Data flow: from receipt to bINT

1.3 Data flow: from receipt to bINT

A receipt's journey runs in two phases.

Phase A — Synchronous (the user is waiting):

1. The client sends the file to the upload endpoint. The server compresses the image, strips EXIF metadata, and stores the result in object storage. A perceptual-hash deduplication index is checked before analysis.
2. For image input, the vision LLM (02 Stage 2) reads the receipt directly from the image in a single call. For PDF input, an OCR layer (02 Stage 1) first extracts the text, which then feeds the same LLM stage.
3. The LLM returns labeled plain text: a block of FIELD: value lines for merchant, date, totals, and payment fields, plus a pipe-separated table for line items. Parsing is defensive — a missing or malformed line leaves that field null and the pipeline continues.
4. The regex/rule layer (02 Stage 3) reconciles totals and validates dates.
5. The merchant resolver (02 Stage 5) attaches a merchant identity.
6. The trust layer (03) classifies the receipt's quality, and the reward is computed within the same request, so the user sees the verified preview and the reward together.

Phase B — Asynchronous (background settlement):

1. A background post-process worker resolves each line item to a canonical product ID (02 Stage 4) using database-side fuzzy matching with an LLM fallback, and folds the receipt's quality classification into the user's cumulative trust score.
2. For Epoch 9 and later, the settlement worker selects post-cutover bINT v2 movements in locked state, applies the published source-bucket and quota rules, and produces an epoch distribution root for the corresponding INT claims. Epoch 8 remains the historical cPoints settlement boundary.
3. An independent verifier recomputes the bINT v2 allocation and confirms the 1:1 bINT-to-INT relationship before a release can fund a distributor. The claimant then signs the claim from their own wallet and pays the Solana transaction fee from their own SOL balance.

The user sees Phase A in seconds. Phase B finalises asynchronously. The off-chain bINT v2 movement ledger remains the source of truth for Epoch 9+ economic credits; cPoints remains a separate background contribution metric. The on-chain root and later claim transfers record the corresponding INT distribution after the release gates are complete.