Protocol Guidance

Before checking a review for conformance, prismAId can tell you what a conforming review will need. Guidance returns a reporting protocol’s full requirement checklist — the same requirements the conformance check enforces, but listed up front so you can plan for them.

Proactive and reactive

Conformance works in two directions:

• Reactive — checking a record reports the requirements it does not yet meet.
• Proactive — guidance answers what will a conforming review need? before any record exists.

Guidance returns the checklist extracted from the protocol’s published SHACL shapes, grouped by the record class each requirement applies to (for example the review as a whole, the screening stage, or the synthesis). Each item carries the protocol’s own message — for PRISMA 2020, the numbered checklist wording. An agent can use it to help plan a conforming review from the outset, then use conformance checking to track what remains.

Like conformance checking, guidance is declarative: the requirements come from the shapes RevAIse publishes, pulled at call time (see Protocol Conformance for the shared mechanism). It is advisory — it describes what a protocol requires and does not constrain the order in which prismAId’s tools are used.

Usage

Guidance is available on every channel, taking just the protocol name:

• Command line: ./prismaid -guidance prisma-2020
• Go: prismaid.ProtocolGuidance("prisma-2020") — returns the requirements, each with a TargetClass and the protocol’s Message.
• Python: prismaid.protocol_guidance("prisma-2020") — returns a dict.
• R: ProtocolGuidance("prisma-2020") — returns the guidance as a JSON string.
• Julia: PrismAId.protocol_guidance("prisma-2020") — returns the guidance as a JSON string.
• MCP: the prismaid_protocol_guidance tool on the MCP server.

The protocol identifier is the same one accepted by the conformance check — nothing is bundled with prismAId, so the checklist reflects the latest shapes RevAIse publishes. Because those shapes are fetched on demand, guidance requires a network connection.