llm-pathway-curator 0.1.0.post1

Transform enrichment outputs into verifiable, auditable pathway claims with calibrated abstention.

LLM-PathwayCurator

Enrichment interpretations → audited, decision-grade pathway claims.

• Docs: https://llm-pathwaycurator.readthedocs.io/
• Paper reproducibility (canonical): paper/ (see paper/README.md; panel map in paper/FIGURE_MAP.csv)
• Cite: bioRxiv preprint (DOI: 10.64898/2026.02.18.706381).

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🚀 What this is

LLM-PathwayCurator is an interpretation quality-assurance (QA) layer for enrichment analysis.
It does not introduce a new enrichment statistic. Instead, it turns EA outputs into auditable decision objects:

• Input: enrichment term lists from ORA (e.g., Metascape) or rank-based enrichment (e.g., fgsea, an implementation of the GSEA method)
• Output: typed, evidence-linked claims + PASS/ABSTAIN/FAIL decisions + reason-coded audit logs
• Promise: we abstain when claims are unstable, under-supported, contradictory, or context-nonspecific

Selective prediction for pathway interpretation: calibrated abstention is a feature, not a failure.

Fig. 1a. Overview of LLM-PathwayCurator workflow:
EvidenceTable → modules → claims → audits (bioRxiv preprint)

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🧭 Why this is different (and why it matters)

Enrichment tools return ranked term lists. In practice, interpretation breaks because:

1. Representative terms are ambiguous under study context
2. Gene support is opaque, enabling cherry-picking
3. Related terms share / bridge evidence in non-obvious ways
4. There is no mechanical stop condition for fragile narratives

LLM-PathwayCurator replaces narrative endorsement with audit-gated decisions.
We transform ranked terms into machine-auditable claims by enforcing:

• Evidence-linked constraints: claims must resolve to valid term/module identifiers and supporting-gene evidence
• Stability audits: supporting-gene perturbations yield stability proxies (operating point: τ)
• Context validity stress tests: context swap reveals context dependence without external knowledge
• Contradiction checks: internally inconsistent claims fail mechanically
• Reason-coded outcomes: every decision is explainable by a finite audit code set

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🔍 What this is not

• Not an enrichment method; it audits enrichment outputs.
• Not a free-text summarizer; claims are schema-bounded (typed JSON; no narrative prose as “evidence”).
• Not a biological truth oracle; it checks internal consistency and evidence integrity, not mechanistic truth.

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🧩 Core pipeline (A → B → C)

A) Stability distillation (evidence hygiene)
Perturb supporting genes (seeded) to compute stability proxies (e.g., LOO/jackknife-like survival scores).
Output: distilled.tsv

B) Evidence factorization (modules)
Factorize the term–gene bipartite graph into evidence modules that preserve shared vs distinct support.
Outputs: modules.tsv, term_modules.tsv, term_gene_edges.tsv

C) Claims → audit → report

• C1 (proposal-only): deterministic baseline or optional LLM proposes typed claims with resolvable evidence links
• C2 (audit/decider): mechanical rules assign PASS/ABSTAIN/FAIL with precedence (FAIL > ABSTAIN > PASS)
• C3 (report): decision-grade report + audit log (audit_log.tsv) + provenance

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⚡ Quick start (library entrypoint)

llm-pathway-curator run \
  --sample-card examples/demo/sample_card.json \
  --evidence-table examples/demo/evidence_table.tsv \
  --out out/demo/

Key outputs (stable contract)

• audit_log.tsv — PASS/ABSTAIN/FAIL + reason codes (mechanical)
• report.jsonl, report.md — decision objects (evidence-linked)
• claims.proposed.tsv — proposed candidates (proposal-only; auditable)
• distilled.tsv — stability proxies / evidence hygiene outputs
• modules.tsv, term_modules.tsv, term_gene_edges.tsv — evidence structure
• run_meta.json (+ optional manifest.json) — pinned params + provenance

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📊 Rank & visualize ranked terms (rank / plot-ranked)

LLM-PathwayCurator includes two small post-processing commands for ranking and publication-ready visualization of ranked terms/modules:

• llm-pathway-curator rank — produces a ranked table (claims_ranked.tsv) for downstream plots and summaries.
• llm-pathway-curator plot-ranked — renders ranked terms/modules as either:
  • bars (Metascape-like horizontal bars), or
  • packed circles (module-level circle packing with term circles inside).

A) Rank (produce claims_ranked.tsv)

Use rank to generate a deterministic ranked table from a run output directory.

llm-pathway-curator rank --help
# Typical workflow: point rank to a run directory and write claims_ranked.tsv
# (See --help for the exact flags supported by your installed version.)

B) Plot (bars or packed circles)

plot-ranked auto-detects claims_ranked.tsv (recommended) or falls back to audit_log.tsv under --run-dir.

Packed circles require an extra dependency: python -m pip install circlify

Bars (Metascape-like)

llm-pathway-curator plot-ranked \
  --mode bars \
  --run-dir out/demo \
  --out-png out/demo/plots/ranked_bars.png \
  --decision PASS \
  --group-by-module \
  --left-strip \
  --strip-labels \
  --bar-color-mode module

Packed circles (modules → terms)

llm-pathway-curator plot-ranked \
  --mode packed \
  --run-dir out/demo \
  --out-png out/demo/plots/ranked_packed.png \
  --decision PASS \
  --term-color-mode module

Packed circles (direction shading)

llm-pathway-curator plot-ranked \
  --mode packed \
  --run-dir out/demo \
  --out-png out/demo/plots/ranked_packed.direction.png \
  --decision PASS \
  --term-color-mode direction

Consistent module labels/colors across plots

plot-ranked assigns a single module display rank (M01, M02, ...) and a stable module color per module_id, so bars and packed circles can be placed side-by-side without label/color drift.

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⚖️ Inputs (contracts)

EvidenceTable (minimum required columns)

Each row is one enriched term.

Required columns:

• term_id, term_name, source
• stat, qval, direction
• evidence_genes (supporting genes; TSV uses ; join)

Sample Card (study context)

Structured context record used for proposal and context gating, e.g.:

• condition/disease, tissue, perturbation, comparison

Adapters for common tools live under src/llm_pathway_curator/adapters/.

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🔧 Adapters (Input → EvidenceTable)

Adapters are intentionally conservative:

• preserve evidence identity (term × genes)
• avoid destructive parsing
• keep TSV round-trips stable (contract drift is treated as a bug)

See: src/llm_pathway_curator/adapters/README.md

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🛡️ Decisions: PASS / ABSTAIN / FAIL

LLM-PathwayCurator assigns decisions by mechanical audit gates:

• FAIL: auditable violations (evidence-link drift, schema violations, contradictions, forbidden fields, etc.)
• ABSTAIN: non-specific, under-supported, or unstable under perturbations / stress tests
• PASS: survives all enabled gates at the chosen operating point (τ)

Important: the LLM (if enabled) never decides acceptance. It may propose candidates; the audit suite is the decider.

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🧪 Built-in stress tests (counterfactuals without external knowledge)

• Context swap: shuffle study context (e.g., BRCA → LUAD) to test context dependence
• Evidence dropout: randomly remove supporting genes (seeded; min_keep enforced)
• Contradiction injection (optional): introduce internally contradictory candidates to test FAIL gates

These are specification-driven perturbations intended to validate that the pipeline abstains for the right reasons, with stress-specific reason codes.

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♻️ Reproducibility by default

LLM-PathwayCurator is deterministic by default:

• fixed seeds (CLI + library defaults)
• pinned parsing + hashing utilities
• stable output schemas and reason codes
• run metadata persisted to run_meta.json (and runner-level manifest.json when used)

Paper-side runners (e.g., paper/scripts/fig2_run_pipeline.py) orchestrate reproducible sweeps and do not implement scientific logic; they call the library entrypoint (llm_pathway_curator.pipeline.run_pipeline).

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📦 Installation

Option A: PyPI (recommended)

pip install llm-pathway-curator

(See PyPI project page: https://pypi.org/project/llm-pathway-curator/)

Option B: From source (development)

git clone https://github.com/kenflab/LLM-PathwayCurator.git
cd LLM-PathwayCurator
pip install -e .

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🐳 Docker (recommended for reproducibility)

We provide an official Docker environment (Python + R + Jupyter), sufficient to run LLM-PathwayCurator and most paper figure generation.
Optionally includes Ollama for local LLM annotation (no cloud API key required).

• Option A: Prebuilt image (recommended)

  Use the published image from GitHub Container Registry (GHCR).

  # from the repo root (optional, for notebooks / file access)
  docker pull ghcr.io/kenflab/llm-pathway-curator:official
  

  Run Jupyter:

  docker run --rm -it \
    -p 8888:8888 \
    -v "$PWD":/work \
    -e GEMINI_API_KEY \
    -e OPENAI_API_KEY \
    ghcr.io/kenflab/llm-pathway-curator:official
  

  Open Jupyter: http://localhost:8888
  
  (Use the token printed in the container logs.)
  
  Notes:

  For manuscript reproducibility, we also provide versioned tags (e.g., :0.1.0). Prefer a version tag when matching a paper release.

• Option B: Build locally (development)

  • Option B-1: Build locally with Compose (recommended for dev)

    # from the repo root
    docker compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml build
    docker compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml up
    

    B-1.1) Open Jupyter

    • http://localhost:8888 Workspace mount: /work

    B-1.2) If prompted for "Password or token"

    • Get the tokenized URL from container logs:

      docker compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml logs -f llm-pathway-curator
      

    • Then either:
      • open the printed URL (contains ?token=...) in your browser, or
      • paste the token value into the login prompt.

  • Option B-2: Build locally without Compose (alternative)

    # from the repo root
    docker build -f docker/Dockerfile -t llm-pathway-curator:official .
    

    B-2.1) Run Jupyter

    docker run --rm -it \
      -p 8888:8888 \
      -v "$PWD":/work \
      -e GEMINI_API_KEY \
      -e OPENAI_API_KEY \
      llm-pathway-curator:official
    

    B-2.2) Open Jupyter

    • http://localhost:8888 Workspace mount: /work

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🖥️ Apptainer / Singularity (HPC)

• Option A: Prebuilt image (recommended)

  Use the published image from GitHub Container Registry (GHCR).

  apptainer build llm-pathway-curator.sif docker://ghcr.io/kenflab/llm-pathway-curator:official
  

• Option B: a .sif from the Docker image (development)

  docker compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml build
  apptainer build llm-pathway-curator.sif docker-daemon://llm-pathway-curator:official
  

Run Jupyter (either image):

apptainer exec --cleanenv \
  --bind "$PWD":/work \
  llm-pathway-curator.sif \
  bash -lc 'jupyter lab --ip=0.0.0.0 --port=8888 --no-browser 

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🤖 LLM usage (proposal-only; optional)

If enabled, the LLM is confined to proposal steps and must emit schema-bounded JSON with resolvable EvidenceTable links.

Backends (example):

• Ollama: LLMPATH_OLLAMA_HOST, LLMPATH_OLLAMA_MODEL
• Gemini: GEMINI_API_KEY
• OpenAI: OPENAI_API_KEY

Typical environment:

export LLMPATH_BACKEND="ollama"   # ollama|gemini|openai

Deterministic settings are used by default (e.g., temperature=0), and runs persist prompt/raw/meta artifacts alongside run_meta.json.

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📄 Manuscript reproduction

paper/ contains manuscript-facing scripts, Source Data exports, and frozen/derived artifacts (when redistributable).

• paper/README.md — how to reproduce figures
• paper/FIGURE_MAP.csv — canonical mapping: panel ↔ inputs ↔ scripts ↔ outputs

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🧾 Citation

If you use LLM-PathwayCurator, please cite:

• bioRxiv preprint (doi: 10.64898/2026.02.18.706381)
• Zenodo archive (v0.1.0): 10.5281/zenodo.18625777
• GitHub release tag: v0.1.0
• Software RRID: RRID:SCR_027964

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