robins-i-mcp
Server Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| ROBINS_MCP_PAPERS | No | The directory containing the papers (PDF/docx) to be assessed. If not set, the server looks in a `papers/` subdirectory of the current working directory. |
Capabilities
Features and capabilities supported by this server
| Capability | Details |
|---|---|
| tools | {
"listChanged": false
} |
| prompts | {
"listChanged": false
} |
| resources | {
"subscribe": false,
"listChanged": false
} |
| experimental | {} |
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| get_specA | Return the encoded ROBINS-I V2 specification: 13 preliminaries, 40 signalling questions across 6 domains (domain 1 in two variants), the response vocabularies, the evidence policy, and the algorithm fingerprint. OPTIONAL in the assessment flow — introspection only. assess_result already carries the rubric for the domain in hand, so calling both duplicates the payload. detail='compact' (default) gives question ids, own-words labels, response options and evidence modes; detail='full' adds every intent and assessor note. The descriptions are this implementation's own wording, NOT the published signalling-question text, which is not redistributable. The published question IDs are what make the output interoperable. |
| parse_documentA | PRIMARY entry point: parse a study report into a bundle with character-offset, source-tagged section spans. Every quote you later cite is resolved against THIS text, and every claim of absence is searched in it. PASS
PASS THE SUPPLEMENT WHEN YOU HAVE IT. Returns the section map, the text hash that keys later calls, and a cue survey — hit counts for the 15 evidence patterns, so you can see before reading where each domain's evidence lives and which absences already look real. |
| parse_pmcidA | CONVENIENCE entry point: retrieve an open-access article from Europe PMC by PMCID and parse it, main text plus PMC-hosted supplements, merged into one source-tagged bundle. Use it when you have no file in hand, or to auto-fetch an open-access paper's supplement; for a manuscript you were given, use parse_document. supplement_status is 'retrieved' when a supplement was obtained, else 'not_retrieved' — a supplement may still exist on the publisher site, so absence of retrieval is never proof of absence. Raises if no open-access full text is available. An APA-style citation is built from the article's JATS metadata; pass citation= to override it. |
| set_prespecified_confoundersA | Supply P1 — the confounding factors this REVIEW judges important for the intervention-outcome relationship, listed before any study is assessed. THIS IS BLOCKING. Domain 1 will not be scored without it. Question 1.1 asks whether all IMPORTANT confounding factors were controlled for, and 'important' is defined by this list, not by the paper's covariate table. Substituting the paper's own list would let the study grade its own confounding control, which is exactly the judgement ROBINS-I asks the reviewer to make independently. 'Important' means adjustment would be expected to change the estimate meaningfully; factors with only very weak associations are excluded. You MAY propose a list from domain knowledge or a DAG — that is useful and is
what this parameter is for — but a proposed list is not a ratified one. Leave
Scoped by |
| specify_resultA | Name the ONE numerical result being assessed, and settle C4. Required before any domain can be scored. ROBINS-I assesses a single effect estimate, not a paper. A study reporting
three outcomes across two analyses yields six assessments; give each its own
|
| assess_resultA | Return the assessment scaffold for ONE domain: the questions actually in play, their own-words intent, the response vocabulary each accepts, what evidence each answer must carry, and the cue searches already run against this bundle with their hits. THE SCAFFOLD IS PER DOMAIN BY DESIGN. Most signalling questions are unreachable on any given path — 24 of 41 were never reached on the reference assessment — and which of domain 1's two question sets exists at all is decided by C4. There is no flat 41-question rubric to fetch, and asking for one would mean answering questions the algorithm discards. domain=0 (default) returns the overview: the preliminaries, what is settled, which domains are done, and which are outstanding. domain=1..6 returns that domain's scaffold. Domain 1 is refused until P1 is set. Work a domain at a time: read the cues to find where the evidence is, answer only the questions the algorithm reaches, then submit_answers. You do not state a judgement — the server computes it from your answers. |
| submit_answersA | Submit one domain's signalling-question answers and get back the COMPUTED domain judgement, or (domain=0) finalize the assessment. Each element of Three things are enforced here, and all three are the point of the tool: every quote is resolved to character offsets in the ingested bundle and an unresolvable one is REJECTED with the nearest text found; every claim of absence is backed by a search THE SERVER runs, so it is reproducible; and the judgement is computed by the published algorithm from your answers, never asserted by you. If the traversal reaches a question you did not answer, the call returns status='incomplete' naming it — supply it and call again.
domain=0 finalizes: it computes the overall judgement (worst of the six
domains by default), assembles the stamped assessment and returns the
rendered report inline. |
| render_reportA | Re-render a finalized assessment as a self-contained HTML page — the meta panel, the six-domain summary strip, the per-domain judgement with its algorithm trail and the evidence behind every answer, styled to the Black Swan Causal Labs identity and carrying the provenance stamp. Returns the HTML in |
| export_robvisA | Combine assessment RECORDS from any number of runs into a CSV for robvis (McGuinness & Higgins), the standard tool for Cochrane-style risk-of-bias figures. A review of 200 studies is 200 separate runs — each assessment costs a
session, and nothing in this server survives between them. So pass
READ THE RETURNED This is not a column dump, because robvis's ROBINS-I template is ROBINS-I V1 and V2 is not drop-in compatible:
Neither layout can carry 'Low, except for concerns about uncontrolled confounding': robvis reduces every cell to its first initial over a five-fill palette, so it collapses to Low whatever string is written. Say so in the figure caption. |
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No prompts | |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
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