---
id: ch5-guide-vulture
type: spine
title: "How to use Vulture: forward, ask, crawl"
readingTime: 2
standalone: true
core: false
teaser: "Forward an e-mail, ask a question about everything you have forwarded, let it watch a web page: Vulture as Vidzeme uses it for policy monitoring."
parent: null
diagram: fig-guide-vulture
recallQ: "How does content get into Vulture, who can see it, and what is Vulture not suitable for?"
recallA: "You forward e-mails (with PDFs, web clippings or messages attached) to a dedicated address, or register URLs to crawl; each item goes into a private collection that only you can query. It is an experimental sandbox with provisional outputs, so it is not suitable for functions that need auditability and repeatability."
highlights:
  - "Alpha at jackdaw.avinet.no/vulture; a profile is created at first use"
  - "Forwarding is a deliberate act, which D4.1 links to GDPR compliance"
  - "Your collection is private; GPT-4o answers from what was retrieved"
  - "Vidzeme Planning Region uses URL crawling to monitor policy developments"
status: accepted
concept: vulture-mapwhiteboard
lang: en
lens: latvia
depth: intro..standard
formalism: none
visuality: balanced
lengthBand: standard
genre: worked-example
state: edited
carriers: prose|diagram
---

**When to use it:** you receive a steady stream of calls, newsletters and policy updates and want to ask questions across all of it, or to keep watch on a few web pages.

## What you need

- The alpha at **[jackdaw.avinet.no/vulture](https://jackdaw.avinet.no/vulture)** (D4.1 §6.4).
- One or more e-mail accounts you forward from. A user profile is created automatically at first use, and several addresses can belong to one profile.

## Steps

1. **Forward content** to Vulture's dedicated address, by hand or with an automatic rule: e-mails with attachments, PDFs, web clippings or WhatsApp messages from any device or e-mail client.
2. **Decide each time what goes in.** Forwarding is deliberate by design; D4.1 ties this to GDPR compliance and data security.
3. **Let it index.** Each item is validated, analysed for context, chunked and embedded into **your private collection** in a Qdrant vector database. Only you can access it.
4. **Ask in plain language.** Vulture retrieves the most similar chunks, and GPT-4o writes the answer from them. D4.1's examples: tracking events and deadlines, identifying reports, finding funding opportunities and policy updates.
5. **Register URLs to crawl** and define the questions or topics you care about; Vulture extracts the relevant information from the linked pages.
6. **Refine your prompts.** D7.4's guidance: the more you use and refine your prompts, the more precise the results become.

## What you get

A self-expanding personal RAG over your own material: answers, summaries and extracted information. D4.2 calls such outputs **provisional and exploratory**, not formal platform evidence (§3.5).

## Pilot use

In the Latvian pilot, the **Vidzeme Planning Region** uses Vulture's URL crawling and targeted extraction to monitor and analyse policy developments (D4.1 §6.4).

## Watch out

- It is a **sandbox**: lighter integration, weaker guarantees on reproducibility, provenance and long-term maintenance (D4.2 §3.5).
- In the Beta it has become **less central** than planned; tools such as OpenClaw and more integrated workflows took over parts of its role. Expect selective maintenance, not new features.
- Before an answer goes into a RAP or a brief, find the original e-mail or page and cite that.

A shared, auditable evidence base is the job of the [Advisor](#c/polirural-advisor), not Vulture.

**Sources:**
- D4.1 PoliRuralPlus platform design, §6.4 Vulture: Sandbox for AI-driven Productivity Tool Experiments. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/162/D4.1_PoliRuralPlus_platform_design_v1.pdf)
- D4.2 PoliRuralPlus Platform Beta, §3.5 Vulture productivity sandbox. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/421/D4.2_PoliRuralPlus_Platform_Beta.pdf)
- D7.4 Exploitation plans and business models, edition 1, How to Use VULTURE. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/342/D7.4_Exploitation_plans__business_models_edition_1_v1.pdf)