VFS Travel
Intelligence Engine
VFS Global
360 Labs
September 2026
One trusted answer for every visa corridor
Possible origin and destination corridors. The rules for each are split across VFS pages, mission sites, other operators and PDFs, and they change without notice.
Of claims grounded in source evidence (510 of 512) in a working prototype across 31 corridors. 280 visa types tagged. Zero model calls when answering.
To take the prototype to VFS’s 1,826 published corridors, then expand outward. $26,000 build. Running the VFS estate costs about $90 a year in infrastructure.
One visa question, many sources
Ownership is not obvious
In 4 of the 31 corridors we examined, the service is run by someone other than VFS. Finding the right source starts with knowing who is responsible.
The same thing has many names
We found 212 distinct visa-type names across sources. The same visa is described differently by every publisher.
Sources change quietly
We found 95 operational notices. Any one of them can change an answer without the answer changing with it.
Finding the information once is easy. The hard part is knowing which source is authoritative, reading it correctly, and keeping the answer true.
At scale, it becomes an engineering problem
corridors
200 countries × 199 destinations
pages to process
Planning assumption: 10 per corridor
diplomatic posts
Upper bound of the source universe
1 Discover
Find the right sources for each corridor.
2 Access
Reach static pages, dynamic pages, APIs and PDFs.
3 Understand
Turn different formats into one record.
4 Verify
Prove every claim against its source.
5 Monitor
Detect the changes that matter.
6 Review
Put people where judgement is needed.
The prototype works on real sources
of claims grounded in source evidence
510 of 512 claims were supported by the fetched source. The other 2 were rejected automatically.
visa types tagged by purpose
model calls when answering. Answers are read from the knowledge base.
Discover
Find and validate the relevant sources for each corridor.
Harmonise
Turn different page and document structures into one usable record.
Ground
Tie every claim to the exact source text that supports it.
Materialise
Store the approved result, ready to serve.
This proves technical feasibility on a limited set of corridors. Production-scale validation and wider coverage come next.
Try the working prototype
Live prototype
The sandbox could not be loaded here. It may be offline, or you may have no network connection.
Open chancery.360labs.tech/sandboxHow the system works
VFS websites
Country pages, visa information
Government sources
Ministries, embassies, consulates
Operators
Visa operators, airlines, partners
Documents
PDFs, rules, notices and forms
Discovery loop
Find, fetch, validate and qualify new sources, then add them to the source registry.
Verified knowledge base
Extracted, harmonised and grounded facts, stored as a graph with source, authority and fetch time.
Monitoring loop
Re-check approved sources, detect material change, re-extract and send it for human review.
Travellers
Clear answers, with sources
VFS teams
Across internal channels
Partners
Through an API
VFS owns the system, the knowledge base and every review decision. It becomes a proprietary asset that improves with each update.
Finding and reaching the right sources
Find
Search the VFS estate, mission sites, visa operators and immigration sites.
Reach
Fetch and inspect HTML pages, APIs, PDFs and dynamic pages.
Validate
Right page, relevant, accessible, not a duplicate, not an error page.
Qualify
Check authority, relevance to the corridor, coverage and purpose.
Register
Store URL, authority tier, purpose, fetch method and last check.
Direct HTTP
Static pages and APIs. Fast, lightweight, low cost.
Browser rendering
JavaScript-heavy pages, rendered as a user sees them.
Special access
Blocked or location-sensitive sources: stealth browser, residential or in-country access.
Every fetch is validated
A successful response is not enough. We confirm the content is correct, relevant, not blocked and not an empty placeholder.
From raw pages to verified facts
Parse and harmonise
Structured content is mapped with deterministic rules. Only unstructured content goes to a model, and its output is validated against a fixed schema.
Only the sources a question needs are processed, and content is compressed first. One extraction serves business, tourism and transit alike.
Ground every claim
An independent verifier checks each claim against the text the system actually fetched.
Seafarer Visa is required to enter.Keep
Matching text found on vfs.global
Digital Nomad Visa is available.Drop
No supporting text in any source
Store as a graph
Countries, visa types, requirements, validity and sources are linked, not filed as separate documents.
Every fact carries its authority: mission and government for policy, VFS and operators for application steps, reference sources only where the primary source is silent.
Keeping every answer current
Check
Daily or weekly per source, using conditional requests so unchanged pages are not downloaded again.
Detect
Compare content hash, timestamp and meaning against the last version.
No change
Keep the existing record. Nothing else runs.
Cosmetic
Log it. No re-extraction, no review.
Material
Re-extract, send for human review, then update the record.
Defined
Each source type has a freshness target: daily for government and operator pages, longer for stable sources.
Traceable
Every fact carries its fetch time.
VFS Global Switzerland · checked 16 Sep 2026, 03:04 IST
Auditable
Material changes are stored with the difference.
“until 30 June” → “until 31 July”
Recorded 11:20 · reviewed 13:45 · published 14:10
Cost stays low by design
less data to process
8.97M tokens of raw source pages reduced to 6,718 tokens of relevant, structured content before any model sees it.
model calls when answering
estimated running cost a month, depending on re-check frequency
Deterministic rules
The default: validation, compression and serving, wherever the problem is well-defined.
Small models
SLMs and VLMs for bounded extraction and understanding tasks.
Domain models
Regulatory, legal and multilingual content.
Frontier models
Only for ambiguous cases that need deeper reasoning.
Cost figures are estimates from current benchmarks and will be refined as measured rates mature.
Economics at scale
| Scenario | Corridors | Source mix | Per year (USD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VFS estate only | 1,826 | 100% VFS | ~$90 | VFS content API. No model calls. |
| Priority expansion | 5,000 | 30% VFS, 70% external | ~$3,900 | High-value countries and services. |
| Broader coverage | 10,000 | 20% VFS, 80% external | ~$7,900 | More countries and source types. |
| Global scale | 39,800 | 5% VFS, 95% external | ~$32,300 | The full corridor universe. |
Build once
Source discovery, initial fetch and extraction, knowledge base and pipelines, environment, security and monitoring. Optional private GPU cluster: about US$11,000 for 2 nodes.
Run continuously
Monitoring and re-fetching, model use for changed content only, egress where needed, storage and serving, human review. Indicative: US$550 to 1,450 a month.
Illustrative estimates from current benchmarks; actual cost depends on source mix, content complexity and usage. Engineering is priced separately in the engagement options.
VFS owns the intelligence
Served by VFS
The knowledge base is served from VFS infrastructure, for example Cloudflare.
No model at request time
Answering is a database read, not model inference.
Data residency
Can be hosted in-region where required.
Together AI
Open-weight models, serverless, already used by VFS. No commitment.
AWS Bedrock, Mumbai
Inside VFS’s AWS environment, when volume or data residency calls for it.
Dedicated GPU
Only at sustained high use, around 5M tokens an hour.
Own hardware
Possible, but not the default for a bursty workload like this.
From prototype to the VFS estate
Prototype validated
End-to-end pipeline proven across diverse countries and source types.
VFS estate integrated
235 origins and 1,446 visa corridors, through the content API.
Priority expansion
High-value countries and services from external sources.
Global coverage
The full corridor universe, over time.
VFS estate: direct and cheap
The content API gives structured access to VFS-published content. No browser rendering, no residential egress, no model calls for retrieval or change checks.
Everything else: discovery and crawler
Government, mission and other operator sources. Both paths feed the same harmonisation, grounding, monitoring and knowledge base.
Who is building it: 360 Labs
Retail F&B
One of India’s largest retail F&B companies
Location-aware crawler. Mapped every customer pin code to the right dark store, selected inventory that could actually serve it, and validated prices against Instamart.
Location → source → availability → validation
DSV
World’s largest logistics company
Fineasy, billing and documents. Extracts TMS and POD details with OCR, validates them, calculates GST, routes approvals and generates self-invoicing PDFs. SAP integration is the latest extension.
Documents → extraction → validation → workflow
Pine Labs
Merchant commerce and fintech platform
Merchant risk and retention. Combines signals across 2M+ merchant touchpoints to spot disengagement early, explain what changed and trigger targeted interventions.
Signals → change detection → explanation → action
Our own research
Research that feeds our engineering
SLM360 small models that run on devices. Aura a programming language and compiler. Omni systems for data understanding and forecasting.
Engagement and next steps
| Option 1 · Build and handover | Option 2 · Build and maintain | |
|---|---|---|
| Build | $26,000 | $26,000 |
| Team and timeline | AI-native engineering lead, AI-native PM and 2 full-stack AI engineers. 2 months. | Same team and timeline. |
| After the build | Structured handover and knowledge transfer to your team. | $2,500 a month for 2 full-stack AI engineers: maintenance, updates and continuous improvement. |
1 Scoping call
Confirm priorities, success criteria and requirements.
2 Access
Key stakeholders, systems and documentation.
3 Kick-off
Start the delivery pod and detailed design.
4 Deliver
Build in 2 months, then handover or maintenance.