Agriculture AI agent · Grain handling
Grain-Elevator Back-Office AI Agent (Tickets & Settlements)
Match scale tickets to the producer and contract, apply the posted schedule, do the shrink and discount arithmetic, and draft the settlement — a person approves every payment and receipt.
- Typical delivery
- 4–6 weeks
- Deployment
- Your stack
- Settlement
- Your sign-off
- After launch
- Agent Care
What this agent does
Does the paperwork, not the payment
In
- 01
Take the scale tickets as they come off the pit — inbound, outbound and transfer, with weights and grade factors.
- 02
Take the contracts, the open-storage and receipt records, and the grade and discount schedule posted for that day.
Reason
- 03
Match each ticket to one producer, one commodity and one contract, and leave the ones that match nothing alone.
- 04
Work the shrink, moisture and discount arithmetic on the schedule version in force when the load was weighed.
- 05
Net the position — bushels in, out, on open storage and under receipt — against what the last measurement found.
Decide
- 06
Separate what the records settle from what they do not, and mark each figure as weighed, graded or calculated.
- 07
Hold anything that would move a producer's grain, price or balance until that producer and your office have said so.
Out
- 08
Draft the settlement, the producer statement and the position report with every ticket, schedule and date behind them.
- 09
Re-check what moved after the draft — late tickets, corrected grades, transfers, cancelled receipts — and flag it.
Product statement
The agent matches, calculates and packages. Every settlement, every payment and every warehouse receipt is approved by a person before it stands.
Example workflow
One scale ticket, end to end
- 1Ticket receivedScale ticket from the pit, the probe stand or the outbound loadout
- 2Producer and contract matchedAgainst the names on the ticket, the delivery record and every open contract for that commodity
- 3Grade and schedule appliedMoisture, test weight, damage and foreign material against the schedule posted on the weigh date
- 4Arithmetic drafted and checkedShrink, drying, storage, discounts and deductions, each its own line, each recomputed a second way
No human action required
Stages 1 to 4 run without a person in the loop — the matching and the arithmetic finish before anyone is asked to sign anything. A ticket that matches nothing stops there.
Reaches your office to sign — nothing is written first.
Held with the ticket — unsettled and unpaid.
Grain accountant or manager
Reads the ticket, the contract, the schedule version and the arithmetic, then approves, corrects or holds it.
Approve · Correct · Hold
Approved — handed back
- 6Settlement packagedWritten to the grain system only where an approval has already been recorded against it
- 7Outcome evaluatedMatch accuracy, arithmetic checks, schedule version, position drift and corrections by producer
Corrections
Every figure your office changes is counted in the evaluation.
What should not run autonomously
Human approval stays in control
Outside the boundary — human approval required
8 items
- Approving a settlement or releasing a payment.
- Issuing, transferring or cancelling a warehouse receipt.
- Committing a ticket to a contract or a producer.
- Converting open storage into a sale or a price.
Automation boundary
Agent acts unaided
- ✓Match each ticket to a producer, a commodity and a contract, and propose it.
- ✓Calculate shrink, drying, storage and discounts on the schedule posted that day.
- ✓Net the position from tickets, transfers, receipts and the last measurement.
- ✓Package the settlement with every figure behind it, and hold what does not match.
Write actions run only inside the approval boundaries agreed in implementation. Paying a producer is not one of them.
- Settling a grade dispute or overriding a grade.
- Changing the posted grade or discount schedule.
- Adjusting inventory to close a position difference.
- Changing the match rules, tolerances or thresholds.
Example output
One ticket, annotated
Everything the agent proposes is attached to the ticket and the contract it was matched against.
Settlement output · single inbound load
Illustrative example- Ticket
- Inbound corn, one load
- Delivered by
- Hauler, two producers named
- Weighed
- 17.4% moisture
- Proposed match
- Two open contracts, neither exact
- Confidence
- 88%
- Settlement
- Drafted, unapproved, unpaid
As received
The ticket as the scale printed it and the names it carries — nothing on this side is recalculated or tidied up.
Evidence used
- Ticket and weigh date
- Schedule posted that day
- Open contract balances
Why it stopped here
Two contracts are open for this commodity and the ticket names two producers.
What the score decides
Confidence decides how hard your office checks the match, not whether a producer is paid.
Action
ApproveCorrectHoldValue
Where AI adds value
The same four claims, placed at the point in the workflow where each one applies.
Where the value lands
Value 01 – 04
Every scale ticket
Inbound, outbound and transfer
Apply the schedule that was posted
Use the grade and discount schedule, the storage and drying charges and the contract terms in force on the weigh date.
Keep settlement level with the pit
Matching and arithmetic keep up as the loads come in, so what is still on the counter at the end of harvest is what genuinely did not match.
Get the exceptions seen the same day
A ticket that matches nothing, a split that needs the producer's instruction and a figure that fails its check reach your office while the driver is still in the yard.
Build an evidence trail
Retain the ticket, the contract applied, the schedule version, the arithmetic, the approval and the correction — on both paths.
Integrations
Typical integrations
Five system groups connect to the same agent. Which of them are in scope is decided in discovery.
Grain accounting
- AGRIS
- AgVantage
- Cultura
- Bushel
- grain-accounting APIs
Scales & probe stand
- Scale indicators
- ticket printers
- Moisture meters
- grading equipment
Contracts & storage
- Contract records
- open storage
- Warehouse receipts
- EWR providers
Agent
Grain-elevator back office
- Matches tickets
- Calculates settlements
- Holds exceptions
Producer payments
- Producer statements
- settlement drafts
- ACH and cheque runs
- deduction records
Observability & evaluation
- OpenTelemetry
- Langfuse
- Supported monitoring/evaluation sources
Integration availability depends on the client's existing systems and API access.
Agent controls
Six layers between the model and the settlement
Each control wraps the one inside it. A ticket clears every layer before a settlement is drafted, and the signature sits outside all six.
L6 · Outermost — last line of defence
Inward → L1 · closest to the model
- L1 – L2
- Decide whether the figures may stand
- L3
- Decides which schedule the load is priced on
- L4 – L5
- Keep the signature with a person and the trail intact
- L6
- Pulls automation back when signals degrade
How Nestack evaluates it
Evaluate the whole ticket-to-settlement path — not only the final figure.
Coverage runs the whole depth of the workflow, and every layer is cut by slice.
Surface — the settlement your office opens
- E1Final-output evaluationWas the settlement right, line by line, on an independent recalculation?
- E2Step-level evaluationWas the ticket matched to the right producer, commodity and contract?
- E3Schedule-version checkWas the schedule in force on the weigh date the one that was applied?
- E4Tool evaluationDid it read and write the correct ticket, contract and storage record?
- E5Slice evaluationHow does accuracy change across producers, commodities and periods?
- E6Business outcomeHow much was corrected, re-settled, or found short against the bins?
Floor — the money a producer is actually paid
Failure modes
Where each failure originates in the agent
Seven failure modes plotted against the five stages of the agent lifecycle.
Agent lifecycle
Direction of processing →
01 · Ticket intake
1 mode
- GE-01
Ticket on the wrong producer
A hauled or split load settles to one name.
Stage gathers
Weights, grade factors, names and the weigh date
02 · Matching
2 modes
- GE-02
Wrong contract applied
A settlement drafted on bushels already fully applied.
- GE-03
Open storage priced unasked
Stored grain converted to a sale with no instruction.
Stage applies
The producer, the commodity and the open contract
03 · Calculation
1 mode
- GE-04
Shrink or moisture arithmetic wrong
Net bushels and the producer's payment are both wrong.
Stage computes
Shrink, moisture, discounts, storage and drying
04 · Draft / write
2 modes
- GE-05
Receipt issued or cancelled wrongly
A receipt stands against grain that is not there.
- GE-06
Position drifts from the bin
Missed tickets or transfers leave the book overstated.
Stage packages
The settlement your office reads before signing
05 · Change / Version
1 mode
- GE-07
Superseded schedule applied
Last week's discounts priced against this week's load.
Stage tracks
Schedule, contract-rule and configuration changes
- Sev-1 · a producer's money moves unasked
- Sev-2 · the settlement figure is wrong
- Sev-3 · the book drifts from the bins
Affected slices
The errors do not spread evenly across the driveway
A few kinds of load carry most of the corrections — split tickets, stored bushels, the days the pit never stops — and they are usually the ones nobody reconciles closely. Nestack reports performance by slice, not only in total.
Slice performance — reported separately, not only in aggregate
Illustrative example| Slice | Failure rate | Lift | Lift vs. threshold | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Split and hauled tickets | 7.9% | 3.6× | Review | |
| Harvest-peak delivery days | 6.0% | 2.7× | Review | |
| Open-storage and price-later | 4.0% | 1.8× | Watch | |
| Routine single-contract loads | 2.0% | 0.9× | Normal |
Bar: settlement-discrepancy rate lift vs. routine-load baseline · scale 0–4.0× · tick marks the 2.0× threshold
2 of 4 slices over threshold
Evidence-linked improvement
A settlement is corrected in the producer's account, not in the model
Repaying one producer closes that ticket and nothing else. The rule, the schedule handling or the match that produced it is what gets changed and re-tested.
Improvement cycle · five stages
Switchback — the path turns at Improve and returns at Learn
- 01
Detect
Corrections, re-settlements and position drift show up producer by producer.
- 02
Diagnose
The difference is located in the match, the schedule version, the arithmetic or the source record.
- 03
Improve
Your office re-approves the corrected rule, and the version it takes effect from is written down.
- 04
Verify
Held-out tickets are re-settled and the figures compared with what your office paid.
- 05
Learn
The ticket is re-settled on every release, and the settlement runbook records the rule.
Learn → Detect
The return edge. Telling the producer and putting the money right is your office's job — the agent's part is that the next load is not wrong the same way.
Typical build scope
Twelve workstreams across six weeks
The build scope read against the delivery timeline. Week structure follows the six-week plan — discovery, ticket data, matching and arithmetic, evaluation, integration, then production validation and handover.
Workstream
Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6
- 01Workflow discovery and automation-boundary definition.Week 1
- 02Ticket, contract and storage sources.Week 1, Week 2
- 03Grade and discount schedule versioning.Week 1, Week 2
- 04Scale-ticket ingestion and normalisation.Week 2
- 05Producer, commodity and contract matching.Week 2, Week 3
- 06Shrink, discount and settlement arithmetic.Week 3
- 07Second-pass recalculation and tolerances.Week 3, Week 4
- 08Approval workflow for settlements.Week 4
- 09Evaluation suite and regression tickets.Week 4, Week 5
- 10Position against measured inventory.Week 5
- 11Grain-accounting and payment integration.Week 5, Week 6
- 12Observability, deployment and Agent Care handover.Week 6
12 workstreams · 6 weeks · bar shows the weeks a workstream is active — several run in parallel
Final scope and sequence confirmed in discovery
Engagement tiers
What each tier includes
Rows are the capabilities named in each tier's scope. Higher tiers include everything below them.
| Capability✓ in scope · — not at this tier | PilotOne commodity, one location | ProductionProduction grain-system integration | AdvancedMulti-location / multi-commodity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduced at Pilot | |||
| Ticket-to-contract matching | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Shrink and discount calculation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Settlement drafts for approval | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Baseline evaluation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Introduced at Production | |||
| Your posted schedules and versioning | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Producer statements prepared for review | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Approval workflow and audit trail | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Observability and evaluation | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Introduced at Advanced | |||
| Position reconciliation against measurement | — | — | ✓ |
| Multi-location and multi-commodity books | — | — | ✓ |
| Enterprise controls and segregation of duties | — | — | ✓ |
| Build price | From $5,000 | From $8,000 | Custom quote |
- Final build price
- Confirmed after discovery based on locations, commodities, grain-system and payment integrations, ticket volume, approval controls and deployment requirements.
- Separate from build
- Build pricing is separate from recurring Agent Care, which covers managed monitoring, evaluations, incidents and verified improvements after launch.
What we need from you
What you bring, and what we build with it
Each input maps to a piece of build scope and a week in the delivery timeline.
You bring
We build with it
01Your posted grade and discount schedules, with the dates they applied
→Schedule versioning and the rule that picks a load's schedule
Week 102A season of scale tickets, including the ones that had to be redone
→Ticket ingestion, normalisation and the matching baseline
Week 203Contract, open-storage and warehouse-receipt records
→Producer, commodity and contract matching
Week 304How you calculate shrink, drying and storage charges today
→Settlement arithmetic and the second-pass recalculation
Week 305Who may approve a settlement, a payment and a receipt
→Approval workflow, audit trail and the automation boundary
Week 406Your last position reconciliation and the bin measurements behind it
→Position reconciliation and the drift check against the book
Week 507Access to the grain accounting and payment systems
→Source assessment, then grain-system and payment integration
Weeks 5–6
Nothing else is required
Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover are ours.
Delivery timeline
Four phases across six weeks
Phases are drawn over the weeks they actually occupy. Week 5 carries both the position reconciliation and the first settlements drafted from live tickets.
Phase
W1
W2
W3
W4
W5
W6
- DiscoveryW1
- BuildW2 – W3
- EvaluateW4 – W5
- Pilot & LaunchW5 – W6
Week focus
W1Workflow discovery, schedule versioning and the approval boundary
W2Scale-ticket ingestion, normalisation and the matching baseline
W3Matching, settlement arithmetic and the second-pass check
W4Evaluation suite, approval workflow and failure-mode testing
W5Integration, position reconciliation and drafting from live tickets
W6Your office settles from drafted tickets, then Agent Care starts
- Reading the band
- The arithmetic is tested against your own settled tickets in week 4, before anything is drafted for approval in week 5.
- At the end of W6
- Settlements have run alongside your existing process and been approved by the people who sign them, then Agent Care takes over monitoring.
- Duration
- Six-week plan shown · typical delivery 4–6 weeks depending on scope confirmed in discovery.
Next step · Agriculture AI agent
Build a back-office agent around your ticket and settlement work.
Show us a week of scale tickets, the schedules you posted against them and the contracts they should have landed on. We'll settle that week from your own records and show you every ticket and every figure ours disagrees with.
- Typical delivery
- 4–6 weeks
- Deployment
- Your grain accounting stack
- Settlement
- Your office signs, always
- After launch
- Agent Care available
Nestack Agents · Grain-elevator back office
AGT-AGR-12 · Agent Care available after launch