Post-award is where money already won has to be kept: funders release the next tranche only when a compliant progress report lands on time, and they claw back or flag awards when reports slip or numbers don't reconcile. This skill drafts those deliverables — progress/annual reports, final reports, milestone and deliverable tracking, budget-vs-actual narratives, and no-cost-extension (NCE) and rebudgeting justifications — in the exact shape each major funder demands.
It is the post-award counterpart to the pre-award proposal skills: it never writes a new proposal or a fresh budget request. It reports against an award that already exists.
When to Use This Skill
Use this skill when the user needs to:
- Draft an NIH RPPR (Research Performance Progress Report) — Annual (SNAP, non-SNAP, or multi-year funded), Interim, or Final — section by section.
- Draft an NSF annual or final project report, or the public-audience Project Outcomes Report.
- Draft a Horizon Europe / ERC periodic or final report — the technical narrative (Part B) and the structured-table / financial-statement framing.
- Track milestones and deliverables against a workplan and write the status narrative.
- Write a budget-vs-actual (variance) narrative explaining over/under-spend by category.
- Justify a no-cost extension or a rebudgeting / virement request.
- Work out when each report is due from the award start/end dates
(
scripts/report_deadlines.py).
Does NOT Trigger — route these elsewhere
| The request is really about… | Route to |
|---|---|
| Writing a new proposal / project description for NSF, NIH, DOE, DARPA, NSTC (pre-award) | alterlab-research-grants |
| A TÜBİTAK proposal (1001, 1002, etc.) — Turkish funder, pre-award | alterlab-tubitak-proposal |
| Akademik Teşvik annual incentive-points application (ÜAK) | alterlab-akademik-tesvik |
| A data management plan / KVKK-compliant DMP for the proposal stage | alterlab-kvkk-dmp |
| A recommendation / reference letter for a student or colleague | alterlab-recommendation-letters |
| Program / department accreditation assessment & assurance-of-learning reports | alterlab-accreditation-aol |
| Verifying that the citations in the report actually exist | alterlab-citation-verifier |
This skill assumes the award is already made. If the user is still competing for funding, stop and route to the pre-award skill above.
The funder formats (verified)
Each funder fixes the structure; do not invent sections. Deep per-funder detail —
every section, what goes in it, and which sections apply to which report type —
lives in references/funder_formats.md. The
essentials:
NIH — RPPR (submitted in eRA Commons)
Three report types share one section skeleton (A–I), per the NIH RPPR Instruction Guide (eRA, January 2026):
| § | Title | Note |
|---|---|---|
| A | Cover Page | |
| B | Accomplishments | goals, what was done (B.2 ≤ 2 pages for most awards), training, dissemination, next-period plans |
| C | Products | C.1 publications (each must comply with the NIH Public Access Policy), datasets, software, IP; C.5.c progress against the Data Management and Sharing Plan |
| D | Participants | personnel + effort; Common Form Biosketch / Current and Pending (Other) Support (SciENcv) for new or changed senior/key personnel — enforced since 8 May 2026; only D.1 on Interim/Final |
| E | Impact | impact on the field, other disciplines, society |
| F | Changes | challenges/delays and significant changes to human subjects, animals, biohazards, select agents; Annual only — not on Interim/Final |
| G | Special Reporting Requirements | G.1 award-term items, incl. each senior/key person's annual malign-foreign-talent-program certification (RPPRs submitted on or after 25 Jan 2026); G.10 unobligated balance > 25% |
| H | Budget | Annual non-SNAP only — not on Interim/Final |
| I | Outcomes | required on Interim & Final, public-facing |
Report types: Annual (next budget period; SNAP, non-SNAP, or multi-year funded (MYF) — NIH has fully funded many new awards up front since FY2025, and those file an annual RPPR on each award anniversary), Interim (filed when a Type 2 renewal is submitted — becomes the Final report if the renewal is not funded), Final (closeout). The RPPR is not a vehicle for requesting a change of scope; that needs separate prior approval. See the references file before drafting.
NSF — project reports (submitted in Research.gov)
- Annual project report — that year's activities and broader impacts.
- Final project report — refers only to the final funded year (it is not cumulative).
- Project Outcomes Report (POR) — a public-audience summary of no more than 800 words, separate from the final report.
- Policy base: PAPPG NSF 24-1 plus Supplements 1–2 (NSF deferred a 26-1 edition). Since Supplement 2 (awards issued on or after 22 Jan 2026) journal articles go to the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR) by the publication date with no embargo, PAR metadata auto-populates the report's products, and datasets can no longer be typed directly into a project report.
Horizon Europe / ERC — periodic & final reports (EU Funding & Tenders Portal)
- A Technical Report in two parts: Part A (structured tables, generated by the Portal from the Continuous Reporting module) and Part B (the narrative, mirroring the application form and reporting differences/deviations).
- A Financial Report: individual and consolidated Financial Statements (plus a Certificate on the Financial Statements where the threshold applies).
- A Continuous Reporting module that stays open for the whole project and feeds Part A automatically.
- Lump-sum grants declare completed work packages instead of actual costs: the financial statement is generated from the work packages declared complete, and the use-of-resources explanation and CFS do not apply.
- ERC splits reporting into a scientific report (interim, typically after month 24 of a 5-year grant) and a periodic (financial) report (typically after month 30), each due within 60 days of its own period end; for the final period both are submitted together.
Deadlines — compute them, don't guess
Reporting deadlines are deterministic functions of the award dates, and missing one can suspend payments. Use the helper instead of recalling rules from memory:
uv run python skills/faculty-life/alterlab-grant-reporting/scripts/report_deadlines.py \
--funder nih-snap --budget-period-start 2026-09-01 --project-end 2028-08-31
It encodes only the verified rules (sourced in references/funder_formats.md):
- NIH SNAP Annual RPPR due the 15th of the month before the month in which
the budget period ends (ends 30 Nov → due 15 Oct); non-SNAP due the
1st of that month (→ 1 Oct); a weekend or federal-holiday date moves to the
next business day. MYF (
--funder nih-myf) due on or before each award anniversary. Final or Interim RPPR within 120 days of the period-of-performance end. - NSF annual report 90 days before the budget-period end; final report and Project Outcomes Report within 120 days after the award end date.
- Horizon Europe / ERC periodic (and final) report within 60 days after each reporting period ends.
The script prints the computed due dates as a table or JSON; it does no network I/O and always tells the user to confirm against the funder's own notice of award, because programs can override these defaults. It shifts weekend dates but does not model US federal holidays, so a date it prints is never later than the real deadline.
How to draft a report
- Identify the funder and report type first — that fixes the template. If the user hasn't said, ask (NIH vs NSF vs EU; Annual vs Final).
- Pull the deadline with
report_deadlines.pyfrom the award dates and lead with it, so the user knows the time pressure. - Gather the inputs the sections need: aims/objectives and milestones, what was accomplished this period, products (publications, data, software), personnel and effort, and the budget figures (planned vs actual).
- Draft section by section in the funder's own order and headings. Never merge or rename funder sections. For each accomplishment, tie it back to a stated aim or deliverable.
- Write the variance narrative for any budget category off plan: state the
planned vs actual amount, the reason, and the corrective action or the
rebudgeting/NCE request it motivates. Detail and templates:
references/budget_variance.md. - For an NCE or rebudgeting request, use the justification structure in
references/nce_rebudget.md: unspent-funds status, the programmatic reason, the revised timeline, and the explicit confirmation that no new scope or new funds are requested. - Flag, never fabricate. Where a number, a publication, or an outcome is
missing, mark it
[TODO: confirm]for the user — do not invent figures, dates, DOIs, or results. If citations are involved, hand the reference list toalterlab-citation-verifier.
Guardrails
- No invented facts. Budget figures, effort percentages, milestone dates,
publication details, and award numbers come only from the user's materials. Mark
anything missing as a
[TODO]placeholder. - The user submits, not the skill. This skill drafts text; the user files it through eRA Commons / Research.gov / the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. The skill has no portal access and claims none.
- Confirm deadlines against the notice of award. The calculator encodes the general rules; specific programs and cooperative agreements can override them.
- Reporting period boundaries matter. An NSF final report covers only the final funded year; an NIH Interim/Final RPPR adds Section I Outcomes and drops Sections F and H (and B.6 plans). Don't carry the wrong scope across report types.
- Surface compliance items early. Non-compliant NIH publications listed in C.1 have to be brought into Public Access compliance before the award renews on time, and NIH notes this generally takes weeks; the senior/key-personnel MFTRP certifications (G.1) and, for awards under the 2023 DMS Policy, DMS-plan progress (C.5.c) are required entries. Ask about all three before drafting rather than at submission.
References
references/funder_formats.md— full NIH RPPR A–I section guide (with which sections apply to Annual/Interim/Final), NSF report types, and Horizon Europe / ERC report structure, each with its source.references/budget_variance.md— budget-vs-actual narrative template, variance categories, and worked examples.references/nce_rebudget.md— no-cost-extension and rebudgeting/virement justification structures and the questions each funder asks.scripts/report_deadlines.py— stdlib-only report-deadline calculator.
Part of the AlterLab Academic Skills suite.