In fact, this is about all the information they need about your project. An example of how Elves respond to this command is available here . Elves automate most of the repetitive and mindless procedures used in solving macromolecular crystal structures, and they are capable of autonomously carrying out all the steps needed to convert raw x-ray diffraction image data to a phased electron density map. Although user input is not necessary for Elves to acomplish this task, the real power of Elves is that it is easy for crystallographers to communicate with them in English . The Elves program is self-configuring, so you don't have to set up Elves on your compter system.
Elves simply use the file formats of the programs they run.
There are also no new programs to learn. However, unlike a real crystallographer, Elves do this very, very fast. Starting with only the images from a newly-collected MAD data set, they can produce an electron density map in a matter of hours on a reasonably fast computer. When they are finished, Elves will leave you with all the scripts, logs, and processed data they used to get you as far as they did, just like a colleague handing over a project. This way, even if Elves fail, you can still continue working from where they left off.