This project brought together SBI researchers from 8 institutions across Europe—combining expertise from method developers and domain practitioners. Together, we aimed to consolidate years of experience into one comprehensive resource.

We present a structured workflow with practical guidelines for each step: simulator setup, prior specification, method selection, network training, and validation. We illustrate each stage with concrete implementation details and common pitfalls.

We provide three examples and code to demonstrate the complete workflow: gravitational wave parameter estimation (astrophysics), psychophysical model fitting (cognitive science), and ion channel inference (neuroscience).

We also cover a range of diagnostic tools that assess whether the posterior distributions returned by SBI are trustworthy. We discuss Posterior Predictive Checks and Calibration tests, as well as their advantages and limitations.

The appendix covers advanced topics and recent developments: sequential methods, model misspecification, function-valued parameters, score-based methods, flow matching. Extended practical guidelines help practitioners navigate the evolving SBI landscape.

Finally, we built a database of SBI applications across fields as a community resource. We catalogued 100+ papers, available in an interactive web app. Users can explore what's been done, find similar problems to theirs, and contribute new applications: sbi-applications-explorer.streamlit.app

Led by @deismic.bsky.social and @janboelts.bsky.social with Peter Steinbach, @gmoss13.bsky.social, @tommoral.bsky.social, Manuel Gloeckler, @plcrodrigues.bsky.social, Julia Linhart, @lappalainenjk.bsky.social, @bkmi.bsky.social,...