Playbook: Scan to Task

Objective

Convert physical documents (mail, receipts) into actionable tasks in the task manager.

Pre-requisites

• OCRmyPDF
• Paperless-ngx
• Vikunja
• n8n

Step-by-Step Flow

1. Ingestion: Physical scan via mobile app or scanner reaches the Nextcloud/Scans folder.
2. Processing: Syncthing moves the file to the Paperless consumption directory.
3. Understanding: Paperless performs OCR and classifies the document. If it detects a keyword like "Invoice" or "Due", it adds the tag action-required.
4. Trigger: n8n monitors Paperless via webhook for the action-required tag.
5. Reasoning: n8n sends the OCR text to the LLM using the Extraction and Classification Prompt.
6. Action: n8n creates a task in Vikunja with a title, description, and due date.
7. Linking: The Vikunja task description includes a direct link to the Paperless document.

Data Contract

Field	Type	Format	Notes
task_title	String	Plain Text	Max 100 chars
due_date	Date	YYYY-MM-DD	Optional
paperless_link	URL	String	Internal ID

Failure Modes & Recovery

• OCR Failure: Text is garbled or unreadable.
  • Recovery: Document is tagged low-confidence in Paperless; manual review required.
• Task Duplicate:
  • Recovery: n8n checks Vikunja for existing tasks with similar names/dates before creating.

Variants

• Manual Intake: User manually uploads a PDF to Paperless and applies the tag.
• Email Forward: User forwards an email to the intake address.