MEGA-BOQ-WEBAPP/README.md
MEGA INFRA 301d0fff44 MEGA INFRA BOQ Converter — Candy PDF to consultant Excel
Reads our Candy PDF (deterministically, no OCR or model needed) and populates
the consultant's own workbook using their formulas, column layout and PAYMENT
column. Nothing is ever silently overwritten: every disagreement is reported,
can be settled inside the app, and regenerated.

- extract   Candy text PDF -> tree (x-position column detection)
- template  layout detect, sequence align, write, totals, overrides
- validate  qty x rate and children-vs-subtotal reconciliation
- profiles  per-consultant layout profiles, stored on a volume

Shipped with a Dockerfile + docker-compose for Coolify.
2026-10-01 02:32:13 +02:00

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MEGA INFRA · BOQ Converter

Drop in our Candy PDF and their Excel. Get back their workbook populated, using their own formulas and layout, plus a proof report of exactly what was written, what was already correct, and where the two documents disagree.

Anything you disagree with, you settle in the app and regenerate. The consultant never has to leave the screen.

Runs entirely on your machine. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.

the app

Settling a disagreement in the app

Where the two documents differ, the app writes nothing — your value stands. Each dispute is one collapsed row. Open it and choose:

  • Keep yours (as it is) — the default, your file is untouched
  • Use our PDF's value — take the figure from the Candy export
  • or type a value — anything else, coerced to a number when it looks like one

Press Apply & regenerate and the choices are written straight into the workbook; the row then moves to "settled" and drops off the open list. The PAYMENT column, your formulas and your formatting are never touched.

disputes

Design system — MEGA INFRASTRUCTURE

Palette sampled from the dashboard. All tokens live in static/theme.css as CSS custom properties, so the brand can be retuned in one place without touching Python.

group tokens
surfaces --canvas #1A202C · --topbar #1A212D · --surface #262A37 · --surface-inset #252A36 · --surface-raise #363B49 · --hairline #2F3442
status fills --success-fill #22383E / --success-edge #1B534A · --warn-fill #3A373C · --danger-fill #3A2D38
accents --orange #FEA944 · --orange-soft #F1A962 · --orange-deep #DF8441 · --green #00CD8A · --red #F04141
text --text #E1E1E1 · --text-muted #999999 · --text-warm #B3AC99 · --text-link #00CD8A

Warm neutrals are deliberate — #E1E1E1 sits on a warm axis and pairs with #B3AC99; pure #EEEEEE would read cold next to #FEA944.

On the accessibility flag: #F04141 measures 3.77:1 on the card surface, so it is used only for the severity edge and large marks. Any red text uses --red-soft #FF6B6B at 5.15:1, which clears AA.

Type is Fraunces for headings and Nunito for body.

Icons are real SVG, not emoji

Thirteen icons live in boq_engine/theme.py as inline SVG — 24x24, 1.75 stroke, round caps, so the set looks drawn by one hand. They inherit currentColor, so they pick up the palette for free, and being inline they need no network and no icon font.

They sit in the brand mark, the uploader labels, the KPI tiles, the pills and the section headings — everywhere HTML actually renders.

Not on buttons or tab labels. Streamlit renders those as plain text, so an inline SVG there leaks to the user as literal <svg …> markup, and emoji read as emoticons. Those labels are deliberately typographic, which looks more corporate anyway.

Two implementation notes worth knowing

The stylesheet is injected with st.html, not st.markdown. Markdown injection duplicated the style block on every rerun, and one malformed selector silently killed every rule after it — the page rendered unstyled with no error anywhere. Serving it from static/ was tried and doesn't work: Streamlit only serves its own hashed assets from that route, and an arbitrary path falls through to the SPA shell and returns index.html as text/html. st.html inserts the sheet into the page, isn't iframed, and replaces cleanly.

Buttons and tab labels are plain text. See the icon note above — this is the one place Streamlit refuses to render HTML, and it fails loudly.

Status messages are quiet pills, not alert blocks. A filled st.warning bar shouts at the reader for something that is background information. theme.pill() sits at the same volume as the legend it belongs next to. Genuine errors — source lines that have nowhere to go, subtotals that do not reconcile — still use real alerts, because those are the thing to act on.

Dispute choices are real Streamlit widgets. Raw HTML <select> was tried first and silently does nothing — the value never reaches Python, because st.markdown(unsafe_allow_html=True) has no channel back to session state. Keys are derived from the cell (choice::<sheet>::<row>::<field>) so a choice survives a rerun and can be read back to build the override map.

The rule that matters most

Where the two documents disagree, the consultant's value is left alone and the difference is reported. The app never overwrites their work to match ours.

Every finding carries a severity decided in the data layer, not guessed from the sentence text — so a red card always means "a person must choose":

severity meaning on your sample
decision the two documents genuinely disagree 1 — overheads qty 15 000 vs 1 500 000
source_gap our PDF has no figure; theirs is better 13 — all of Section 4
source_defect our PDF printed something corrupt 2 — the ? litre sign
resolved the consultant settled it in the app 0 until they do
note worth knowing, no action implied totals written

A cell with an override is written instead of left alone, and the dispute drops to resolved so it stops being flagged.

Two cases where that mattered:

  • Candy prints the litre sign as ?. Copying it into their file would have introduced a defect that was not there. Their ℓ was kept.
  • Our PDF has all of Section 4 as "Rate only" (qty 0) — cable ducts and directional drilling were never quantified. Their template has real provisional quantities (100 m³ of trench, 200 m of 110 mm pipe, 70 m of drilling). Writing our 0 would have destroyed better data.

Results on the sample

Values written 84
Already correct (verified) 98
Source lines with nowhere to go 0
Disagreements reported, none overwritten 16

Their workbook's own COMBINED SUMMARY recomputes to R5,696,934.93 — matching the Candy PDF's grand total to the cent, through their own formulas and their own VAT line.

Things the source BOQ gets wrong

Reported, not fixed — these are in the PDF:

  1. 1.2 Scheduled Time-Related Items — R31,500.00 unexplained. Its priced lines total R1,053,000.00 against a printed R1,084,500.00. Every other 1.2.x line is blank/INCL. Worth a phone call.
  2. 1.6 Temporary Works — printed total swallows 1.5 Protection of Services (R144,908.18), which the document numbers after it.
  3. 2.1 Earthworks — printed total swallows 2.2 Selected Sub Grade (R146,983.50).
  4. Item 4..2.5 (double dot), 2.5.4 used twice, two sections numbered SECTION 6, units drifting between m2/m²/m3/m³/?.

Layout

static/theme.css         design tokens + all styling (edit this to retune)
.streamlit/config.toml   base Streamlit theme colours
boq_engine/extract.py    PDF -> tree            (deterministic, no model)
boq_engine/template.py   layout detect + align + write + totals
boq_engine/validate.py   arithmetic + structure checks
boq_engine/profiles.py   per-consultant template profiles
boq_engine/theme.py      injects the stylesheet, builds finding cards
boq_engine/populate.py   tree -> standalone xlsx + csv
app.py                   Streamlit UI
run.py                   CLI: PDF -> xlsx + csv

Known limits

  • Column bands are tuned for A4 portrait Candy output. A different print layout needs BANDS in extract.py re-measured.
  • Only one consultant's file has been seen. Alignment is near 1:1 for this one; a structurally different template may need its own profile tuning.
  • Multi-sheet templates are handled one BOQ-shaped sheet at a time; a template that splits one section across two sheets would need a different strategy.
  • Description joins can drop a space where Candy's print engine split a word (Fixed-ChargeItems). Cosmetic.