RE
RAG Explainer Ingest — Reading the PDF
[01/08] Ingest • Reading the source files

Step zero — the system reads your PDF

Before anything smart happens, the pipeline extracts every word from the policy. You'll meet 5 sample pages here and in every demo (1, 2, 8, 12, 31). Garbage in → garbage out, so this step decides answer quality.

How it works

  1. PDF pages go in — scanned or digital.
  2. Text and tables are extracted (OCR model only if scanned).
  3. Every slice's Meaning Fingerprint gets stored, ready for Search.

What gets extracted — tap a page

Page 1 — Definitions (digital text)
Page 8 — Provider table
Page 31 — Scanned form (needs OCR)
Tap a page above to see how it is read.

What it does

  • Reads text, tables and images (OCR)
  • Keeps data inside your system — private
  • Acts as the single source of truth

What it does NOT do

  • No slicing yet (that’s Chunking)
  • No meaning yet (that’s Embeddings)
  • Does not “look” at the PDF like you do — it extracts

Next: Chunking

Extracted text is still 50 pages. Next the pipeline cuts it into slices →