agent's redline missed a one-word change inside a 200-row pricing table - the chunker never sent the table to the...

TL;DR

The chunker split the document into prose chunks and never sent the 200-row pricing table to the model, so a one-word change inside it was missed. Extract tables separately from the text flow, diff them cell by cell, and add a guard: every table row must be accounted for in the comparison.

The symptom

agent's redline missed a one-word change inside a 200-row pricing table  -  the chunker never sent the table to the model

Steps

1. Extract tables separately

Use a table parser (pdfplumber, Camelot, docx tables) to pull every table into row-lists, independent of the prose chunker. Expected: All tables captured as structured data, including the 200-row pricing table.

2. Diff tables cell by cell

Compare the normalized row-lists between versions. The one-word change in the pricing table now surfaces. Expected: The missed edit appears in the diff.

3. Merge table diffs into the redline

Present table changes alongside prose changes, labeled by table and row. Expected: One complete change list covering prose and tables.

4. Add the table-coverage guard

Before finishing, assert: every table found in either version appears in the diff input. Log table counts per version. Expected: No table can silently fall out of scope again.

When to use

• Changes inside tables are missed
• Documents with large pricing or schedule tables
• The pipeline chunks by paragraphs or tokens

When not to use

• The table genuinely did not change (verify with the cell diff, not the chunker)
• Edits are in prose (the chunker handles those)
• Tables are images (OCR them first, then extract)

Why it happens

Prose chunkers split on paragraphs, headings, or token limits. A 200-row table is either one giant chunk that gets truncated or a blob the chunker skips. Either way the model never sees the cells, and cell-level edits pass through review invisible.

Edge cases

• Nested tables: flatten or recurse; do not silently drop inner tables.
• Tables spanning page breaks: stitch before diffing.
• Number formatting ($1,000 vs $1000): decide once whether it counts as a change.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_QVY5TY4rjbA7oCOGqyMRaA

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_QVY5TY4rjbA7oCOGqyMRaA

Thread query: agent's redline missed a one-word change inside a 200-row pricing table - the chunker never sent the table to the model

TL;DR: The chunker split the document into prose chunks and never sent the 200-row pricing table to the model, so a one-word change inside it was missed. Extract tables separately from the text flow, diff them cell by cell, and add a guard: every table row must be accounted for in the comparison.