RFE Decoder

• Reads a Request for Evidence, Notice of Intent to Deny, denial, or appeal decision and breaks down exactly what it's asking for: which regulatory criteria are being questioned, what kind of objection each one is, an overall severity read, and a plain-English summary.
• Detects your document type and visa category (EB-1A, O-1A, or EB-2 NIW) automatically from the letter's own content — you never specify a category going in.
• Runs in under a minute, free, with no login required to decode a letter.

The in-product screen title is "Denial/RFE Decoder Lite." This is an AI-driven analysis (Claude reads and structures the letter), so every result carries the standard compliance disclaimer band — it explains what the letter says, never what your odds of overcoming it are.

RFE Decoder is the free, first-look entry point into the Respond stage of the Case Journey — the same stage RFE Studio (the Pro full response-drafting tool) belongs to. Most petitioners land here directly after receiving a real letter, independent of where they otherwise are in their case.

Its own results page points forward to Pathway Navigator next — a genuinely different use case (someone reconsidering strategy, not responding to something filed) worth knowing rather than assuming one single journey. If the breakdown reveals gaps in your case, Merito Score is a natural next step too.

• Your actual letter, in one of three forms: upload a file (PDF, PNG, JPG, or .txt, up to 50MB), paste the text directly (500–50,000 characters), or fetch it from a direct link to a PDF.
• No account needed to decode a letter and see the preview; a free account (10 seconds) unlocks the full breakdown.
• Cost: free. No tool_costs row exists for this tool. A daily rate limit protects the search/analysis infrastructure — it is not a credit charge.

• Document type — Request for Evidence (RFE), Notice of Intent to Deny (NOID), Denial, Appeal Decision, or "Unclear document type" if the tool can't confidently tell.
• Visa type detected — EB-1A, O-1A, EB-2 NIW, "Other," or "Unclear" — read automatically from the letter itself.
• Severity — an overall read of how broad the objections are: Narrow, Moderate, or Broad, with a color indicator.
• Plain-English summary — a short paragraph translating the letter's substance out of its own formal phrasing.
• Criteria questioned — each specific regulatory criterion the letter raises a concern about, tagged with an objection type (Insufficient evidence, No evidence submitted, Final merits / totality, or Procedural) and a one-line explanation.

Warning: The tool's own privacy note states your letter is never stored — it's read once, analyzed, and discarded, and only the structured summary is kept. Worth knowing before uploading a real, sensitive letter. Separately: "severity" describes the letter's own breadth, not your odds of overcoming it — read it as a triage signal, never a verdict.

• The free tier includes everything in "Reading the result" above: objections with severity, document and visa type detection, and the plain-English summary — no plan or card required, ever, for this.
• Upgrading to RFE Studio (Pro) adds what this free tool deliberately doesn't do: a full paragraph-by-paragraph response skeleton mapped to your actual exhibits, officer tone analysis for every objection, and matched AAO precedent decisions — see the RFE Studio guide.
• If you start the 7-day Pro trial to reach RFE Studio, note Stripe's checkout collects a card upfront (not a no-card trial); cancelling anytime after is self-serve through the billing portal. None of this is required just to decode a letter here.
• Start your free trial from /dashboard/billing once you're ready for the response-drafting step — decoding your letter itself never asks for it.

• Pasting only an excerpt instead of the full letter text — a partial letter can produce an incomplete or misleading breakdown, since the tool can only analyze what it's given.
• Treating "Narrow" severity as meaning the letter isn't serious. Narrow just means the objections are concentrated on fewer criteria — even a narrow RFE on a single criterion can be genuinely case-deciding.
• Waiting until close to the response deadline to run this. It's a fast, free first-look step meant to inform planning early, not something to save for the end.
• Mixing up document types before responding — an RFE, a NOID, and a denial each call for a different kind of response; the tool detects this for you specifically so you don't have to guess.