Method note 02
What does this local grant cross-checker do?
It extracts bounded numeric candidates from narrative prose, holds them beside a stable budget table, recomputes the visible arithmetic, and records every mapping and difference a person confirms. It runs in the browser with no account and makes network calls only for billing and entitlement checks.
Why this review exists
Reviewers ask the same handful of questions before trusting a tool with a proposal draft, and every one of them is about what the tool refuses to do.
Scope and refusals
Does it write or rewrite proposal text? No. It extracts bounded numeric candidates and performs visible arithmetic, and it has no text generation of any kind.
Does it check compliance? No. It cannot interpret funder instructions, eligibility, allowability or submission rules, and it will not tell you whether a cost is reasonable.
Does it use a model? No. Suggestions come only from documented numeric equality within the tolerance you set, and every suggestion requires a human decision before it becomes a mapping.
Files, data and privacy
Does proposal data leave the browser? Not through the application runtime, which sends only billing and entitlement requests across origins and sends no proposal content. Files you download and choose to share leave the browser boundary because you moved them.
Can it read PDF or DOCX? No. This release accepts strict CSV or TSV budget text and plain text or Markdown narrative content, because a tolerant parser for rich formats is exactly where a silent misreading would come from.
Can browser data be cleared? Yes, by the browser, by a privacy setting or by another person using the same profile. The digest-backed checkpoint you download is the backup.
Ambiguity, findings and freezes
What happens with ambiguous punctuation? The claim stays pending until a person decides how to read it. A figure written as 1.500 can be one and a half or fifteen hundred depending on the locale, and the tool will not guess.
What is in the handoff packet? Thirty passive files covering sources, normalised rows, extracted claims, mappings, arithmetic traces, findings, decisions, reviewer questions, freezes, a manifest and SHA-256 hashes.
Does a freeze approve anything? No. It is a digest-backed snapshot of the review state you entered. It is not a signature, a certification or an approval.
Practical sequence
- Read the answers below
- Open the fictional sample and test any answer against it
- Read the limitations page before a real review
- Export the handoff packet and inspect it