, extra storage, pay-as-you-go AI, build hours, and search time.
- [Semantic Search](https://freedam.io/glossary/semantic-search): Search that matches the meaning of a query rather than its exact words, using embeddings to find assets described differently from how you phrased it.
- [How to use SharePoint and a DAM together](https://freedam.io/guide/sharepoint-dam-integration): Plan how to use a DAM alongside Microsoft 365. Decide which files stay in SharePoint and how people will access media from Teams, OneDrive, and Office.
- [Visual Search](https://freedam.io/glossary/visual-search): Finding images by what they look like rather than how they are tagged — searching with an example image to surface visually similar assets in a library.
- [Face Recognition Search](https://freedam.io/glossary/face-recognition-search): Finding every asset a specific person appears in by matching detected faces against confirmed reference examples, rather than relying on manual tags.
- [How to move from SharePoint to a DAM](https://freedam.io/guide/migrating-from-sharepoint-to-dam): Plan your move from SharePoint to a DAM. Review files, map columns to metadata, check permissions, and manage existing links during the migration.
- [Can Google Drive or Dropbox replace a DAM?](https://freedam.io/guide/cloud-storage-dam-limitations): Compare Google Drive and Dropbox limits for storage, version history, and syncing. See what they mean when you use either service as a media library.
- [OCR (Optical Character Recognition)](https://freedam.io/glossary/ocr): OCR (optical character recognition) turns text inside images and scans into machine-readable text: how it works, how accurate it is, and what it changes in a DAM.
- [Duplicate Detection](https://freedam.io/glossary/duplicate-detection): Automatically spotting identical or near-identical files in a library, typically via perceptual hashing, so duplicates are caught as content arrives.
- [Why is it so hard to find images in shared drives?](https://freedam.io/guide/finding-images-in-cloud-storage): Learn how Google Drive and Dropbox search for images, why relevant files can be missed, and how metadata and visual search help people find them.
- [Access Control](https://freedam.io/glossary/access-control): The rules deciding who can see, download, edit, or share each asset in a DAM — enforced per user, group, and asset rather than assumed by folder.
- [Can shared drives track image rights?](https://freedam.io/guide/image-rights-in-shared-drives): Google Drive and Dropbox control who can open a file, not whether you may publish it. Access control versus rights management, and what an audit trail must record.
- [Audit Trail](https://freedam.io/glossary/audit-trail): A chronological record of who did what to which asset and when — uploads, edits, downloads, permission changes — kept for accountability and review.
- [How to move from shared drives to a DAM](https://freedam.io/guide/migrating-from-cloud-storage-to-dam): Plan a move from Google Drive or Dropbox to a DAM. Map folders to metadata, check file information, and decide how to handle existing shared links.
## Engineering
- [What it actually takes to build a good image search](https://freedam.io/engineering/how-to-build-image-search): What we learned building image search with keyword retrieval, embeddings and PostgreSQL, including the parts that affected recall more than ranking did.
- [How we built image search in PostgreSQL](https://freedam.io/engineering/image-search-architecture): A production image-search stack using pg_textsearch for BM25, pgvector for HNSW vector search, and reciprocal rank fusion in one PostgreSQL database.
- [Finding the same image twice](https://freedam.io/engineering/near-duplicate-image-detection): How freedam combines DCT hashing, multi-index lookup and vector verification to find re-encoded, resized and cropped copies without confusing similar products.
- [Searching a library in twenty languages](https://freedam.io/engineering/multilingual-search-architecture): How freedam keeps document language, text configuration, partial indexes and query fallbacks aligned across twenty PostgreSQL stemmers.
- [Measuring a search nobody thought was broken](https://freedam.io/engineering/measuring-search-quality): How a sixty-case relevance panel exposed fifteen search failures, corrected a plausible diagnosis and revealed gaps in its own coverage.
- [A face is not a name](https://freedam.io/engineering/face-recognition-person-search): How freedam separates face detection from identity, stores ArcFace embeddings in pgvector and measures the threshold used for automatic matching.
- [The chat that never sees your library](https://freedam.io/engineering/conversational-search-architecture): How freedam uses a language model to produce a validated filter tree while PostgreSQL handles retrieval, permissions and result counts.
## Documentation
- [Signing In](https://freedam.io/docs/signing-in): Sign in to your Freedam workspace with a password or single sign-on, reset a forgotten password, create an account, request access, and get an inactive account reactivated.
- [First Steps](https://freedam.io/docs/first-steps): Your first minutes in Freedam: accepting the terms of use, finding your way around, searching and downloading assets, and where to get help.
- [Workspace Setup](https://freedam.io/docs/workspace-setup): Create a Freedam workspace with a 30-day trial, follow the setup checklist, find your workspace again, and understand what happens when the trial ends.
- [Dashboard](https://freedam.io/docs/dashboard): Customize your landing experience with a flexible grid of assets, collections, and brand information.
- [Gallery](https://freedam.io/docs/gallery): Browse, search, and manage your digital assets with advanced filtering and bulk processing tools.
- [Searching by Keyword](https://freedam.io/docs/search-keywords): Find assets by typing words from filenames, descriptions, tags, captions, and the text inside documents or images.
- [Searching by Meaning](https://freedam.io/docs/search-meaning): Find assets based on what they show or describe, even when the exact keyword isn't anywhere in the metadata.
- [Suggestions as You Type](https://freedam.io/docs/search-suggestions): Get live word and list-value suggestions as you type in the search bar.
- [Did You Mean? (Spell-check)](https://freedam.io/docs/search-did-you-mean): When you mistype a search term, Freedam proposes the closest real match from your library so you never hit a dead end.
- [Filtering Results](https://freedam.io/docs/filters): Narrow the Gallery to exactly the assets you need using quick filters for colour, tags, asset type, dates and more.
- [Advanced Filters](https://freedam.io/docs/advanced-filters): Build precise multi-rule queries that combine any number of conditions with AND / OR logic.
- [Bulk Paste Search](https://freedam.io/docs/bulk-paste-search): Paste a list of SKUs, product references or other identifiers into a smart filter and find every matching asset in one step - plus export the values that didn't match. Optionally pin it as a one-click button next to the gallery search bar.
- [Saved Searches](https://freedam.io/docs/saved-searches): Save your favourite filters and searches so you can recall them in one click - useful for recurring reports and day-to-day tasks.
- [Find Visually Similar Images](https://freedam.io/docs/visual-search): Upload a reference image and find assets in the library that look like it - perfect for catching duplicates, variants, and on-brand alternatives.
- [Finding Photos of a Person](https://freedam.io/docs/person-search): Locate every photo in the library that features a given person - useful for talent management, approvals, and personalised communications.
- [Bulk Metadata Edit](https://freedam.io/docs/bulk-metadata-edit): Change metadata on many assets at once with a queue of operations: set or clear values, find and replace, append or prepend text, shift dates, and add or remove keywords.
- [Export](https://freedam.io/docs/export): Export a selection of assets as a ZIP archive with a metadata spreadsheet, a PDF portfolio or conta
