Kauro, a graph-based chatbot for high-fidelity information transmission conversations

Across biomedical research and care, many conversations transmit information with profound practical, ethical, and legal consequences. The process of informed consent, where individuals decide to join a study or accept clinical care, is perhaps the most consequential, yet it is also complex, labor-intensive, and variable across sites. Existing platforms for information transmission in the informed consent context largely reproduce static documents and lack reproducibility or auditability, while generative chatbots offer flexibility at the cost of stochasticity, hallucination, and regulatory risk. We present Kauro, an open-source, graph-based chatbot that encodes scripted conversations as version-controlled JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) structures, enabling deterministic traversal (ie, paths through the graph), complete audit logging, and IRB-verifiable oversight. Its modular separation of client, server, and script ensures portability across institutions. By operationalizing constraint rather than flexibility, Kauro reframes deployment of machine intelligence in biomedical communication with reproducibility and auditability, offering a scalable platform generalizable to any domain where conversations demand safety, precision, and trust.