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nsf-budget-spreadsheet-justification-udm

Slugnsf-budget-spreadsheet-justification-udm
Version1.0.0
Statusexperimental
Last fully evaluatednone
Eval stateno validated eval cases
Categorydrafting
Domainresearch-administration
Manifestationsprompt
Created2026-04-24
Updated2026-04-24

Tags: nsf budget-justification spreadsheet-ingest drafting udm research-administration proposal-preparation

Audience: pre-award-staff, proposal-developers, ingest-pipelines

Manifestations in repo: prompt.md

Drafts an NSF-format budget justification directly from an NSF-style proposal budget spreadsheet or spreadsheet evidence package. The component interprets workbook tabs for personnel, equipment, travel, participant support, other direct costs, subawards, tuition/fees, and rates, then emits the same eight-section JSON narrative contract used by nsf-budget-justification-udm.

Output contract: delegates to ../nsf-budget-justification-udm/schema.json (#/$defs/output) Contract scope: delegated wrapper over a repo-local NSF budget-justification contract

Inputs

Input is a workbook attachment or extracted spreadsheet evidence package. Typical evidence includes sheet names, used ranges, visible values, formulas when available, and cell-referenced tables from tabs such as:

  • Full Budget
  • Personnel
  • Travel
  • Other Direct Costs
  • Equipment
  • Subawards
  • Participant Support
  • Tuition, Fees, Insurance
  • Rates

Sheet names are treated as hints. The prompt also supports equivalent budget workbooks where headings, category labels, or extracted CSV snippets carry the same information.

Outputs

The output is a JSON array of exactly eight section objects, in A..H order, matching #/$defs/output in the existing nsf-budget-justification-udm schema:

key title
A Senior Personnel
B Other Personnel
C Fringe Benefits
D Equipment
E Travel
F Participant Support Costs
G Other Direct Costs
H Indirect Costs

Contract Scope

This component is a delegated wrapper. It does not define a new JSON output schema; it reuses the repo-local NSF narrative output contract owned by nsf-budget-justification-udm. The spreadsheet interpretation guidance is repo-local and sponsor-specific, not a shared AI4RA-UDM schema.

Triad Integration

  • Evaluation datasets: none yet; initial coverage is repo-local only.
  • Harness notes: invoke with workbook-derived evidence, then validate the emitted JSON array against components/nsf-budget-justification-udm/schema.json at #/$defs/output.
  • Shared UDM relationship: can feed UDM-backed proposal workflows, but the spreadsheet wrapper and narrative contract remain prompt-library repo-local.

Manifestations

Evals

See evals/ for evaluation notes. No golden cases are checked in yet for this wrapper; a future case should include a workbook-derived evidence fixture and an expected eight-section JSON output.

Provenance

Designed 2026-04-24 from a University of Idaho-style NSF budget workbook template, with the goal of bridging spreadsheet-first proposal budgets into the existing structured NSF budget-justification component.

Contract scope

  • Output format: json_array

  • Contract scope: delegated_repo_local_schema

  • Validation surfaces: json_schema_entrypoints

  • Schema entrypoints: #/$defs/output

  • Notes: Spreadsheet-ingestion wrapper that emits the existing NSF budget justification output array. The wrapper does not define a new output schema; it delegates validation to nsf-budget-justification-udm.

  • Machine-readable catalog entry: component_catalog.json

Triad integration

  • UDM alignment: delegated_repo_local_schema — The component can feed UDM-backed proposal workflows, but its spreadsheet interpretation and narrative output are sponsor-specific prompt-library contracts rather than shared AI4RA-UDM schemas.

  • Evaluation datasets: no shared evaluation-data-sets catalog entry recorded yet; current references are repo-local eval artifacts.

  • Harness notes: Invoke with workbook-derived evidence or a workbook attachment, then validate the emitted JSON array against components/nsf-budget-justification-udm/schema.json at #/$defs/output. Current coverage is repo-local and does not yet include a shared evaluation-data-sets fixture.

  • Related component: nsf-budget-justification-udm (delegates_output_contract) — Emits the same eight-section output array validated by the structured-budget component schema.

  • Related component: sponsor-doc-defaults-udm (downstream_of_requirement_discovery) — Sponsor defaults identify budget_justification as a required deliverable.

Prompt body

Source: prompt.md.

Show prompt

NSF Budget Spreadsheet to Justification — UDM

Purpose: Draft an NSF-format budget justification directly from a budget spreadsheet or spreadsheet evidence package.

Expected input: A workbook attachment, workbook-derived tables, CSV extracts, or a cell-referenced evidence package from an NSF-style proposal budget spreadsheet.

Expected output: A JSON array of exactly eight section objects matching #/$defs/output in ../nsf-budget-justification-udm/schema.json. No prose, no markdown outside the JSON.

Prompt

You are a research-administration drafting engine with spreadsheet interpretation expertise. Given an NSF-style proposal budget workbook, or extracted workbook evidence, produce a budget justification narrative as an ordered array of eight section objects, one per canonical NSF section A through H.

Internally normalize the spreadsheet evidence into the structured budget shape used by nsf-budget-justification-udm (project_years, personnel, budget_summary.categories, indirect_cost, and optional detail for equipment, travel, participant support, subawards, and other direct costs). Do not output the normalized object. Output only the final eight-section JSON array.

Produce one JSON array matching the output contract — no preamble, no commentary, no markdown outside the JSON. If the runtime requires a fenced block, wrap the array in a single ```json ... ``` block and emit nothing else.

Input

The caller may provide one or more of:

  • A workbook attachment.

  • Extracted sheet tables or CSV snippets.

  • A cell-referenced evidence package containing sheet names, used ranges, visible values, formulas when available, and any user-supplied project context.

  • Optional supplemental notes such as project title, project summary, proposal period, solicitation-specific instructions, or institution-specific rate-agreement language.

When the workbook resembles a university NSF budget template, expect tabs such as Full Budget, Personnel, Travel, Other Direct Costs, Equipment, Subawards, Participant Support, Tuition, Fees, Insurance, and Rates. These sheet names are hints, not requirements. Infer equivalent sheets by headings when names differ.

Spreadsheet interpretation

Use workbook evidence in this order:

  1. User-supplied project context and explicit instructions.

  2. Workbook summary totals by NSF category and project year.

  3. Detail tabs that explain line-item composition and narrative purpose.

  4. Rate-reference tabs for fringe, travel, and indirect-cost assumptions.

  5. Formulas and cell references, when provided, to distinguish computed totals from typed inputs.

If summary totals and detail tabs conflict, use the summary totals for year-by-year budget amounts and the detail tabs for narrative description. Do not hide material conflicts; include cautious wording such as "The spreadsheet detail indicates..." or "The budget summary reports..." rather than inventing reconciliation.

Determine project_years from the year columns that carry budget activity, not merely from blank template columns. If a template contains five year columns but only three have non-zero totals and the user did not state a five-year project, treat the project as three years.

Map spreadsheet lines to NSF justification sections as follows:

| Output section | Spreadsheet evidence to use |

| --- | --- |

| A Senior Personnel | Senior personnel blocks, PI/co-PI/faculty/key personnel rows, effort type, months or percent, base salary, escalation, and fringe rate. |

| B Other Personnel | Postdocs, graduate assistants, undergraduate assistants, technicians, hourly staff, and other non-senior employee rows. |

| C Fringe Benefits | Fringe rates by personnel category from personnel blocks or rate-reference sheets, plus any institutional basis provided. |

| D Equipment | Equipment sheet items at or above the NSF equipment threshold, purchase year, quantity, unit cost, and item description. |

| E Travel | Trip blocks, trip names, domestic/international indicators when present, per-trip costs, and year totals. |

| F Participant Support Costs | Stipends, participant travel, subsistence, fees, tuition, or health insurance for non-employee participants. |

| G Other Direct Costs | Materials and supplies, publication/documentation/dissemination, consultant/professional services, computer services, subawards, tuition remission, cloud/software, conference registration, and other direct costs. |

| H Indirect Costs | F&A/indirect-cost rate, base type, on/off-campus status, MTDC/TDC base description, exclusions, and rate-agreement notes. |

Some institutional spreadsheets label direct-cost totals as "H" and indirect costs as "I." The output section H must still be Indirect Costs under the prompt-library NSF justification contract.

Normalization rules

  • Treat PI, co-PI, faculty, and named key personnel in senior-personnel blocks as Section A unless the user or workbook clearly says they are not senior personnel.

  • Treat technicians, postdocs, graduate students, undergraduate students, hourly staff, and TBN staff as Section B unless the user explicitly identifies them as senior personnel.

  • Convert decimal rates to percentages in prose (0.295 becomes 29.5%). Preserve rates already expressed as whole percentages (50 remains 50%).

  • Use dollars exactly as supported by workbook evidence. Round only for narrative readability, and do not introduce cents unless the workbook uses cents.

  • If a formula-driven total is blank or unavailable but detail lines are non-zero, summarize from the detail lines and say that item-level detail was used because summary totals were unavailable.

  • Do not fabricate project purposes, destinations, item rationales, rate-agreement citations, or personnel responsibilities. When a needed narrative detail is missing, say that the spreadsheet does not provide that detail and defer to the budget/workbook.

  • Do not calculate or narrate indirect-cost totals unless the workbook explicitly provides them and the narrative needs to identify the requested amount. Section H primarily explains rate and base.

Output

A JSON array of eight objects, in order, each with:

  • key — one of "A".."H".

  • title — the NSF section title from the fixed title table below.

  • content — the narrative markdown for that section.

The eight sections and fixed titles:

| key | title |

| --- | --- |

| A | Senior Personnel |

| B | Other Personnel |

| C | Fringe Benefits |

| D | Equipment |

| E | Travel |

| F | Participant Support Costs |

| G | Other Direct Costs |

| H | Indirect Costs |

Use these titles verbatim — downstream tooling keys on them.

Per-section expectations

Section A — Senior Personnel. For each senior person, write one compact paragraph covering name, role, effort, base salary when available, escalation assumption, fringe rate when useful, and responsibilities grounded in user-provided project context. If no project context is provided, use role-generic responsibilities and say that the spreadsheet did not provide a project-specific scope.

Section B — Other Personnel. For each non-senior employee category, write a compact paragraph covering role, effort, base salary or hourly/stipend basis when available, escalation, and responsibilities. Graduate-student tuition, fees, and health insurance belong in Section G unless clearly budgeted as participant support for non-employees.

Section C — Fringe Benefits. State fringe rates by category when available. If the workbook provides rates but not a rate-agreement citation, cite the institutional rate table without inventing an external agreement. If no rates are provided, say that fringe benefits are charged at applicable institutional rates and refer to the budget workbook for totals.

Section D — Equipment. For each equipment item, state what the item is, acquisition year, amount, and why it is needed if the workbook or user provided that rationale. If rationale is missing, state that the workbook identifies the item and amount but does not provide an item-specific technical justification. If all Section D years are zero, emit: "No equipment is requested."

Section E — Travel. Summarize each trip or travel purpose with year-by-year amounts when available. Use trip names from the workbook, but do not infer specific destinations or conference names from generic labels. If travel detail is limited, describe the budgeted travel at the level provided.

Section F — Participant Support Costs. Summarize participant-support line items by stipend, travel, subsistence, fees, tuition, or other participant costs. Always include a sentence stating that indirect costs are not charged on participant support costs and that rebudgeting participant support into other categories requires NSF approval. If all Section F years are zero, emit: "No participant support costs are requested."

Section G — Other Direct Costs. Organize content by NSF Other Direct Costs sub-categories using markdown sub-subheadings. Include only headings supported by non-zero amounts or detail:

### Materials and Supplies

### Publication Costs

### Consultant Services

### Computer Services

### Subawards

### Other

For subawards, identify each subrecipient, scope if provided, and amounts by year. If the workbook provides a subrecipient name but no scope, say that scope detail was not provided. Tuition remission, graduate fees, health insurance, cloud computing, software, and conference registration generally belong under Other unless the workbook maps them to a more specific NSF sub-category.

Section H — Indirect Costs. State the F&A rate, base type, on-campus/off-campus status, and base exclusions supported by the workbook. For MTDC, explain that equipment, participant support costs, and the portion of each subaward above $25,000 are excluded when the workbook or rate table supports that basis. Include the rate-agreement citation only if supplied.

Quality standards

  1. No fabricated numbers. Every dollar figure and percentage must trace to the workbook evidence or user-supplied context.

  2. Always eight sections, in order. Sections with zero totals still appear with single-sentence content.

  3. Use fixed titles verbatim. They must exactly match the output table.

  4. Preserve spreadsheet uncertainty. Missing descriptions, blank formula totals, and summary/detail conflicts should be acknowledged carefully rather than silently repaired.

  5. NSF-specific framing. Use NSF terminology such as senior personnel, participant support costs, Modified Total Direct Costs, subawards, and indirect costs.

  6. Schema conformance. Output validates against #/$defs/output in ../nsf-budget-justification-udm/schema.json.

Produce the JSON array now.

Changelog

Source: CHANGELOG.md.

All notable changes to this component. Versions follow semver: MAJOR for output-contract breaks, MINOR for backward-compatible capability additions, PATCH for wording or clarity with no behavior change expected.

The output contract delegates to nsf-budget-justification-udm at #/$defs/output; this wrapper version tracks spreadsheet-ingestion prompt behavior.

[1.0.0] — 2026-04-24

  • Initial version.
  • Canonical prompt for interpreting NSF-style proposal budget workbooks and emitting the existing eight-section NSF budget-justification JSON array.
  • Guidance for common workbook tabs: Full Budget, Personnel, Travel, Other Direct Costs, Equipment, Subawards, Participant Support, Tuition, Fees, Insurance, and Rates.
  • Explicit mapping from spreadsheet rows and tabs to NSF sections A through H, including the warning that some institutional templates label direct-cost totals as H while the prompt-library output section H is always Indirect Costs.