Frequently Asked Questions

ProofInk.AI is an AI-powered feedback tool for grant proposals and research papers. It analyzes your draft documents against agency-specific or discipline-specific evaluation criteria and produces structured feedback with scores, evidence-backed critiques, and a prioritized improvement roadmap. It is designed for researchers who want rigorous, criterion-level feedback before submission.

General-purpose chatbots give you a single-pass response based on whatever prompt you write. ProofInk.AI runs a structured, multi-pass analysis pipeline: it extracts evaluation criteria, scores each criterion independently against calibrated rubrics, cross-references findings for internal consistency, and synthesizes a prioritized action plan. Every critique must cite a specific quote from your document — the system cannot make unsupported claims. The depth and structure of the output is substantially beyond what a single chatbot prompt can produce.

ProofInk.AI supports two main document types: grant proposals (evaluated against agency-specific criteria from NSF, NIH, DOE, ERC, UKRI, and others) and research papers or manuscripts (evaluated against a 10-criterion academic quality framework). You can upload PDF, DOCX, or TXT files up to 50 MB in size.

Uploaded files can be up to 50 MB. For best results, we recommend documents under 100 pages. Very long documents may take longer to process and may be truncated to fit within the analysis context window. If your document exceeds the processing limit, you will receive a notification.

Researchers at any career stage — from graduate students preparing their first grant application to senior PIs revising a resubmission. It is particularly useful when you want structured, criterion-level feedback and you either do not have access to experienced reviewers in your area or want an additional perspective before asking colleagues to read your draft.

Focused feedback reports are the simplest way to use ProofInk.AI. You select a feedback template (funding agency or paper review), upload your draft proposal or manuscript, optionally provide solicitation context, choose a feedback mode (Quick or Deep), and click Run. Your feedback report is generated and displayed on the same page. Uploaded documents are treated as ephemeral — they are automatically deleted from active storage within approximately 2 days of upload, regardless of whether you close the page or log out. Focused feedback reports are available on all plans, including the free tier.

The Lab Suite is the full project workspace environment, included with the Lab Bundle and the 3-Pack Lab Suite. You can organize documents into projects, store them persistently in a document library, re-run feedback reports across multiple revisions, compare feedback reports over time, and use the Document Q&A feature to ask questions about your uploaded files. Both are one-time purchases whose credits never expire. Current pricing is available on our pricing page.

Quick feedback (~1–3 minutes) provides a fast assessment of your document: key strengths, weaknesses, and top priorities to address. Deep feedback (~5–15 minutes) runs a multi-pass analysis with criterion-by-criterion evaluation, a dedicated gap and contradiction checker, cross-validated findings from multiple independent analysis runs, and a prioritized improvement roadmap. Deep feedback is best for final pre-submission analysis when thoroughness matters most.

Document Q&A is a Lab Suite feature that lets you ask natural-language questions about documents in your project library. The system uses semantic search to find the most relevant passages across all your uploaded documents and generates answers grounded in the actual text. It is useful for quickly locating specific information, comparing sections across documents, or getting clarification on complex passages.

No. Solicitation upload is optional. ProofInk.AI includes built-in evaluation templates for each supported agency, based on publicly available criteria. If you do have a specific solicitation (as a file or as text you can paste), providing it gives the system additional context — such as page limits, budget constraints, or program-specific requirements — which can improve the relevance of the feedback. But the feedback works well without it.

Quick feedback typically takes around 1–3 minutes. Deep feedback takes approximately 5–15 minutes depending on document length and complexity. You can leave the page open and the analysis will complete in the background.

When you run a feedback report on a document that you have previously reviewed, you can select the earlier report from the "Compare with previous feedback report" dropdown. The system will then compare the new analysis against the previous one and produce a Revision Status section showing which issues have been Resolved, Partially Addressed, or remain Unresolved. This helps you track your progress across revisions without re-reading the entire previous report. You can also mark individual points in the earlier report as Not Agree; any point you reject is left out of this comparison, so ProofInk tracks only the issues you actually accepted rather than re-raising feedback you have consciously dismissed. Revision-aware feedback is available for both Quick and Deep modes, for both grant proposals and paper reviews, in both Focused and Lab Suite workflows.

Deep feedback reports that use the revision-aware feature include a Revision Comparison Dashboard at the top of the report. This dashboard shows the score change between versions, a progress verdict (e.g., "Meaningful Progress" or "Major Revision Still Needed"), a breakdown of resolved vs. unresolved items, and a checklist of remaining priorities. It gives you a quick visual summary of how your revision improved the document.

The Revision Response tool helps you at a later stage of the process: after you have received the reviewers' comments on your submitted grant proposal or paper and have already prepared a revised version. You provide the reviewers' comments together with your original and revised documents, and the tool drafts a point-by-point response letter — matching each reviewer concern to the changes you made and indicating whether each appears to have been addressed. This is different from revision-aware feedback: revision-aware feedback compares two of your own drafts to track which issues ProofInk previously raised have been resolved, whereas the Revision Response tool helps you reply to an external reviewer's comments once your revised version is ready. In short — revision-aware feedback tracks your progress against ProofInk's earlier feedback report; the Revision Response tool helps you respond to the reviewers who evaluated your submission.

Actionable findings in a feedback report — weaknesses, issues, gaps, missing elements, improvement suggestions, priority revisions, and per-criterion concerns — carry an Agree / Not Agree control. (Positive notes such as strengths, and supporting sections such as cross-validation and evidence, don't carry one — the control is meant for the points you might act on.) Agree is the default. If you disagree with a point, click Not Agree: the point is not deleted — it stays visible but faded — and your choice is saved with that specific feedback report. You can toggle any point back to Agree at any time. Points you mark Not Agree do two things: they are excluded from the revision-aware comparison when you later run a new draft (so ProofInk does not keep re-raising feedback you have consciously rejected), and they are clearly labelled in any exported PDF, Word, Markdown, or LaTeX document. The feature works for both Quick and Deep reports, for grant proposals and paper reviews, in both the Focused and Lab Suite workflows.

Yes. Your documents are strictly confidential. They are processed solely for generating your feedback report. We do not share, sell, or expose your documents to any third party. Our AI providers (Anthropic and/or OpenAI) process your text via their APIs under terms that prohibit using it for model training. API data is automatically deleted after a short safety-monitoring period.

No. Your uploaded documents and feedback reports are never used to train, fine-tune, or improve any AI model — not by us and not by our AI provider. This is guaranteed by both our policies and the contractual terms of our AI provider's API.

For focused feedback reports (Free, Professional plans), uploaded documents are ephemeral. They are automatically deleted from active storage within approximately 2 days of upload, regardless of whether you close the page, log out, or take no further action. For Lab Suite, Lab Bundle, and 3-Pack Lab Suite users, documents persist in your project workspace for up to 1 year from the upload date, after which they are automatically removed. You can delete any document at any time. You are always in control of your data.

Yes. You can permanently delete your account at any time from your profile settings. This removes all your documents and clears all review content immediately. The displayed account is anonymized in the user interface. A minimal account-history record is retained for internal audit and abuse prevention — it includes your original name and email, tier, registration and last-login dates, counts and dates of completed reviews, and total cost and tokens consumed. It does NOT contain the content of any uploaded documents or AI-generated reviews. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

No. Your documents are never shared with plagiarism detection services, search engines, or any third-party databases. Documents are processed solely for generating your feedback report and are not exposed, indexed, or distributed in any form. Each user's documents are isolated — no other user can access your files. Our AI providers (Anthropic and/or OpenAI) process text via their APIs under terms that prohibit using it for model training or any purpose beyond providing the service.

No. Your data is fully isolated. Each user can only access their own documents and feedback reports. There is no shared workspace, public gallery, or cross-user visibility of any kind. Even within team projects (for institutional plans), access is controlled by explicit membership — only invited members can see project contents.

Completed feedback reports are retained for 1 year from the date of creation, after which they are automatically deleted. This applies to both focused feedback reports and Lab Suite feedback reports. After a reasonable amount of time, past reports are unlikely to be useful for ongoing work but still consume storage, so we remove them to keep the system efficient. The feedback report record (dates, scores, and quota usage) is preserved even after deletion to maintain accurate account history. If you delete your account before the retention period ends, all report content is permanently cleared immediately.

For focused feedback reports (Free, Professional plans), uploaded documents are ephemeral and are automatically deleted from active storage within approximately 2 days of upload — regardless of whether you close the page, log out, or take no further action. For Lab Suite, Lab Bundle, and 3-Pack Lab Suite users, uploaded documents in your project workspace are retained for up to 1 year from the date of upload, after which they are automatically deleted. The upload date is displayed next to each document so you can see when it will be removed. You can always delete documents manually at any time. Deleted documents may persist in encrypted backups for up to 14 additional days before being permanently removed when the backup rotates. Deleting your account removes all live data immediately.

Our system maintains encrypted backups to protect against data loss. Backups are encrypted before they leave our servers and are stored off-site in DigitalOcean Spaces (object storage) in the United States. Backups are retained for up to 14 days and are then permanently deleted. Backups are encrypted at rest and are used solely for disaster recovery. If you delete your account, your live data is removed immediately; backup copies containing your data are permanently purged within 14 days as part of the normal backup rotation cycle.

ProofInk.AI offers several options: (1) Free — includes quick feedback reports, no expiration. (2) Single Deep Feedback Report — one deep feedback report, pay as you go. (3) 3-Pack Lab Suite — deep feedback reports with Lab Suite access (project workspaces, document library, Document Q&A), one-time purchase, never expires. (4) Lab Bundle — a larger allocation of quick and deep feedback reports plus Document Q&A, with full Lab Suite access, one-time purchase, never expires. Current pricing and exact allocations are available on our pricing page.

Yes. You can purchase a Single Deep Feedback Report, a 3-Pack Lab Suite, or a Lab Bundle at any time, regardless of your current plan. Credits from one-time purchases are added to your account and do not expire. The 3-Pack Lab Suite also grants access to project workspaces, document library, and Document Q&A.

No. Every ProofInk.AI plan is a one-time purchase (Single Deep Feedback Report, 3-Pack Lab Suite, Lab Bundle). There are no recurring charges and nothing to cancel — your credits simply never expire.

There is nothing to roll over — all plans are one-time purchases (Single Deep Feedback Report, 3-Pack Lab Suite, Lab Bundle), so your credits never expire and remain available until you use them.

ProofInk.AI produces structured, evidence-backed feedback that researchers consistently find useful for improving their drafts. However, like all AI systems, it may occasionally miss nuances specific to your field, misinterpret specialized terminology, or generate suggestions that do not fully apply to your context. We strongly recommend using the feedback as one input alongside advice from colleagues, mentors, and domain experts.

No. ProofInk.AI evaluates the structure, presentation, and completeness of your document against evaluation criteria. It does not verify whether your research claims, data, or methodological choices are scientifically correct. That assessment requires domain expertise that is beyond the scope of any current AI system.

No. ProofInk.AI is an independent tool. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NSF, NIH, DOE, ERC, UKRI, or any other funding agency or research council. Our evaluation templates are based on publicly available criteria and do not constitute official agency guidance.

No. ProofInk.AI provides informational feedback to help you strengthen your draft. Funding and publication decisions involve many factors beyond the document itself — including reviewer preferences, competition, budget availability, and institutional context — that no AI system can predict or account for.

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