What's new · Sapling SAP

Sapling SAP is a preview: versions change quickly. Dates are those of the commits.

0.14.0 (2026-11-14)#

A view "Run and check" in the Sapling side bar: what running the programs needs, said plainly, with one button for each missing item (install DataStep Studio for R or DataStep Studio, connect the AI agent, the R packages); Run in R, Run in SAS (asks before any study data are copied to the SAS server), Check.
Check lists each problem by program and output, with its trace as clickable steps back to the block of the plan or the rule of the specification, and the log lines around an error.
With an AI connected: Ask the agent to find the cause. It proposes one correction, tested in a copy; the Inbox shows it as a correction, or, apart and with the two readings side by side, as a change of the plan that needs your reason. Only you accept or decline.
A walkthrough step "Optional: run it". A small extension pack (vscode-pack/) for the three tools.

The sample study is Sapling's own: a made-up hypertension trial with a protocol written for it and dummy data. The CDISC pilot is no longer in the package.
The sample's walkthrough adds an efficacy table (MMRM of the change in blood pressure) from a template with three questions.
A page for a statistical design plan (design.qmd): assumptions with their basis, the last simulation's results, a quick simulation button, findings as proposals.
A responder template (logistic regression) that derives its responder flag with the table; reference-based sensitivity analyses.
Without AI, more decisions of the interview write their blocks (design, interim looks, multiplicity, the estimand's event with its records rule, missing data); the protocol sentence is cited when it is found with a good score.
Walkthrough steps tick when the work is done, the first-run message says what Restricted Mode means, the table shell stays inside the page.

The tester's path: a sample study inside the extension, a ten-minute walkthrough that needs no AI, R or command line, "Check What Sapling Needs", the data and AI statement, "Give Feedback".
Without an AI, 8 of the 22 decisions of the pilot plan write their blocks; "What is missing" finds what a plan lacks from its own structure.

Sapling works without AI: the interview's options (house rules, conventions, the practice of recent public SAPs with counts), proposals from the rules and from templates, no dead AI button.
When an AI is connected it works ahead and in parallel: no waiting in the interview, the blocks that follow a decision arrive in the inbox.

AI proposals in the page: a new or changed block shown at its place, compiled first; accept, decline with a reason, improve.
Ask AI to change a block; the decision interview; house rules and what the assistant learns (plain files you can read and clear).
The chat and the review inbox; prompts corrected after a pass with a real AI.

The visual editor never shows a white page; specifications (ADaM, TLF) as their own page with each row against the SAP.
Fifteen usability faults found while filming fixed: the PDF of a draft and its reasons, one source error per new table, a visible method choice, Export Word, "New SAP" in one step, Restricted Mode explained.

The package built from the Markdown source of the plan (the 0.7.0 package was of the earlier LaTeX form).

The SAP as a document with a compiler to the structured SAP, a knowledge base of guideline items, review rules, the Method Lab, the visual editor, an AI-agnostic assistant, an MCP server.