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What is Shelv?

Shelv is a managed API that converts documents — PDFs, contracts, books, regulations — into structured Markdown filesystems. Your AI agents can then mount and interact with these filesystems using standard Unix tools. Parse once, mount anywhere, instantly.

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The Problem

AI agents need to work with documents, but PDFs are opaque blobs. Agents can’t grep a PDF. They can’t ls a contract’s clauses. They can’t cat a specific chapter. Most solutions either dump raw text (losing all structure) or require custom parsers per document type. Neither scales.

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How Shelv Works

1

Upload a document

Send a PDF to the Shelv API. That’s it — one API call.
2

Automatic processing

Shelv’s pipeline parses the document, uses LLMs to determine the optimal filesystem structure, verifies content integrity, and stores the result.
3

Mount or fetch

Get temporary S3 credentials to mount the filesystem directly, or fetch the file tree as JSON for in-memory use.

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What You Get

A document uploaded to Shelv becomes a browsable filesystem: 
my-contract/
├── definitions.md
├── article-01-parties.md
├── article-02-vessel.md
├── article-05-laytime/
│   ├── 5.1-calculation.md
│   ├── 5.2-exceptions.md
│   └── 5.3-demurrage.md
├── clauses/
│   ├── force-majeure.md
│   └── arbitration.md
└── metadata.json
Your agents can:
  • grep -r "indemnity" . — search across all files
  • cat article-05-laytime/5.3-demurrage.md — read a specific section
  • ls clauses/ — list all clauses
  • find . -name "*.md" — discover all content files

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Key Features

  • Automatic structuring — LLM-powered analysis determines the optimal file/folder layout for each document
  • Template support — Use built-in templates (book, legal-contract, academic-paper) or let Shelv auto-detect
  • S3-compatible mounting — Get scoped temporary credentials to mount with s3fs in any sandbox
  • JSON tree endpoint — Fetch the entire filesystem as a JSON object for in-memory use
  • Webhook notifications — Get notified when processing completes
  • Review mode — Inspect and modify the structure before finalizing
  • Content integrity — Verification step ensures no content is lost during structuring

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Next Steps

Quickstart

Upload your first document and get the file tree in 5 minutes.

API Reference

Explore the full API with an interactive playground.