Personal project · 2026
Clew
Clew is a personal experiment in turning a company's files into data that people can check. Its first app is a supplier price list for people who look up prices in files, such as quantity surveyors, buyers and warehouse staff. Every price links back to the cell or the page region that it came from.
- Role
- Design and development
- Team
- Solo
- Time
- 2026
- Runs on
- Windows 10 and 11
- Stack
- SvelteKit
- Rust
- Python
- PostgreSQL
- OCR
01 / Problem
Prices hide in files
Quotes, orders, scans and phone photos pile up in shared folders. To find what you last paid for an item, you open file after file.
02 / Architecture
How it is built
Clew keeps the original files unchanged and builds on them in four layers: files, documents, an evidence pool and apps such as the price list. People correct the pool, never the app, so their corrections survive rebuilds.
Clew runs on a Windows computer inside the company: a Rust service, its own PostgreSQL and a Python document worker in a sandbox. AI calls go through a control plane on my server and carry only text excerpts. Offsite backups are encrypted with a key that only the company holds.
03 / Features
What it does
- Import Whole folders of spreadsheets, PDFs and images. Scanned pages go through OCR. An agent on the computer adds new files from linked folders.
- Read AI writes one parser for each spreadsheet template. After that, the parser reads every file of that template with no AI call.
- Prices Suppliers, products and materials. The same item from each supplier side by side, with the latest price and its history.
- Review When Clew is unsure, it asks a person. The decision survives rebuilds.
- Export The price list exports to an Excel workbook.
04 / Film