---
id: ch5-guide-advisor
type: spine
title: "How to use the PoliRural+ Advisor for RAP work"
readingTime: 2
standalone: true
core: false
teaser: "Scope the question, ask for sources, check them, push back: how the consortium used its custom GPT for SWOTs, gap analyses and a glossary."
parent: null
diagram: fig-guide-advisor
recallQ: "How should a RAP team phrase and handle questions to the PoliRural+ Advisor to get usable, checkable answers?"
recallA: "Name the region, the task and the measure, ask for sources, and check the citations, because the private RAG behind it retrieves only a small set of top-ranked chunks from the project corpus. Then keep the dialogue going and edit or question the output; D7.4 asks users to engage critically rather than accept answers."
highlights:
  - "A custom GPT over the project's Knowledge Space and References database, open to anyone with the link"
  - "Narrow questions retrieve better evidence than broad ones"
  - "Used for the May 2025 RAP gap and SWOT analysis of all nine pilots and a November 2025 EU glossary"
  - "Treat outputs as drafts: edit, question, verify"
status: accepted
concept: polirural-advisor
lang: en
lens: generic
depth: intro..standard
formalism: none
visuality: balanced
lengthBand: deep
genre: worked-example
state: edited
carriers: prose|diagram
---

**When to use it:** you are drafting or reviewing a RAP, a policy brief or a pilot evidence summary and want answers from the project's own documents rather than the open web.

## What you need

- **The Advisor link.** It is a custom GPT in ChatGPT, "publicly available to any user with the link" (D4.1 §6.2); D7.4 describes access "through a dedicated link". The pack does not give the address, so get it from your pilot or the project.
- No upload is needed: its contents stay in the project's Team workspace and are not used by ChatGPT to train its wider models (D4.1 §6.2).

## Steps

1. **State the task and the place.** Name your region, the RAP theme and the kind of output you want (SWOT, measure list, funding options).
2. **Keep the question narrow.** A RAG engine returns a small top-ranked set of chunks, often 10 to 20; a broad question pulls up general statements (D4.2 §3.6).
3. **Ask for the sources.** The service is designed to return citations, excerpts and reference trails (D4.2 §3.7). Open them.
4. **Continue the dialogue.** Clarify, challenge and follow up; one question and one answer does not use the tool well (D4.2 §3.6).
5. **Edit and question the draft.** D7.4 advises users to edit responses and question outputs rather than accept them.
6. **Move repeatable work to an agent.** If the same assessment runs for every measure, the Boxes & Arrows Agent Builder in JackDaw takes steps and quality checks.

## What you get

Answer drafts grounded in the project corpus, with citations you can check and reuse (D4.2 §3.7). In Annex O of D2.2, a pilot stakeholder asked "How can I develop an excellent RAP for my region?" and got an eight-part structure, from regional context to monitoring, with pointers to D2.1, D5.1 and D2.2.

## How the consortium used it

- **May 2025:** a summary of every pilot's RAP, its gap and a possible radical innovation, plus a SWOT per pilot. For County Monaghan it named the gap as rural mobility and remote-work infrastructure (D2.3 Annex A).
- **August 2025:** the Advisor analysed project outputs with the AI Act and EU guidelines on generative AI to draft the Participatory AI Principles; the first is that AI responses must be understood and questioned, not blindly accepted (D2.3 Annex C).
- **November 2025:** an EU glossary for RAP and grant alignment, built by scanning all public project outputs (D2.3 Annex C).

## Watch out

- The private RAG is only as good as the **completeness and preparation of the corpus**; GeoRAG still needs better links between texts, metadata and spatial services (D4.2 §3.7).
- A Knowledge Graph link for clearer evidence trails is **planned**, not built.

**Sources:**
- D4.2 PoliRuralPlus Platform Beta, §3.6 Boxes & Arrows Agent Builder; §3.7 Advisor and RAG services. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/421/D4.2_PoliRuralPlus_Platform_Beta.pdf)
- D4.1 PoliRuralPlus platform design, §6.2 PoliRuralPlus Advisor, Custom GPT. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/162/D4.1_PoliRuralPlus_platform_design_v1.pdf)
- D2.3 Rural-urban data analysis, Annex A Examples of using Advisor to improve RAPs; Annex C Examples of using Advisor for project and policy support. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/382/D2.3_Rural_Urban_data_analysis_v1.0.pdf)
- D2.2 Rural-urban linkages and opportunities post COVID-19, Annex O Example of a Pilot using the PoliRuralPlus GPT. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/140/Attachment_0_57.pdf)
- D7.4 Exploitation plans and business models, edition 1, Annex B PoliRuralPlus Advisor "Caddy" service. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/342/D7.4_Exploitation_plans__business_models_edition_1_v1.pdf)