Building a customs document cross-check AI agent for a large African importer: $10.5K setup pricing
momohotait · reddit · 2026-10-15
A developer is building an AI agent for the 8–9 person customs team of a large African importer, who currently hand-check multilingual scanned invoices, bills of lading, certificates and customs docs arriving by email—late-caught errors leave containers at port accruing demurrage.
The prototype (tested on real files) uses a vision model to read documents, fixed code rules for all cross-checks and calculations, Outlook-drafted correction emails gated by human approval, plain-language Q&A that always cites source documents, and memory of team decisions. In progress: per-field confidence with cropped scans routed to humans, a reference set built from the ugliest scans, and per-container free-day countdowns with alerts before demurrage starts.
Proposed pricing: $10,500 setup + $2,450/month, no commitment, capped at 250 files/month (local salaries $550/month). Open questions he's asking the community: model choice (top model everywhere or only for reading and uncertain fields), handling search over years of email history with a single-mailbox read-and-draft scope, storing per-supplier "normal discrepancy" decisions without an exception mess, solo maintainer operations without being on call, and liability/overage billing terms.
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