This post explores the design of a generic processor that can handle any data payload without requiring specific event classes on your classpath. It uses Apache Kafka, Confluent Schema Registry, and Protobuf to enable schema-less event processing. The processor leverages Spring Boot's Kafka library for quick setup and boilerplate Kafka consumer management. It defines a deep envelope pattern for modeling events and utilizes Confluent Schema Registry to parse binary payloads at runtime. The post also discusses how to convert the parsed events into JSON for downstream reporting systems, including techniques for enhancing timestamp representations and extracting generic metadata.