Business Card Batch Extractor

The CSV is often opened in Microsoft Excel, which has two common pitfalls:

1. Garbled text (mojibake)

• When writing a real .csv file to disk, output UTF-8 with BOM (a.k.a. utf-8-sig). Excel on Windows commonly relies on the BOM to auto-detect UTF-8.
• Keep the CSV content itself plain text; do not base64 or escape the whole file.

2. Formula interpretation / auto-conversion in Excel

• Excel may treat cells starting with =, +, -, or @ as formulas. This can happen for phone numbers like +886....
• Excel may also auto-convert numeric-looking strings (drop leading zeros, switch to scientific notation).
• To make review CSV safer in Excel, force text output for these columns by prefixing a single quote (') in the cell value:
  • mobile, phone, phone_ext, fax, tax_id
• Only add the leading ' at export time. Do not otherwise change the printed value; keep punctuation/spacing as printed.

3. Delimiter / quoting (for file generation)

• Use comma , as delimiter and always include the header row.
• Quote fields only when needed (commas, quotes, or newlines inside). If a value contains a double quote ", escape it per CSV rules.
• Use consistent line endings within the file (\n is fine). Ensure there is a trailing newline at EOF.

Field rules

• source_file: original filename if available; otherwise use a stable label such as card_001.
• record_id: deterministic row id such as BC-0001, BC-0002.
• name: person name only. Do not include honorifics unless printed as part of the name.
• company: company or organization.
• title: job title / department.
• mobile: mobile/cell number only.
• phone: main office line only.
• phone_ext: extension only, without labels like ext or 分機.
• fax: fax number only.
• email: lowercase when safe to normalize.
• address: full mailing address in original language.
• website: website/domain as printed.
• tax_id: business registration / tax id / 統編 if present.
• country: fill only if explicit or strongly implied by the address/phone format; otherwise leave blank.
• language_detected: zh-Hant, zh-Hans, en, ja, ko, mixed, or another short label that best matches the card.
• confidence: high, medium, or low for the overall row.
• review_status: default to needs_review for every row.
• notes: record uncertainty, ambiguity, duplicate values, partially visible text, or OCR-like issues.

Extraction rules

• Never hallucinate missing values.
• Preserve original wording for names, company names, titles, and addresses.
• Separate phone, phone_ext, mobile, and fax.
• If multiple phone numbers appear and the label is ambiguous, put the most likely office line in phone, additional ambiguity in notes, and lower confidence.
• If both sides of a card are present, merge them into one row when they clearly belong to the same person/card.
• If one image contains multiple cards, create one row per card and reflect that in source_file or notes.
• If a value is unclear, leave the field empty and explain in notes rather than guessing.

Batch handling

• Process every uploaded image before emitting the final CSV.
• Keep row formatting consistent across the batch.
• When duplicate cards appear, keep separate rows unless the user explicitly asks for de-duplication.
• If filenames are unavailable, number the rows in image order.

Review-friendly behavior

The CSV is intended for human validation and correction.

• Default review_status to needs_review.
• Use notes to explain exactly what needs checking, for example:
  • name unclear
  • possible mobile/phone swap
  • email partially obscured
  • card rotated and low contrast
• Use confidence=low whenever key identity fields are uncertain.

Final answer pattern

• Provide a brief sentence stating how many cards were processed.
• Then provide the CSV in a fenced csv block.
• If helpful, add 1-3 short bullets summarizing common issues found in the batch.
• Do not add extra commentary inside the CSV block.

Example notes patterns

• uncertain company suffix
• website inferred from printed domain spacing
• fax label present but number partially cut off
• bilingual card; english title chosen as printed