Skip to content

Tutorial: from a PDF to a reviewed table

This walkthrough continues the Quickstart. It assumes project pump-study in environment study, canvas pump-selection, an ingested PDF, and an agent connected to the same environment.

Open the correct project

anchor use study pump-study
anchor serve --env study --project pump-study

Keep the server running and open its printed URL. If it is already running for this project, use that instance. anchor serve-info lists running servers.

Ask the agent to call list_projects, then open_project("pump-study") or pass project="pump-study" on project-scoped calls. A canvas slug alone does not identify its project.

Build a useful table

Tell the agent what you need and which source to use:

On canvas pump-selection in project pump-study, make one specification table from the pump datasheet. Include operating limits, units, and the relevant product variant. Each row must link to the source page and the most precise available locator. Do not infer unstated values.

With gold regions, the agent can search regions and retrieve their reconstructed content. With local-only extraction, it can inspect page text and available layout geometry. Semantic gold-region search is unavailable without gold regions and embeddings. Reading through an agent exposes that content to its configured model, even if the ANCHOR environment uses local.

An agent can add or update the table through MCP. The browser reads the same persisted canvas and refreshes through server-sent events.

Check the evidence

Click the source anchor beside a row. Inspect the PDF in the source dock:

  1. Check that the value belongs to the right parameter and product variant.
  2. Check the units and any operating conditions or footnotes.
  3. If the reference opens a whole page, locate the value yourself. Selecting text can pin a more precise box to the row.
  4. Correct the table or ask the agent to revise it when the claim is wrong.

Rows distinguish Verified, Unverified, Stale, and No evidence. Verified means ANCHOR matched the row's key and value to stored validated evidence. It is not an engineering approval. A substantive edit can make a previously verified row stale while keeping its source link. Use the row's Check action to request revalidation against the current stored evidence. See Claim and evidence for the matching limits.

Make a request on the canvas

Use the mark up tool on the left rail, or press i while you are not typing. Mark the objects or rows you mean and write a specific request, for example:

Check the units in these rows and add the cited operating conditions.

Click send to agent. The remark stays on the board with its thread. It becomes a durable project-level intent that your agent can retrieve. Ask the agent to check pending intents for pump-study if it is not already doing so. ANCHOR does not run an agent or guarantee that your client continuously polls.

An empty shape or a node marked as a placeholder identifies a possible target; it does not, by itself, submit a request. A valid submitted ask needs text or meaningful drawing content.

Review the response

The agent may ask a question in the remark thread. Answer it there so the clarification stays attached to the request.

For a suggested canvas change, inspect the preview and choose approve or decline. You can send further marks or text as feedback. Applied small changes may offer keep and revert controls in the same thread. These controls concern that change; they are not a general canvas undo history.

Agent-created nodes can also use the canvas review mode and proposal sets. Those group added elements for review and are separate from intent-thread suggestions. The resulting table remains editable by you.

For the distinction between plan messages, previews, and saved nodes, see Agent plans and canvas nodes.

Reuse the project

In a second terminal:

anchor use study pump-study
anchor list
anchor canvas list
anchor canvas state pump-selection
anchor intents

The corpus belongs to the project, so one document can support several canvases. Stop the server with Ctrl+C; restart it with the same environment and project to continue. Copy the whole project folder, including anchor.toml and .anchor_data/, for a filesystem backup. An environment's credentials are separate from the project.

Optional: explore the demo canvas

anchor demo seeds a canvas called demo with six placeholder spec nodes and starts a server. It can ingest an optional local sample PDF if one is available; the public package does not ship a vendor datasheet. Check which project the command resolves before using it for real work. The demo's empty nodes still need an explicit request before an agent fills them.

Next steps