Blog
Building the cross-border network.
Notes from RSA XB on cross-border logistics, AI tooling, and building software-first networks for freight forwarders, consolidators, and 3PLs.
PerspectiveThe weekend demo proved the wrong thing
A mailbox agent before Monday feels like proof you should go AI-first. It isn't. It proves extraction got cheap, not that your org chart should absorb every model release.
Denis Konoplev6 min read
AI & evaluationIf the answer fits in a dropdown, it is not an agent problem
Smarter ops does not mean a model on every decision. Closed sets belong in registries. Judgment belongs where the schema runs out, and here is the test we use before anything calls a model.
Pavan Kumar TV7 min read
Duties & complianceYour rate card can be perfect and the bill still wrong
Most teams treat a matched base rate as proof billing is under control. It isn't. The leakage lives in accessorials, and here is the charge set without the brochure language.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
PerspectiveThe best-funded logistics AI doesn't clear a single entry
Everyone assumes the hot money is building clearance and visibility agents. It isn't. It went to invoices, disputes and spend recovery, and the join on your desk still has no owner.
Denis Konoplev5 min read
AI & evaluationLegal has specialist models. Logistics has one. That's the whole problem
Legal, healthcare and finance each have several specialist AI models with serious money behind them. We went looking for the logistics equivalent. We found one, and it's a research release.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
Data & standardsEvery carrier already speaks the same codes. Your stack still invents new ones
Every IATA carrier speaks the same status codes. There is still no usable open-source library for tracking an air waybill. The reusable public asset here is the standard, not the code — and we got one important detail wrong first.
Pavan Kumar TV6 min read
Rules of origin"Where is it from?" is the most expensive simple question in trade
Origin sounds like the simplest question in trade. It is one of the hardest — and the answer depends on a code you have to get right first.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
Rules of originIndia–UK CETA is in force. Origin is where the money is.
The agreement entered into force today. Tariff lines are the headline; rules of origin are the mechanism. Firms that treat origin as paperwork will leave the benefit on the table.
Denis Konoplev4 min read
AI & evaluationYour shared mailbox isn't an inbox. It's an untyped API
Shared logistics mailboxes carry weight files, invoices, contracts, status reports and system noise in one stream. Classifying them is the easy half. Delivering them somewhere without redeploying is the hard half.
Parvez Alam6 min read
AI & evaluationAdding more context lowered classification accuracy
We assumed better retrieval would mean better classification. We tried dense embeddings, hybrid search, larger candidate sets. Accuracy went down. The bottleneck was somewhere else entirely.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
ClassificationFor tax reasons, the X-Men aren't human
A US court once ruled the X-Men non-human to settle a customs dispute. That absurd-sounding case is exactly why tariff classification is now a 10x cost problem, and why we grounded our AI in CBP rulings instead of fine-tuning a model.
Pavan Kumar TV2 min read
Duties & complianceThe €150 exemption is gone. Per-line accuracy is now the whole game.
From today, low-value consignments into the EU are dutiable. A classification error that used to cost nothing on a €40 parcel now costs on every line, every day, at parcel volumes.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
Data & standardsDigital rates still arrive as Excel with the rules in column G
Every logistics company wants digital rates. Everyone's rates arrive as an Excel file with a unique shape, rules buried in footnotes, and a version that changed last week. Here's why that's genuinely hard rather than just annoying.
Pavan Kumar TV8 min read
PerspectiveLogistics doesn't need an AI TMS
Every incumbent is bolting agents onto the system of record. That's the wrong shape. The work that's actually painful sits outside the TMS, in the inbox and the attachments and the phone calls.
Denis Konoplev5 min read
Data & standardsThe tracking event that matters most is the one that never arrives
Visibility dashboards are built to display events that arrived. The expensive failures are silences — a milestone that was skipped, or a shipment that stopped reporting. Those need a plan to detect.
Pavan Kumar TV6 min read
ClassificationA binding ruling is not a precedent you can borrow
A binding ruling is binding on the authority, for the holder, on those goods. It is not a precedent you can borrow. Understanding the difference is worth a lot of money.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
AI & evaluationThe benchmark we beat was 15.5% contaminated
31 of 200 test cases appear verbatim in the training split with identical labels. We found it while checking our own favourable result. Here's the de-leaked number.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
Data & standardsThe AWB isn't born yet when the pain starts
Most freight systems make the air waybill the parent record. But the AWB doesn't exist for the first leg of a shipment's life, and stops existing before the last. That's a modelling bug with a delivery date attached.
Pavan Kumar TV6 min read
Duties & complianceHMRC sponsored a standard. Half of you can't prove compliance
The BSI published the first formal standard for customs intermediaries on 2 June, sponsored by HMRC. It's voluntary. That is exactly why it will matter.
Denis Konoplev5 min read
AI & evaluationFine-tuning scored 40%. Retrieval beat it without training
A fine-tuned 70B scores 40 percent on the published HTS benchmark. A training-free retrieval pipeline over the same public rulings scored 55. The interesting part isn't the gap. It's why the gap exists.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
ClassificationThe six GRI rules, in order, and the two that actually bite
Classification isn't a search for the closest description. It's a legal procedure with six rules applied in sequence. Almost every real dispute is decided by two of them.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
Data & standardsHalf the world's addresses aren't addresses
In the Gulf, an address is a building name, a community and an emirate. There's no postcode to check it against. Here's the architecture that worked, the instinct that didn't, and what it costs to maintain.
Parvez Alam6 min read
AI & evaluationEveryone's accuracy number is unfalsifiable
Classification vendors advertise 90 to 96 percent. The only peer-reviewed number for the same task is 40. Those aren't contradictory findings. They're different measurements, and nobody says which one they ran.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
PerspectiveCross-border still runs on four inboxes and a hope
Fragmentation is treated as inevitable. It is not. Here is the thesis behind RSA XB — and why the system of record is the wrong place to put the next agent.
Denis Konoplev3 min read
ClassificationSix digits are global. Everything after that is politics
Six digits are global. Everything after that is a sovereign decision. Knowing where the shared part ends is the difference between a code that travels and one that quietly doesn't.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read
PerspectiveAsk who owns the middle mile. You'll get four answers, all wrong
Ask who is responsible for a parcel between the origin warehouse and the destination doorstep and you get four confident answers, none of which agree. That gap is where the cost lives.
Pavan Kumar TV5 min read