How to check that a document meets a list of requirements
Check your text against the thesis regulations, a set of guidelines or assignment instructions, the terms of reference of a tender, the clauses of a contract or a regulation you have to comply with.
Turn the rules into a list of requirements
Write each requirement on its own line, as the rules state it and with its original numbering, so you can cross-check the result against them.
Review the list before running anything
Remove what is not a requirement (headings, introductions) and merge or fix anything that was split wrongly when copying.
Find where the document covers each requirement
For each requirement, look for the passages in the document that cover it, even if they don’t use the same words, and don’t settle for the first one you find. A requirement with no passage is an absence.
Tell what is met, incomplete or missing
A requirement can be met, partly met or missing. To tell which, ask yourself whether there is a dedicated passage that covers everything it asks for, whether it leaves something out or whether it only touches on it, and rate it from 1 to 5.
Fix and keep a record
The missing requirements and the low-scoring ones are what to fix before you hand in. Keep the table as a record of what you checked, against which list and with what result.
Other ways to do it
You can do it by hand, with a spreadsheet with one row per requirement, or with Word’s search, reading each result. You can also ask a general AI assistant (such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude), but on a long document it may overlook parts or quote wrongly. HILO uses a request built for this task: it goes through the whole document, the AI only points out which sentences correspond to each requirement, and HILO shows those sentences exactly as they are in your text, with their approximate page.
HILO is a good fit when the document is long and the list has many points: it works in the browser, with nothing to install, and the document with the requirements is not saved. Another approach is better if you need to verify facts (fact-checking), which HILO doesn’t do.
With contracts or regulations, HILO locates where each point is covered, but it does not replace a legal review.
Check your own document
Open the document, load the requirements and see which are met and which are missing.
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