natural-language-report-service
A user asks for a report in Dutch. An LLM turns the question into a spec. A fixed program turns the spec into small SPARQL queries, joins the results and writes a CSV. The LLM writes no SPARQL and sees no report data.
Ad-hoc reports only. The scheduled reports stay in
loket-report-generation-service.
Two modes: refine, then execute
Every turn is classified first. One small LLM call (src/llm/mode.js)
returns true/false: does the user's last message clearly say "run it now" or
not. The answer picks one of two deterministic code paths.
Refinement (Modus A). The LLM proposes a spec and explains in Dutch what
it will list and filter. It may call lookup_values to search code lists for
candidate values, so its filter suggestions name real values instead of
guesses, explore_data to see the predicates, values and links of a target
class, and sample_spec to see a few rows a draft spec finds. All three read
the public graph only, under the service scope. The LLM never runs a report
and never learns what the report would hold: the report runs as the user, on
data the LLM may not see, so a sample is a hint, not a check. The user must confirm before anything executes.
As long as the user has not given a clear command, the turn stays in this
mode.
Execution (Modus B). The user has confirmed. No LLM runs. The last spec bijlage in the conversation is the agreed spec: the service reads it from the share, checks it against its profile and runs it as the caller. The answer is a fixed Dutch text with the CSV and the spec as bijlagen. No spec yet, a spec that no longer checks out, or a failed run each give a fixed Dutch failure message. Nothing is retried and no spec is rewritten.
Only refinement has tools: list_profiles, describe_profile,
validate_spec, read_spec, lookup_values, explore_data and
sample_spec.
How it works
Two documents drive everything:
| Who writes it | When | Where | |
|---|---|---|---|
| profile | the app | once, committed | config/report-profiles/*.ttl, mounted at /config/profiles/ |
| spec | the LLM | one per question | in the request, not stored |
A profile is a SHACL shapes graph: one sh:NodeShape per entity, fields
as sh:property, code lists via sh:class, links via sh:node. The service
ships no profile and knows no vocabulary; profiles live in the app repo.
Profiles load at boot; a broken profile stops the service.
A spec is rep:ReportSpec + sh:NodeShape: sh:property selects the
subjects, rep:columns says what the CSV holds. The two never interact. The
namespace is http://mu.semte.ch/vocabularies/reporting/ (rep:).
A filter tests only the end of its own path. To test a node in the middle of
a path ("the mandate whose role is Burgemeester"), a filter or column carries
rep:where: a condition written like a filter, from the row, that shares the
nodes of every step it has in common with its host. On a column it drops
values from the cell, never rows. The app's report-spec-readme.md has the
details and an example.
The run: check → seed (SELECT DISTINCT ?s, paged) → columns (per group, per
chunk of subjects) → assemble (dedup + rep:collect) → CSV → register file
- report resource. One run per confirmed spec.
One identity: mu-authorization's
All SPARQL goes through the template's own helpers (mu's query and
update). They attach the caller's session from
the request context, and mu-authorization decides graphs and visibility; the
service never touches an auth header. The context lives for the whole run,
also past the 202 the chat turn answers with, so background writes stay
the caller's.
The tools the LLM calls return URIs, counts, statuses and column names — never a cell value.
The rule: no report data reaches the LLM
No report row, row count or run error ever reaches the LLM. A run starts
after the turn's only LLM call (the mode check) and answers with fixed text.
What the LLM does see: the conversation, the profiles, validator messages,
spec files, and public data read under the service scope (inlined code
lists, lookup_values, explore_data and sample_spec, see below).
Keep it that way. Every database read the LLM drives goes through
publicQuery (the service scope), never the caller's session, and none of
them counts. sample_spec runs a draft spec's queries on the public graph
only; it is not the report. validate_spec still says where each
rep:where applies, and the proposal repeats it to the user.
The service scope
The LLM's own reads during refinement (describe_profile's code lists,
lookup_values, explore_data and sample_spec) run under a service
scope, not the caller's session: publicQuery in src/llm/lookup.js. mu's
query(q, { scope }) sends mu-auth-scope; the sparql-parser config grants
that scope read access to http://mu.semte.ch/graphs/public only. So
refinement reads only the public graph, regardless of who calls. Execution
still runs as the caller, so the report contains what they may see, and the
LLM sees none of it.
The scope URI is SERVICE_SCOPE (default
http://services.semantic.works/natural-language-report) and must match the
with-scope grant in the app's sparql-parser config.lisp. Do not set
DEFAULT_MU_AUTH_SCOPE on the service: that would scope every query
(including the run and the chat store) and break them.
The endpoint
POST /assistant/conversations/:id/turns { content } → 202 { id }
This is the chat. The route is in app.js: it records the question, answers
202 with the message id, then classifies the turn and refines or executes
(src/report-assistant.js) with the conversation's history. The
conversation, message and bijlage reads and writes are in src/chat.js. The
answer and its bijlagen are written when the turn ends. The browser polls
/chat-conversations/:id?include=messages.attachments and finds the answer
that way. Failure is a message, never a silent loader.
The chat needs LLM_BASE_URL; without it every turn answers with a failure
message. A full-org report run takes minutes.
The internal tools
The refinement loop drives one tool set (src/llm/tools.js). The tools are
machinery, not an external surface. All LLM-facing text (system prompts,
profile menu, tool descriptions, validator errors) is English; the answer the
user sees is Dutch.
Environment
| Var | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
MU_SPARQL_ENDPOINT |
— | the auth layer, e.g. http://database:8890/sparql. Never virtuoso. |
REPORT_CLASS |
…/reporting/Report |
type of the report resource |
CSV_SEPARATOR |
; |
CSV column separator |
SUBJECT_CHUNK_SIZE |
100 |
subjects per column query (VALUES batch size); lower it when the auth layer rejects long queries |
ROW_LIMIT |
200000 |
seed limit; failing the job beats truncating |
MAX_PATH_DEPTH |
8 |
longest allowed spec path |
INLINE_VALUES_MAX |
50 |
code lists up to this size are inlined in describe_profile |
VALUES_TTL |
3600 |
seconds the inlined lists are cached |
LLM_BASE_URL |
— | the chat's LLM; OpenAI-compatible (https://ollama.com/v1) |
LLM_MODEL |
— | e.g. gpt-oss:120b |
LLM_API_KEY |
— | bearer token, optional for local Ollama |
SEED_PAGE_SIZE |
5000 |
seed page size |
SUBJECT_CHUNK_SIZE |
100 |
see above |
SHARE_DIR |
/share |
where CSVs are written |
CHAT_ASSISTANT_URI |
— | the prov:SoftwareAgent that signs assistant messages; found by lookup when unset |
CHAT_HISTORY_LIMIT |
20 |
messages of history a turn reads |
SERVICE_SCOPE |
http://services.semantic.works/natural-language-report |
the mu-auth-scope for the LLM's own reads (code lists, lookup_values, explore_data, sample_spec). Must match the with-scope grant in the app's sparql-parser config. |
Do not set ALLOW_MU_AUTH_SUDO; the template then refuses sudo queries.
In the stack
docker-compose.yml:
natural-language-report:
build: ../natural-language-report-service/
image: lblod/natural-language-report-service:0.2.0
volumes:
- ./data/files:/share
- ./config/report-profiles/:/config/profiles/
config/dispatcher/dispatcher.ex:
match "/assistant/*path" do
forward conn, path, "http://natural-language-report/assistant/"
end
One route: the chat's turn endpoint.
First deploy: docker compose build natural-language-report, then
docker compose up -d natural-language-report dispatcher.
Authorization
Admin only: config.ex grants reporting:Report to LoketAdmin (o-admin-rwf)
alone. A toezicht user can run the seed and read the CSV data, but the
reporting:Report triples are silently dropped by the auth layer (their group
may not write that type), so the report URI the tools return is dangling for
non-admin callers. Opening this up means adding the type to their group first.
Rules the code holds to
- Query
http://database:8890/sparql. Never virtuoso. Never sudo. - No
GRAPHclauses, no property paths, no aggregates, no inline comments: mu-authorization is a SPARQL 1.0 subset. - Generated queries use full URIs, no prefixes (a bare
mu:uuidprefixed name without its PREFIX line is an opaque 500).
Libraries
n3— Turtle parsing (profiles, specs)- hand-written: CSV writer (quotes only when needed), the query builders,
the agent loop (bare
fetch, no provider SDK)
What it will not do
No counting, no sorting, no top-N, no comparing two subjects, one class per report, suggestions stop at the public graph.