Lister AILister AI — Understand Your R&D Uncertainties and Strengthen Your Evidence
Lister uses powerful AI to answer questions about scientific or technological uncertainty, and supports every answer with published work.
Lister checks more than 10 external research sources, including OpenAlex, PubMed, Europe PMC and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Three ways Lister supports your claim
Included with every plan, from the £19 Claim plan upwards.
Understand existing research
Lister searches relevant published work to help establish the technical baseline.
Review your R&D explanations
Lister identifies possible gaps, unsupported assertions and areas requiring clarification.
Improve your answers
Lister proposes clearer explanations for business review and approval.
Published methods did not establish how adhesive-cure shrinkage affects fibre position within a 2 µm tolerance.
Every answer points to its source
Lister AI searches relevant scientific and technological publications to evaluate existing knowledge and identify potential limitations in established methods.
Where research sources are relevant, Lister provides references that businesses can review and verify against the original publications.
An advance in science or technology
What advance was sought, and why it is an advance for the field rather than only for your company
Pre-2025 published work already described passive fibre-to-chip alignment, with predicted misalignment below 2 µm and added loss below 1 dB [S5]. These concern different coupling structures and do not establish the performance of our adhesive-cure and datum process. No published work found directly resolving the combined effects of adhesive-cure shrinkage, datum tolerance and post-cure optical drift.
R&D that started before you realised it was R&D
Work often begins in a sales, investment or internal project, or as a regular task, before anyone calls it R&D. It can become part of your R&D tax relief claim as long as you can explain it.
In Plio, assign the task or work package to your R&D project and add why it is R&D. Lister AI checks the reason, and it becomes R&D evidence. The work continues in its original project, and the R&D project shows it with its costs.
Tests showed standard housings shift the fibre after adhesive cure. Resolving it needs alignment work that existing methods do not cover.
Lister AI ✓ Reason linked to the technological uncertainty in R-00003.
How is Lister AI different from general-purpose AI tools?
General-purpose AI tools can help explain R&D tax relief requirements and draft technical descriptions, but they rely heavily on the information and instructions provided by the user.
Lister AI is purpose-built to help UK businesses prepare technical evidence for HMRC R&D tax relief claims.
Unlike general-purpose AI tools, Lister follows a structured, HMRC-aligned assessment process to:
Identify scientific or technological uncertainties
Assess whether the challenges described involve genuine technological uncertainty rather than routine development or business difficulties.
Evaluate advances in science or technology
Examine whether the project sought an advance beyond existing scientific or technological knowledge or capabilities.
Compare against published research
Search relevant scientific and technical publications to assess what was publicly known and whether established solutions were available at the relevant time.
Identify evidence gaps
Highlight unsupported statements, missing technical details and areas requiring further explanation.
Recommend improvements
Provide specific recommendations to strengthen technical descriptions and supporting evidence.
Support ongoing R&D documentation
Connect assessments with the business's recorded R&D activities, helping maintain evidence throughout the project rather than reconstructing it only when preparing a claim.
Lister does more than generate text. It provides a structured assessment of the technical evidence behind an R&D tax relief claim.
Lister does not determine HMRC eligibility, guarantee that expenditure qualifies or replace professional judgement. Businesses remain responsible for verifying their evidence and the information submitted to HMRC.
Lister AI Is Built on Extensive R&D Evidence Testing
Lister AI has been developed and refined through systematic testing across scientific and technological R&D scenarios, including technical uncertainties, intended advances, research-source reliability and evidence quality.
Tested Across Thousands of AI Assessments
What we test
- Technological uncertainty assessment
- Scientific and technological advances
- Research-source reliability
- Unsupported claims and evidence gaps
- Consistency across repeated runs
- Challenging R&D scenarios
Our testing process includes repeated assessments, technical evidence reviews, source verification checks and challenging scenarios across different R&D sectors.
We test not only whether Lister produces useful explanations, but also whether it identifies unsupported claims, recognises missing evidence and reaches consistent assessment conclusions.
Our objective is not to make every project qualify. It is to help businesses identify what their technical evidence genuinely supports.
Figures represent cumulative internal development and benchmark testing across multiple model versions, including repeated evaluations of the same cases. Results do not represent independently certified accuracy or guarantee HMRC claim acceptance.
Start your R&D record with Lister AI
Lister AI assists with claim preparation. It does not certify R&D eligibility or guarantee HMRC acceptance.