Gather

Inbound Document Intake

Turn any inbound document into a structured record.

Receives whatever artefacts external parties send — PDFs, emails, scans, EDI — and extracts the structured fields your process needs, without requiring senders to change their behaviour. Low-confidence extractions queue for human review rather than silently corrupting downstream data.

Shape

Operational dimensions

Requires approval

Each output waits on a human decision.

Event-triggered

Fires when an upstream condition occurs.

Low data gravity

Light state; replaceable any time.

Read-only inbound

Consumes external data; does not write back.

Inputs

Inbound artefact (PDF, email, scan, EDI, image)
Document-type schema defining extraction targets
Confidence threshold for exception routing
Inbound channel config (email inbox, upload endpoint, fax connector)

Outputs

Structured record matching the target schema
Source artefact reference with provenance
Exception queue items with extraction confidence trace
Per-field extraction confidence scores

Mechanism

Receives discrete inbound artefacts (PDFs, emails, scans, faxes, EDI, forms) from external senders, extracts structured fields under a target schema, and lands a structured record plus exception queue for unparseable items.

Why this is a primitive

Cannot be decomposed — receive-parse-extract on inbound artefacts is one operation. Strip the extraction layer and you have an inbox (no primitive); strip the inbound channel and you have a parser (no primitive). The two are inseparable as a single intake mechanism. It does NOT capture live conversation (interview-capture), does NOT host the submitter UI (structured-form-intake), does NOT classify/organise post-landing (organise-* primitives).

Where it shows up

Insurance claims team — receives claim forms and supporting documents by email and fax, extracts structured claim fields automatically, routes edge cases to assessors

Accounts payable team — ingests supplier invoices from multiple formats, extracts line-item amounts, PO references, and VAT fields into the ERP

Property management firm — processes inbound tenancy applications and supporting documents, extracts applicant data for credit-check workflow

Logistics operator — receives EDI shipment notices from carriers, parses them into structured shipment records for track-and-trace

Related primitives

Composes with

Structured Submitter-Side Form Intake →Stateful Object Lifecycle →Analyst-Driven Research Corpus Assembly →External Stream Monitoring →

Alternative to

Structured Submitter-Side Form Intake →