Extend

What is Extend?

Extend is a document processing platform for turning PDFs and other complex documents into structured data. It is built to parse, extract, split, validate, and route document content using specialized parsing and workflow tools designed for production pipelines.

The product focuses on documents where layout, reading order, field relationships, and downstream answer quality matter. According to the site, it includes a parsing API, workflow orchestration, review and confidence tooling, and a studio for building and evaluating schemas without relying on manual scripts alone.

Key Features

• Layout-first parsing API: parses difficult documents with a focus on layout and reading order, which matters when the structure of the page affects extracted data.
• Extraction and splitting workflows: supports parsing, extracting, and splitting documents as part of a broader pipeline, not just single-document parsing.
• Confidence scoring and multi-pass review: flags uncertainty before production by checking outputs and surfacing potential errors for review.
• Processing modes: offers low-latency, cost-optimized, and maximum-accuracy modes so teams can choose the tradeoff that fits the workload.
• Composer Agent: uses example documents to identify issues, refine schemas, and improve extraction quality with less manual prompt iteration.
• End-to-end orchestration: supports multi-step document workflows with validation, routing, versioning, and durability.
• Studio and evals: provides a UI for iterating on schemas, running evaluations, and catching regressions without depending only on CLI scripts.
• Self-hosted deployment option: can run on a team’s own infrastructure for sensitive documents.

How to Use Extend

A typical workflow starts by uploading sample documents and defining the fields or schema you want to extract. Teams can then use the parsing API or the Studio interface to test outputs, run evaluations, and refine the schema with Composer if needed.

After that, users can choose a processing mode, add confidence checks or review steps, and connect the parser into a larger workflow that validates and routes document data. For deployment, teams can use the cloud product or self-host it if documents must stay in-house.

Use Cases

• Financial document pipelines: extract structured fields from invoices, statements, or other finance documents where layout and field relationships affect downstream processing.
• Healthcare document processing: handle regulated or high-stakes documents that need validation and careful review before being used in workflows.
• Large-scale bulk extraction: process high volumes of pages with a cost-optimized mode and workflow orchestration for repeatable jobs.
• Real-time document intake: use the low-latency processing mode for applications that need quick turnaround on incoming documents.
• Schema development and evaluation: let domain experts iterate on extraction schemas, run evals, and check for regressions before shipping changes.

FAQ

Does Extend only parse PDFs? The source describes it as a document processing platform for PDFs and other hard documents, but it does not list a complete set of supported file types.

Can it be used in production workflows? Yes. The site emphasizes production-ready document processing, orchestration, versioning, durability, and confidence scoring for review.

Is there a way to review uncertain outputs? Yes. Extend includes confidence scoring and a multi-pass review agent that can flag potential errors before production use.

Can teams run it on their own infrastructure? Yes. The site says Extend offers self-hosted deployment for teams that need to keep sensitive documents in-house.

Does it include tools for testing extraction quality? Yes. The product includes a Studio and evals workflow for iterating on schemas and catching regressions.

Alternatives

• General OCR or document extraction APIs: these tools typically focus on text recognition and basic field extraction, but may offer less workflow orchestration or schema iteration support.
• Custom LLM-based document pipelines: teams can build their own extraction system with foundation models, but that usually requires more engineering for evaluation, confidence handling, and orchestration.
• Traditional IDP platforms: older intelligent document processing systems often emphasize capture and rules-based workflows, while Extend appears centered on model-driven parsing and developer-oriented pipeline building.
• Open-source parsing stacks: these can be flexible and cheaper to start with, but usually require more assembly work for review, evals, and production durability.