Volterra Knowledge Engine

The data backbone powering Volterra's AI tools -- ingesting documents from 5 sources, generating embeddings, and enforcing GDPR compliance so every other platform component can search company knowledge.

The Problem

Operational knowledge was scattered across five systems -- Notion wikis, SharePoint drives, HubSpot tickets, Slack threads, and local file shares. Support agents re-answered questions that had been solved months earlier. Product and leadership had no way to search across sources. And with EU-based customers, any AI tool touching this data needed automatic PII detection and GDPR-compliant handling.

What This Does

• Multi-source ingestion -- Pulls documents from Notion, SharePoint, HubSpot, Slack, and local files through a unified processing pipeline with format-specific parsers (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, CSV, HTML, email)

• Automatic PII detection and GDPR compliance -- Flags or redacts personal data before embedding, classifies document sensitivity, enforces access levels

• 27 MCP tools for AI agents -- Exposes the entire knowledge base via Model Context Protocol so downstream apps (Semantic Platform, website AI chat) can query it programmatically

Impact

Part of the Volterra Platform

Knowledge Engine is the foundation layer. It generates the embeddings that power the Semantic Platform's 5 GPT apps, feeds the website AI chat via n8n, and provides ticket data for Call Intelligence analysis.

Architecture

graph TB
    CLI[CLI Commands] -->|Ingest| DP[Document Processor]
    DP -->|Parse| Parsers[Format Parsers]
    DP -->|Embed| OAI[OpenAI API]
    DP -->|Store| DB[(PostgreSQL + pgvector)]
    DP -->|Compliance| PII[PII Detector]

    subgraph Sources
        FS[Local Files]
        NO[Notion API]
        SP[SharePoint]
        HS[HubSpot]
        SL[Slack Export]
    end

    Sources -->|Fetch| DP

    subgraph EF[Edge Functions]
        HTS[HubSpot Ticket Sync]
        NPS[Notion Pages Sync]
        SCS[Slack Channel Sync]
        MCP[MCP Server]
    end

    Cron[pg_cron] -->|Scheduled| EF
    EF -->|Read/Write| DB

Key Features

• Multi-source ingestion — Local files, Notion, SharePoint, HubSpot, Slack with unified processing pipeline

• Format support — PDF, DOCX, XLSX, CSV, HTML, email, plain text with extensible parser architecture

• pgvector embeddings — OpenAI text-embedding-3-small (1536d) with HNSW indexes for semantic search

• GDPR compliance — Automatic PII detection, sensitivity classification, and access level enforcement

• Automated sync — pg_cron + Edge Functions for daily data ingestion from Notion, HubSpot, Slack

• MCP server — Read-only Model Context Protocol server exposing 27 tools for AI agent access

• n8n integration — Workflow management CLI for automating ingestion pipelines

Tech Stack

Project Structure

src/
├── core/
│   ├── document-processor.ts    # Main orchestration (451 lines)
│   ├── embedding-service.ts     # OpenAI embedding generation
│   └── metadata-inference.ts    # Auto-classification
├── parsers/                     # Format-specific text extraction
│   ├── pdf-parser.ts
│   ├── docx-parser.ts
│   ├── xlsx-parser.ts
│   ├── wod-parser.ts            # Structured deal data extraction
│   └── ...
├── sources/                     # Data source connectors
│   ├── notion-source.ts
│   ├── sharepoint-source.ts
│   ├── hubspot-source.ts
│   └── slack-source.ts
├── compliance/
│   ├── pii-detector.ts          # PII pattern detection
│   └── gdpr-handler.ts          # Sensitivity classification
├── services/
│   ├── n8n-api-client.ts        # n8n REST API client
│   └── vision-service.ts        # GPT-4o image analysis
└── scripts/                     # CLI entry points
supabase/
├── functions/                   # Edge Functions (sync, MCP)
└── migrations/                  # PostgreSQL schema migrations

Getting Started

1. Install dependencies:

   npm install

2. Configure environment:

   cp .env.example .env

3. Set up database (run migrations in Supabase SQL Editor):

   CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector;
   -- Then apply migration files in chronological order

4. Ingest documents:

   # Local files
   npm run ingest:file ./documents/
   
   # From Notion
   npm run ingest:notion
   
   # From HubSpot
   npm run ingest:hubspot
   
   # Slack export
   npm run ingest:slack -- --export-path /path/to/export

GDPR Compliance

The system automatically detects PII (emails, phone numbers, SSNs, names) and classifies document sensitivity:

Documents with detected PII are automatically upgraded to restricted or confidential access levels.

Key Design Decisions

• Extensible parser architecture — Base class pattern makes adding new format parsers trivial

• Source-agnostic processing — All sources normalize to the same document interface before embedding

• HNSW over IVFFlat — Better recall accuracy for semantic search at slightly higher index build cost

• pg_cron for sync — Database-native scheduling avoids external cron services

• MCP server — Exposes knowledge base to AI agents via standardized protocol

Built By

Adrian Marten — GitHub