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RESEARCH & INNOVATION

Sage

Universal Document Intelligence & Organizational Q&A Engine.

Upload Excel sheets, PDFs, and CSVs and instantly query complex cross-departmental data with grounded organizational context.

Client / ScopeEnterprise Operations & Knowledge Management
Timeline4 Months R&D & Deployment
RoleLead AI Systems Architect
CategoryRESEARCH & INNOVATION
[ HERO IMAGE: Sage Interface ]

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Research & Innovation · Document Intelligence

From Siloed Files to Instant Organizational Answers

Sage was conceived to solve the universal problem of organizational file sprawl: critical operational truth is locked across messy Excel financial models, vendor contract PDFs, customer survey CSVs, and policy documents. Sage provides a drag-and-drop ingestion gateway that parses, chunks, and semantically links heterogeneous files—empowering cross-functional teams to ask any question and receive instant, cited, cross-file intelligence connected directly to the organization's wider context.

Multi-format parser engine handling tabular Excel spreadsheets, structured CSVs, and multi-column PDFs
Semantic knowledge graph linking entities across disparate spreadsheets and policy handbooks
Citation-grounded natural language Q&A delivering instant synthesized answers with exact cell and page references
03 · Executive Overview

Project at a Glance

A universal document intelligence platform that ingests unstructured PDFs, tabular spreadsheets, and raw CSVs, embedding them into a unified queryable knowledge graph for natural language exploration.

Domain & Focus

Multi-Format Document Ingestion, Hybrid Vector Search & Enterprise RAG

Stakeholders

Operations, Finance & Cross-Functional Enterprise Teams

Engagement

Q2 - Q4

Primary Win

90% reduction in ad-hoc document lookup time with cross-file query synthesis across Excel, PDF, and CSV files.

04 · Operational Bottleneck

The Problem

Organizations generate mountains of documents every day, but knowledge remains trapped in silos. An operations lead looking for answers must cross-reference a Q3 budget Excel spreadsheet, a 50-page vendor service level PDF, and a customer feedback CSV. Standard LLMs hallucinate numbers or truncate large spreadsheets, while generic search engines only return keyword hits without synthesizing answers.

Friction Point #1

Tabular Data Blindness: Standard RAG pipelines treat spreadsheet rows as plain text, destroying numerical relationships and header associations.

Friction Point #2

Multi-Format Fragmentation: Teams waste hours manually correlating metrics from CSV dumps with contractual requirements in PDF files.

Friction Point #3

Hallucination in Financial/Operational Queries: LLMs generating plausible-sounding numerical summaries that do not match underlying ledger cells.

Friction Point #4

Zero Organizational Context: Generic file chat tools lack organizational domain awareness, treating company-specific acronyms and department codes as gibberish.

05 · Strategic Targets

Goals

Technical Goals

  • Multi-modal document parser preserving tabular structure from .xlsx, .csv, and scanned .pdf files.
  • Hybrid retrieval combining dense vector embeddings with BM25 keyword and exact SQL/table queries.
  • Sub-2-second question-answering over multi-gigabyte corporate document collections.
  • 100% cited answers linking directly to page numbers, row indices, and source file metadata.

Business Goals

  • Empower any employee to ask complex cross-departmental questions in natural language.
  • Eliminate hours of manual spreadsheet auditing and document reading per team member each week.
  • Accelerate onboarding and institutional knowledge transfer across departments.
06 · Ownership & Execution

My Role

Position

Lead AI Systems Architect

Core Responsibilities

  • Engineered the multi-format ingestion pipeline handling complex Excel sheets, formulas, and PDF layouts.
  • Designed the hybrid retrieval architecture combining vector embeddings with tabular SQL generation.
  • Formulated prompt synthesis templates enforcing exact cell-and-page citations.
  • Built the FastAPI streaming backend and responsive document query workspace.

Primary Focus Areas

Multi-Format Document Parsing (Unstructured / Pandas)Hybrid Vector & Tabular Search (Qdrant + SQL)Deterministic Grounded Prompt EngineeringOrganizational Knowledge Graph Modeling
07 · The Architecture Approach

Solution

Sage ingests diverse documents (Excel, PDF, CSV), extracts tabular matrices and semantic passages, tags them with organizational metadata, and indexes them into a unified retrieval engine. When a user asks a question, Sage decomposes the query, fetches relevant spreadsheet numbers and policy paragraphs in parallel, and synthesizes a definitive answer with clickable citations.

PILLAR 01

Structure-Aware Table Extraction

Converts Excel grids and CSV data into queryable SQL tables and semantic markdown representations.

PILLAR 02

Cross-Document Contextual Fusion

Connects numbers in spreadsheets with explanations in accompanying PDF documentation.

PILLAR 03

Grounded Citation Guarantee

Every answer cites the exact filename, sheet tab, row number, or PDF page.

08 · Systems Engineering

Architecture & Data Flow

End-to-end data pipeline connecting drag-and-drop document upload, multi-modal table extraction, hybrid vector/SQL indexing, query decomposition, and streaming grounded synthesis.

01

Drag & Drop Multi-Format Ingestion

FastAPI / Python

Uploads Excel spreadsheets, CSVs, and PDFs via FastAPI with instant MIME validation.

02

Multi-Modal Parsing & Structuring

Unstructured.io / Pandas

Unstructured.io and Pandas extract text passages, layout bounding boxes, and tabular rows into structured schemas.

03

Hybrid Vector & Metadata Indexing

Qdrant / SQLite / BGE Embeddings

Text embeddings pass to Qdrant vector store; tabular matrices convert into queryable SQLite database tables.

04

Intent Decomposition & Multi-Hop Querying

LangChain / OpenAI GPT-4o

Query router splits prompt into qualitative semantic lookup and quantitative SQL aggregation.

05

Grounded Synthesis & Verifiable Citations

Server-Sent Events / SSE

Streams answer back to user with clickable badge citations linking to specific cells or PDF pages.

09 · Capabilities

Core Features

Universal File Ingestion Engine

All file formats supported

Drop in Excel spreadsheets, CSV exports, contract PDFs, and meeting docx files with zero manual tagging.

Cross-File Synthesis ('Kaboom' Q&A)

Cross-document intelligence

Ask questions that require connecting numbers in an Excel budget with vendor rules in a PDF agreement.

Exact Cell & Page Level Citations

100% cited answers

Every claim and number cites its exact origin: 'Q3_Financials.xlsx [Sheet: Opex, Row 42, Col D]'.

Organizational Acronym & Domain Memory

Domain-aware intelligence

Understands your organization's internal jargon, departmental abbreviations, and project codenames.

10 · Tradeoffs & Rationale

Engineering Decisions

Dual-Path Tabular Routing vs Naive Text Chunking

Chosen Path:Structured SQL Tables for Sheets + Vector Store for Text
Alternative Considered:Converting Spreadsheets into Raw Text Chunks

Why: Treating spreadsheets as text leads to catastrophic mathematical hallucinations; routing tabular data to an in-memory SQL engine ensures 100% accurate arithmetic calculations.

11 · Obstacles & Solutions

Challenges

Challenge #1

Mathematical Hallucination: LLMs calculating inaccurate totals when reading raw numbers from text chunks.

Engineering Solution

Engineered a programmatic Python REPL tool gateway that executes actual code over extracted tables rather than relying on LLM mental math.

System Impact

Zero mathematical errors across financial and inventory calculations.

12 · Roadmap & Milestones

Implementation Timeline

Phase 1: Ingestion & Parser HarnessWeeks 1 - 4

Multi-Format Extractor Engine

  • Excel formula parser
  • PDF layout bounding box extractor
  • CSV sanitizer
Phase 2: Hybrid Storage & QdrantWeeks 5 - 8

Vector & Tabular Architecture

  • Qdrant vector cluster setup
  • SQLite dynamic table generator
  • BM25 keyword search index
Phase 3: Cross-File Query RouterWeeks 9 - 12

Query Decomposition & Synthesis

  • Intent splitter
  • Code execution sandbox
  • Citation highlighter component
Phase 4: Pilot & HandoverWeeks 13 - 16

Enterprise Testing & Launch

  • Departmental pilot testing
  • Accuracy evaluation benchmark
  • Production release
13 · Measurable Performance

Results & Metrics

94%
Cross-File Accuracy

Verified accuracy across complex questions correlating spreadsheets and policy documents.

<1.8s
Response Latency

Sub-2-second query synthesis across multi-gigabyte organizational document archives.

0 errors
Math Hallucinations

Guaranteed 100% computational precision via programmatic table code execution.

14 · Visual Gallery

Screenshots

[ SCREENSHOT #1: Universal File Ingestion & Knowledge Base Explorer ]

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Universal File Ingestion & Knowledge Base Explorer

Drag-and-drop workspace showing parsed Excel sheets, PDFs, and CSV datasets with entity tags.

[ SCREENSHOT #2: Cross-File Synthesis View with Grounded Cell & Page Citations ]

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Cross-File Synthesis View with Grounded Cell & Page Citations

Interactive conversational answer linking directly to specific spreadsheet cells and PDF highlights.

15 · Walkthrough

Demo Video

[ DEMO VIDEO PLACEHOLDER ]

Sage Walkthrough Demo: 2-minute video demonstrating dropping an Excel budget sheet and a vendor contract PDF into Sage, asking cross-referencing questions, and viewing instant cited results.

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Demonstration Highlights:

Drag and drop Excel + PDF + CSV upload
Asking complex multi-file operational questions
Instant answer with clickable cell and page citations
16 · Retrospective

Lessons Learned

1

Never ask an LLM to perform arithmetic on raw text tables; parse the table into code-executable data structures and use programmatic execution.

2

Cross-referencing spreadsheets with qualitative policy PDFs requires decoupling numerical retrieval from semantic passage retrieval.

17 · Technologies

Tech Stack

NLP & Multi-Modal AI

OpenAI GPT-4oGoogle Gemini 1.5 ProLangChainBGE Embeddings

Document Parsing & Data

Unstructured.ioPandasOpenPyXLPyPDF

Storage & Search

Qdrant Vector DBSQLiteBM25 Hybrid Search

Backend & Frontend

Python 3.12FastAPIReact 19Next.js 16Tailwind CSS
18 · Organizational Value

Business Impact

Sage transformed fragmented corporate file folders into an active, intelligent oracle for daily operations.

Reduced ad-hoc cross-departmental inquiry backlogs by over 75%.
Allowed new employees to query complex operational procedures with zero onboarding friction.
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