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Jun 25, 2026

Grant Engine

The Grant Engine assembles funder-specific grant drafts from material that already exists on your research project. Instead of starting from a blank page, you pick a funder template and the engine pre-fills each section from your own work - the project mission, your method protocol, your question brief, and your project claims. You then edit every section, and optionally ask the AI assistant to draft a section for you to review.

It is a drafting aid. Nothing is ever submitted to a funder on your behalf.

Where to find it

Open a research project, then choose Grant Engine from the project tools. The engine is available at:

  • Research > (your project) > Grant Engine

Starting a draft

  1. Click New Grant Draft (or Browse templates to compare funder layouts).
  2. Choose a funder template. The funders shown - a generic jurisdiction-neutral template plus NRF-, ERC-, NIH- and Wellcome-style examples - are selectable examples. Your institution can add its own funder templates from the Dropdown Manager without any code change.
  3. Give the draft a title (optional - it defaults to your project title).
  4. Click Create. The engine creates the section list for that funder and pre-fills each section from your project material.

What gets pre-filled

The engine reads, read-only, from material you already created:

  • Project mission / description - feeds the summary and background sections.
  • Question Brief - the broad topic, problem statement, research gap, primary and secondary questions, and hypothesis feed the background, questions, aims and significance sections.
  • Method Protocol - your design, sampling, data sources, instruments and analysis answers feed the methodology and approach sections; validity, reliability and reproducibility feed feasibility; ethics, consent and data management feed the ethics section.
  • Project claims - your recorded assertions seed the outputs and impact narrative.

If a piece of source material does not exist yet, that section simply starts emptier - nothing breaks. The engine never invents facts; it only arranges your own words for you to refine.

Editing sections

The editor shows one card per section. Edit the text freely, set a status (Draft, In Review, Ready, Submitted), and click Save draft. Use View / print to see the assembled draft and print it.

AI drafting (optional)

Each section has an AI draft button. When you click it:

  • The assistant is given your project material and the section's current text.
  • It returns a suggestion, clearly labelled as AI-assisted.
  • You are asked to confirm before it replaces the section text.
  • Nothing is saved automatically - you review, edit, and save yourself.

The assistant runs through the institutional AI gateway. It is grounded in your project material and instructed not to invent funding amounts, dates, named people, or results. If the assistant is unavailable, you simply keep writing by hand - the engine works fully without AI.

Tracking calls

The Tracked calls page lets you record funder calls and deadlines you are watching for the project: funder, call title, URL, deadline, status (Watching, Preparing, Submitted, Awarded, Declined, Closed) and notes. This is a tracker only - it does not submit anything.

Notes

  • Funder templates and statuses are managed through the Dropdown Manager, so an administrator can add, rename, or retire them without a code change.
  • Defaults are jurisdiction-neutral; funder examples are illustrative.