---
title: "How to use the Auto-labeler"
url: "https://help.sysrev.com/en/article/how-to-use-the-auto-label-feature"
language: "en"
last_updated: "2026-01-15T22:38:22.684Z"
---

# How to use the Auto-labeler

Your **label description** acts as the generative AI prompt that is used by the Auto-labeler to apply label answers to each record. For categorical labels, the Auto-labeler will also access the Categories to retrieve its answers. To set up your labels for auto-labeling, go to **Manage -> Label Definitions**. Click on the gear icon for an existing label to edit it or create a new one by clicking on the Create New Label button.

## **1\. Set your label description prompt and Auto-label settings**

In this example, we have created a categorical label and want the Auto-labeler to answer the question "In what geographic region was this study conducted?", providing the following answers: Africa, North America, Caribbean, Asia, Central America, South America, Oceania, Europe, Middle East, not specified. 

**Note:** We included a 'not specified' option, but if we didn't, the Auto-labeler would be forced to select an answer, even if incorrect. We could turn off "Require answer", allowing the auto-labeler to skip the article if no answer is appropriate.

In this example, we have selected the following Auto-labeler options: 

-   toggled ON the Enable Auto Extraction so that the Auto-labeler runs on this label; 
-   toggled OFF Use Full Texts, so the Auto-labeler only looks at the metadata (title and abstract) and not any attached PDFs; 
-   toggled ON Reasoning with Confidence, to enable the built-in chain-of thought reasoning questions that can be added to the prompt. 

![](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/e8abb262-911c-4bc8-bb9a-5c01f7aeba91)

**Note:** The [Reasoning with Confidence](https://help.sysrev.com/en/article/probability-reasoning) will add a set of built-in reasoning steps (known as 'chain-of thought' prompting) to your prompt and will likely impact Auto-labeler performance. It is useful to run your prompt with and without this feature selected to determine which setting works better in your case.

## **2\. Set up your article filter and Auto-label limit**

After clicking Save, we can go back to the Articles tab to set the articles that we want to Auto-label. In this example, we filtered for only records that have been included by two reviewers. We set our Max Articles (the number of records we want the Auto-labeler to label) to 10. You can see that the Auto-labeler has provided a breakdown of the cost and estimated the cost of this run to be $0.05

![](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/63fd0b74-3be2-4202-96bc-c9a9d22a1413)

When you are ready, and your selection does not exceed the budget in your account, click the Run Auto-label button. Upon successful completion, the message "Last run just now: success" will appear at the bottom of the Auto-labeler box. To view Auto-label answers, click on one of the labeled articles from the list and scroll down. Below the article abstract you will see the Auto-label answers. In this example, you can see that the Auto-label identified ecological and environmental impacts in this study record. It also included this record with 80% certainty.

**Note:** If instead of Last run just now: success, there is an indication that some of the run failed, simply click the Run Auto-label again. It will only run again on the failed items and often will succeed on a second try.

## **3\. Review auto label answers**

Once you run the Auto-labeler, you will see Auto-label answers at the bottom of each record as shown in the image above. If you enabled "Reasoning with Confidence", you can view the Auto-labeler's reasoning process by clicking on the dropdown arrow next to the Auto-label answer.

In this example, we can see that the Auto-labeler selected Europe with 100% certainty in its answer.

![](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/df3288b5-b692-4081-96ba-03bdaf5afcb9)

You will also now also see an Auto-label Report, located at the bottom left of the Overview page of your project. This report provides detailed analytics of the Auto-label answers in comparison to reviewer answers. See more about the report on the [Understanding the Auto-label Report page](https://help.sysrev.com/en/article/understanding-the-auto-label-report). 

You can also have the Auto-labeler prefill the labels in the Review tab. To learn more, visit our [Prefill label answers help page](https://help.sysrev.com/en/article/using-prefill-review-answers-with-the-auto-labeler).

For a recommended process for testing and revising your prompt, check out our [Suggested Workflow for Testing and Running Auto-labels page](https://help.sysrev.com/en/article/suggested-workflow-for-testing-and-running-auto-labels-copy). 

**Pro tip:** For tips and tricks on optimizing your prompts, check out the [Tips for Optimizing your Auto-label Prompts page](https://help.sysrev.com/en/article/tips-for-optimizing-your-auto-label-prompts-copy).