Show HN: We automated Portugal visa appointment checks with computer-use agents | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: We automated Portugal visa appointment checks with computer-use agents

getfastvisa.com

3 pointsgsunshinel15 comments

Hi HN! Hello there! We at getfastvisa help mostly US applicants with Portugal visas and VFS! The part I thought was interesting to share here is the operations behind it.

A lot of immigration work is not really "lawyers thinking"... It is someone checking for appointment portals every day (VFS is a nightmare), looking for slots, retrying when pages break, preparing the next step, documenting what happened, updating the client, repeat. For dozens of clients.

In some workflows this was basically 80% of a junior/intern role. Important work, but very repetitive.

So we built internal computer-use / browser agents for it. We also tried talking with some law / immigration firms about this before. The pain was real, but many were so against thinking in workflows that it felt almost like witchcraft to them. So ok, instead of selling tools to the legal industry, we use the tools ourselves and compete with them.

I think this will happen a lot in legal AI / legal tech: the AI product is not always SaaS for incumbents. Sometimes it is a service company using agents internally and moving faster and cheaper.

I am curious to what HN thinks, not chatbots giving legal advice but agents doing boring real-world backoffice. Fragile portals, repeated cheks... audit trails...

that's actually an interesting concept and glad to see it has already worked for 500+ users, visa processes these days take a long time to complete, and unfortunately might require others to use multiple methods applications and different wait times just for one "approved" document. Hope to see other locations you might support in the future!

Thanks for the kind words cubit, was a hard and long journey to it

What a great way to make a system that's bursting at the seams, even worse.

You are framing the problem backwards.

The system is already bursting because the process is badly designed, VFS and consular websites are fully broken and we do not resell slots, we do just what a normal legal firm would with interns but with computer use.

If the only way the current system works is by making everyone waste hours refreshing broken portals, that is not fairness. That is just bad infrastructure with human labor hiding the problem.

The system is bursting because AIMA is severely understaffed and there's a shit ton of people waiting in line. An agent is not going to solve this, it will just make you earn some money while helping people who are able to pay to jump the line.

You are framing the problem in whatever way it helps you sleep at night. "Fairness", lol.

You are confusing things, this is not for AIMA, this is for VFS. Nobody is jumping the line.

And how does providing a solution makes things worse?

I also fail to understand how, it is a problem people want and need solved.

I just had to go through renewing my residency in Spain. You need an appointment for every step. If you aren't able to check 50 times per day, you'll never succeed in finding an appointment. The process is completely broken. The only way to get an appointment is by paying a service to get one for you, which is between 50-100 euros. It is astounding that not only the process is so collapsed, but that the administration or foreigner police do nothing (they should just assign you an appointment after each step) to improve this. On top of that, they currently just legalized 500k-1million people who were not here legally, and I have no idea how they expect the majority (who are declared vulnerable) to be able to complete the immigration process.

Portugal is the same, they are so inefficient it almost seems intentional (or maybe it is). We wanted to serve these kind of clients, but could not do it properly because we could not even book appointments ourselves and had to rely on shady companies reselling slots, which I dont think they get in a fair way (or maybe not even legal), as there are many reports of insiders selling access... So we decided to turn to tech for help.

If it's automated, why bill nearly 2 grand? For running a script?

Because this is 20% of the process, the service is still a legal team doing your all your immigrations. Checking the best strategy, how to apply, review your documents manually, book calls with you and, if necessary, appeal if the consulate asks questions or initially rejects your case. The price is for the full visa assistance.

So, it's not automated and the title is a lie? Just submarine marketing for "digital nomads" to come buy overpriced shit and crowd out the locals.

Your life would improve by reading short texts, then move on to children’s books, as most people did in childhood, to begin developing reading comprehension

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