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Customs Agent

The Domain Execution Agent behind the Customs & Global Trade Operations add-on — a jurisdiction-aware specialist for broker authorization, Incoterms, and tariff-classification paperwork, plus eleven dedicated reasoning capabilities covering trade compliance, declarations, clearance, freight, and duty across the add-on's screens.

What Is the Customs Agent?

Customs Agent is the specialist behind every AI-calling and jurisdiction-aware screen in the Customs & Global Trade Operations add-on. It combines two distinct kinds of expertise:

  • Jurisdiction-aware paperwork — given a country and a document type, it prepares the correct broker-authorization, Incoterms-rule, or tariff-classification form for that jurisdiction (Turkey's GTİP tariff system, the US HTS system, or a generic fallback for any other country), the same way a customs broker would reach for the right country-specific form.
  • Eleven dedicated reasoning capabilities, one per screen in the add-on, each reviewing its own kind of trade document and returning a structured judgment — a risk flag, a discrepancy, a recommendation — grounded in the tenant's own trade records.

In one sentence

Customs Agent is where every trade-compliance judgment call in Customs & Global Trade Operations actually happens — it first finds the relevant sanction rules, declarations, or freight records already on file, then reasons over them the way a customs specialist would.

How the Agent Builds Its Context

Every screen in Customs & Global Trade Operations follows the same two-step approach, and Customs Agent always provides the second step:

Step 1 — Find the relevant records Step 2 — Customs Agent reasons over them
StepWhat it does
Step 1Searches the tenant's own live records — sanction rules, declarations, clearance records, freight benchmarks — for the ones relevant to the document being reviewed, entirely on the user's own device.
Step 2Takes the most relevant matches and reasons over them — risk scoring, overcharge/overpayment detection, discrepancy diagnosis, and more — producing the structured finding the screen displays.

The candidate pool is always the tenant's own ledger

Customs Agent ranks against the tenant's own live records rather than an external regulation archive — there is no separate government sanctions list or tariff schedule wired in yet. "Search Similar Rules" on the Trade Compliance screen, for instance, ranks the sanction rules already on file for that tenant.

Part 1 — Jurisdiction-Specific Trade Paperwork

Given a country code and a document type, Customs Agent prepares the matching form for that jurisdiction:

JurisdictionTariff systemNotes
TurkeyGTİP — 12-digit tariff codeTSE/CE/Tareks permit fields included
United StatesHTS — 10-digit tariff codeFDA/EPA/FCC permit fields included
Any other countryGeneric fallback fieldsNever fails to return a usable form, even for an unmapped jurisdiction

Each document type carries its own field set:

Broker Authorization

Customs registration number, Power of Attorney reference and expiry date, digital signature certificate number, and assigned customs offices — powers the Customs Brokers & Agencies screen's authorization modal.

Incoterms Rules

Incoterm code, risk transfer point, buyer freight-cost share, buyer risk share, and (Turkey only) a VAT exemption code — powers the Incoterms & Delivery Rules screen.

Tariff Classification

HS/GTİP or HTS code, product description, duty rate, excise rate (Turkey only), and required permits/certifications — powers the HS Code Catalog screen.

Part 2 — Eleven Trade Reasoning Capabilities

Every reasoning screen in Customs & Global Trade Operations is backed by its own dedicated capability, each grounded in the same kind of trade documents a customs specialist reviews every day:

Screen it powersWhat it computes
Trade Compliance & SanctionsDenied-party match, dual-use license requirement, military-use risk vector, and required documentation for a proposed export/shipment.
Export DeclarationsMissing invoice details, dual-use export flag, and currency valuation variance note for an outbound filing.
Import DeclarationsUndervaluation risk warning, reference price gap, and a safety-inspection hold recommendation.
Clearance StatusRouting motive, predicted additional delay, and whether a physical inspection is likely.
Certificates & Origin DocsRegional Value Content threshold check, non-originating material risk, and chamber-endorsement verification for a preferential origin document.
Freight Rate BenchmarkCarrier overcharge detection, spot-rate arbitrage opportunity, and an estimated price leakage amount for a shipping lane.
Global Shipment TrackingPredicted arrival variance, free-time expiration urgency, and a recommended container gate-out priority.
Carrier & Forwarder HubSLA contract-breach detection, booking allocation drop detection, and a hazardous-cargo handling accuracy estimate for a logistics provider.
Landed Cost CalculatorDuty-spike detection, misallocated terminal-charge flag, and a sanity-check recalculated per-unit landed cost.
Customs Duty & Tariff LedgerOverpayment detection, drawback (refund) eligibility, miscalculated tariff-bracket flag, and an estimated refund amount.
Doc Matcher & LinterNet weight gap, HS code mismatch, and currency discrepancy flags across a shipment's paired documents.

Why eleven separate capabilities instead of one general one?

A sanctions-screening judgment and a duty-drawback judgment reason about completely different things and produce a different kind of finding. Keeping them separate means a refinement to one screen's judgment can never silently affect another's — the same discipline a specialist applies by keeping distinct checklists for distinct kinds of review.

Where the Customs Agent Fits

Customs Agent has no ledger of its own — every screen's records (sanction rules, declarations, clearance records, freight benchmarks, duty entries) live in the add-on's own tenant-scoped store. Customs Agent's job is strictly the reasoning step: given the context a screen already assembled, produce a structured judgment and hand it back to the person responsible for that record.

A reasoning layer, not a data layer

Customs Agent never reads or writes a tenant's stored records directly — it receives exactly the context the calling screen assembled, reasons over it, and returns a result. Persisting that result back into the screen's own ledger, and any follow-up action a user takes on it, is the calling screen's own responsibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Customs Agent specific to the Customs & Global Trade Operations add-on?
Today, yes — all eleven reasoning capabilities and all three document types exist to serve that add-on's screens specifically. The same jurisdiction-aware paperwork pattern and specialist-review pattern are the ones Patent Agent and Compliance Agent already use elsewhere in TotalApp.
Does Customs Agent make a final compliance decision on its own?
No. Every finding — a sanctions match, an undervaluation warning, a duty-drawback estimate — is handed back to the person responsible for that shipment or filing for review. The agent narrows down what needs attention; it does not sign off on a filing by itself.
What happens if the agent finds no relevant records for a document?
Each screen's search filters out low-relevance matches before reasoning begins. If nothing clears that bar, the agent still returns a result — its judgment simply notes that no matching reference was found, rather than erroring out.
How would a new jurisdiction, like a hypothetical China tariff system, get added to Part 1?
By adding that jurisdiction's own paperwork rules to the agent's jurisdiction handling. No screen using the agent needs to change — they already pass whichever country the user's jurisdiction picker resolves to.