{"id":95955,"title":"Raycaster - Cursor for regulatory documents in drug development","tagline":"AI workspace for high-stakes documents, not just code.","body":"Hey YC 👋 I’m Levi, founder of Raycaster.\n\n### TL;DR\n\n* Raycaster is **Devin/Cursor, but for life sciences documents instead of code.**\n* It does **project-level drafting** across hundreds of PDFs, Word, Excel, and PowerPoints - not just “write a file from scratch.”\n* We’re starting with **drug development docs** (clinical, CMC, regulatory, quality) where delays and mistakes are insanely expensive.\n\n**Video (1 min):** [link](https://youtu.be/FhpC9dyBUF4)\n\n---\n\n### The problem (in plain English)\n\nIn drug development, everything important lives in documents:\n\n* protocols, reports, validation plans\n* batch records, specs, methods\n* Module 3, labels, responses to regulators\n\nThey’re scattered across SharePoint, Veeva, email, vendor portals, etc. When something changes - dose, batch size, impurity limit - you’re supposed to update _dozens_ of dependent docs so nothing contradicts anything else.\n\nToday that means:\n\n* **Research:** hunting across PDFs, Word, Excel, PowerPoints and public guidances for the right paragraph or table\n* **Draft:** copy-pasting into new docs and hand-editing boilerplate that “mostly” matches\n* **Edit:** reviewers tracking changes by eye and leaving 200 comments per document\n* **Version control:** folders called `FINAL_v7_REALLY_FINAL_clean(2).docx` and hoping nobody sends the wrong one to the agency\n\nThis happens across _every_ stage of drug development - nonclinical → clinical → CMC → labeling. When documents drift, you get delay letters, extra review cycles, or a straight-up rejection. It’s one of the big reasons timelines slip.\n\nChatGPT / Copilot can draft a single file. They don’t understand a **cross-document project** with real regulatory consequences.\n\n---\n\n### What we built\n\nRaycaster is an **AI workspace for document projects**, starting with regulatory and CMC work.\n\nThink of a repo, but for your dossiers:\n\n* A **workspace** that holds your source docs (guidances, prior submissions, lab reports, CoAs, batch records…).\n* A graph of how they depend on each other (this spec feeds this batch record feeds this Module 3 section, etc.).\n* An AI agent that can **research, draft, edit, and reconcile** across all of them—with citations and review controls.\n\nConcretely:\n\n1. **Research, with real citations**\\\n   Ask: “What does EMA say about a 5× batch size increase?” or “Which CoAs support these new commercial lots?”\\\n   Raycaster reads mixed formats (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX), pulls out the relevant paragraphs/tables, and shows you the answer with pinned citations back to the exact page and cell.\n\n   ![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95955\u0026key=user_uploads/299659/18f9f9a3-3ea8-49c7-b50f-17df326e526e)\n\n2. **Project-level drafting**\\\n   Instead of “write me a cover letter,” you say “update the batch formula + cover letter + justification for the 5× scale-up.”\\\n   Raycaster drafts the actual Word docs in your workspace, using the research + your templates, and wires in all the cross-references.\n\n   ![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95955\u0026key=user_uploads/299659/a80d77f1-fbde-429f-b80d-30153df19a1e)\n\n3. **Structured editing**\\\n   Editing is usually harder than drafting: “bump the batch size everywhere, but don’t touch the control batch,” “update only the EMA version,” etc.\\\n   Raycaster does **diff-aware edits**: it proposes precise changes inline, shows red/green diffs, and explains _why_ each change was made.\n\n   ![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95955\u0026key=user_uploads/299659/4b1ab418-fbe1-4517-a157-f54b076a9ca5)\n\n4. **Version control + remote agents**\\\n   Every change is tracked like a commit. You see: who asked for it, what files were touched, what the diff was, and what sources were used.\\\n   You can let Raycaster run “in the background” on a workflow (e.g. keep Module 3 in sync with new CoAs), then come in as a human reviewer to approve or tweak before anything is finalized.\n\nAll of this lives in a collaborative, access-controlled workspace, so legal/reg affairs/IT don’t freak out.\n\n---\n\n### Why this is technically interesting\n\nFor devs: this is all the fun of agents and tooling, but on **documents instead of code**:\n\n* Retrieval over **huge, messy, mixed-format corpora** (PDF/DOCX/XLSX/PPTX, scanned tables)\n* A maintained **dependency graph** of citations and document links, so the agent can do impact analysis instead of one-off Q\u0026A\n* A diff engine that understands “regulatory text” and tables (git diff , not just lines of code\n* Multi-agent workflows with strict evaluation + human checkpoints, because “just let the model commit” is not an option when the FDA is on the other side\n\n---\n\n### Why we’re doing this\n\nI started Raycaster after seeing the same pattern over and over: the science was fine; **the documents were the bottleneck.** Teams were shipping “AI pilots,” but the real work was still people copying text between PDFs and Word.\n\nWe think documents deserve the same treatment code got:\\\n**good tooling, real version control, and smart agents that understand context.**\n\n---\n\n### Ask\n\nWe’re opening prioritized access for:\n\n* **Biopharma, med-tech, and device companies** with heavy document work (regulatory, CMC, clinical, quality, safety) on major submissions or post-approval changes.\n* **Engineers / researchers** who care about serious agentic systems on messy document workflows and want to kick the tires or collaborate on evals/benchmarks.\n\nIf that’s you (or someone you know):\n\n👉 Email [**founders@raycaster.ai**](mailto:levi@raycaster.ai) with the subject **“YC Pilot”** and 2-3 sentences about your team + doc stack, or just ping me at [**raycaster.ai**](http://raycaster.ai).\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95955\u0026key=user_uploads/299659/474ffc8a-305f-4986-ba5e-b236cf06dd90)\n\n","slug":"Oxf-raycaster-cursor-for-regulatory-documents-in-drug-development","created_at":"2025-12-03T18:56:35.429Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T00:13:06.489Z","total_vote_count":19,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Oxf-raycaster-cursor-for-regulatory-documents-in-drug-development","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=95955\u0026key=user_uploads/299659/474ffc8a-305f-4986-ba5e-b236cf06dd90","company":{"id":30039,"name":"Raycaster","slug":"raycaster","url":"https://raycaster.ai","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/8e3854e63389e5cabd44e4b6563fefc3bd539147.png","batch":"Fall 2024","industry":"B2B","tags":["Artificial Intelligence","SaaS","Biotech","Enterprise Software"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/30039"}}