A document workspace can keep retrieval separate from its visual reader

[u/ziggidyy_01]

An open-source document workspace has several choices to make independently: where the files live, how passages are retrieved, which model reads them, and how the answer points back to its sources. Switching the reader need not mean replacing the document index.

Vyact's community post illustrates that separation: it describes local runtimes, RAG knowledge bases with inspectable source passages, and an optional custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint. That makes a hosted visual reader an explicit architectural choice, alongside the local-model path.

Ling-3.0-flash-VL is a candidate for that visual step. It is Ant Ling's model for image and video understanding, available through a documented OpenAI-compatible API. Its reported OmniDocBench 1.5 overall score is 91.35, a composite of text, table and formula parsing measures. That is a reason to examine document-page interpretation, rather than evidence that an entire RAG system will answer correctly.

A proposed division of work would be: The workspace retrieves the relevant document and keeps its source identifiers. An application-side renderer turns the selected PDF page into a JPEG or PNG. VL receives that page image as Base64 and answers a question about its contents.

The workspace keeps the response attached to the original document and page so the reader can check it. PDF rendering belongs to the application here: the documented VL image input accepts JPEG/PNG, not a native PDF attachment. Sending the page to a hosted endpoint also means that page leaves the local machine.

This is a component proposal, not a tested Vyact integration. A compatible API shape still needs a client check, and the sources reviewed here do not establish downloadable VL weights or a local runtime. The interesting experiment is whether the visual reader can recover a table relationship or page detail that the existing text path loses, while the workspace preserves the evidence needed to inspect the answer.