The FFR Management Extraction workflow is an AI-powered tool in Vandalizer that analyzes federal award documents and extracts everything you need to manage your Federal Financial Report (FFR/SF-425) obligations. This workflow processes federal award documents, such as award notices, cooperative agreements, or award terms and conditions, and it produces a structured, markdown-formatted reference
Research administration is risk-averse on purpose. The work navigates federal regulations, sponsor-specific terms, institutional policies, and audit trails that survive personnel changes by years. RAs have been trained well, and the training has stuck: when in doubt, slow down; when the rule is unclear, ask; when the answer is unverifiable, do not submit. That posture is not a deficit to be retrained. It is an asset the institution already has, and it should be respected as such.
The Subaward Agreement Extraction workflow is a Vandalizer post-award tool that reads subaward agreements and pulls relevant data for award setup and monitoring all in one run. It processes subaward agreements, pass-through entity documents, and subaward modifications, handling documents of varying length, including attachments and referenced terms.
Vandalizer v4.5.0 Released
Writing budget justifications is a common time-intensive pre-award task, requiring careful cross-referencing between budget figures, fringe rates, indirect cost calculations, and the project narrative. This workflow automates that process while maintaining accuracy.
The RFA (Request for Applications) Checklist Extraction workflow is a two-step, AI-enhanced process that turns an agency RFA, FOA, or NOFO into a structured pre-award checklist for the proposal team. It runs six parallel extraction tasks against the document — dates and deadlines, eligible institutions, eligible individuals, award information, application components, and budget requirements and policies — then a consolidation step assembles the results into a single Markdown checklist organized in eight sections. Missing information is explicitly marked “Not specified in the document” rather than guessed, and strict de-duplication rules keep each fact in exactly one section.
In this interview we discuss how Research Administration offices vary widely in scale and mission. Building Vandalizer—an AI tool suite flexible enough to serve them all—has required diverse institutional perspectives from the start.
What is a workflow and how can it help me automate an RA process?
A workflow is an ordered series of tasks which describe a process from start to finish.
The eCFR MCP Server is a free, open-source tool created by Sabrina Woo and Nathan Layman of Artificial Intelligence for Research Administration (AI4RA) that connects AI assistants directly to the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) API.
At the 2026 REACH Research Analytic Summit, the AI4RA (AI for Research Administration) team delivered a hands-on workshop titled “The Intersection Between AI and Data.” The full workshop (including slides, interactive tools, and a post-workshop guide) is now freely available online.