Urgenth

Customs and HS classification intelligence for cross-border sellers — urgenth.com

A vertical AI agent for one specific, expensive problem: getting the HS/HTS code right before the shipment moves. Sellers describe a product in plain language; the agent extracts the tariff-relevant attributes, queries the official USITC HTS database, and proposes real candidate codes with duty rates. Every code it suggests exists in the actual tariff schedule — the model can only choose from the official candidate pool, never invent one.

Why

Misclassification is the quiet tax on small importers. Pick the wrong code and you overpay duty, or worse — CBP comes back later with a 19 CFR 1592 penalty, interest included. Big shippers have licensed brokers on retinue. A solo seller shipping from Shenzhen to a New Jersey 3PL gets a search box on a government site built in another era.

Most “AI classification” tools demo well and hallucinate codes. Urgenth inverts the architecture: the LLM reads and reasons, but the USITC database decides what exists. Deterministic retrieval first, language model second.

What’s on the site

• HS Code Classifier — describe the product, get real HTS candidates with duty rates and the reasoning trail
• A working customs library — GRI classification rules explained, how to read the HTS schedule, de minimis suspension impact, Section 301 lookup, substantial transformation for country-of-origin, Incoterms for e-commerce sellers, and what actually happens when your HS code is wrong

The knowledge layer is written from practitioner experience — freight, customs brokerage workflows, Incoterms, HS classification — not recycled blog posts.

Status

Live and iterating. The classifier runs against the live USITC HTS API; the library grows weekly.