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Draft papers like a journal editor reviews them.
A Claude Code skill for writing academic papers. Six paper types. Five venues. Tiered voice rules.
Paper-type-aware, venue-aware drafting and revision. The skill asks which paper type you are writing and where you are submitting, then applies the conventions a journal or conference reviewer would expect.
Generic writing tools produce generic prose. Academic papers are judged by different standards per field and venue: a CHI autoethnography and a NeurIPS methods section have almost nothing in common in voice, structure, or reviewer risk.
This skill encodes those differences. It:
- Identifies the paper type (empirical quantitative, empirical qualitative, autoethnography, theory, systematic review, position).
- Identifies the venue (arxiv, NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR, CHI/CSCW/DIS, journal, thesis).
- Loads the references that apply.
- Applies tiered voice rules (universal hard-rejects and contextual warnings).
- Flags reviewer risks specific to the paper type.
- Points at the right LaTeX template and citation style.
You: "I'm writing an empirical HCI paper for CHI. Help me draft the introduction."
|
+-- Skill asks clarifying questions if type/venue aren't clear
+-- Loads references/00-paper-types.md §empirical-qualitative
+-- Loads references/01-venues.md §CHI
+-- Loads references/02-section-moves.md §Introduction (CARS model)
+-- Loads voice rules (03-voice-positive, 04-voice-negative)
|
+-- Drafts with:
- Authorial "we"
- CARS Introduction (territory → niche → occupy)
- Four contribution bullets at the end
- No em dashes, no "In today's world," no "groundbreaking"
- Hedging where appropriate
The skill does not:
- Generate citations from nothing. You still provide sources.
- Check factual accuracy. The skill structures claims that need citations.
- Run literature searches. It advises on what types of sources to cite.
- Produce figures or run statistics. It advises on specs and reporting.
One command:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Hiro-Inagawa/paper-audit-skill/main/install.sh | bashWorks on macOS and Linux. On Windows, run in Git Bash or WSL.
git clone https://github.com/Hiro-Inagawa/paper-audit-skill.git /tmp/paper-audit-skill
cp -r /tmp/paper-audit-skill/skills/paper-audit-skill ~/.claude/skills/
rm -rf /tmp/paper-audit-skillNo dependencies to install. The skill is pure markdown; it does not require Node, Playwright, or any other runtime.
The skill auto-activates when you mention an academic paper, manuscript, arxiv, thesis, or related terms. It also activates on .tex and .bib file extensions.
First interaction: the skill asks for paper type and venue. Answer honestly; different combinations load different rules.
"Help me write the introduction to my NeurIPS paper on attention mechanisms."
"Review my Related Work section for a CHI submission."
"I'm writing a systematic review. What sections do I need?"
"My reviewer said n=1 isn't generalizable. How do I respond?"
"Draft the abstract for my arxiv preprint."
If the skill does not auto-activate when you want it, reference it directly:
"Using the paper-audit-skill skill, review this paragraph."
| Type | Best for | Structure |
|---|---|---|
| Empirical quantitative | Stats, hypothesis testing | IMRaD |
| Empirical qualitative | Interviews, observation | Methods + Findings + Discussion |
| Autoethnography | Single-subject, lived experience | Flexible; narrative + reflexivity |
| Theory | Frameworks, formal proofs | Problem + Thesis + Argument + Consequences |
| Systematic review | Evidence synthesis | PRISMA 2020 |
| Position paper | Argument without new data | Scope + Thesis + Argument + Counterargument |
| Venue | Length | Voice | Citation style |
|---|---|---|---|
| arxiv preprint | 8-15 pages | Technical, authorial "we" | natbib (author-year) typical |
| NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR | 8 pages main | Dense, formal | natbib |
| CHI, CSCW, DIS | 10-14 pages | Narrative OK; reflexive | ACM numeric |
| Journal (general) | 6,000-10,000 words | Formal, venue-specific | APA, Chicago, Vancouver, etc. |
| Thesis (Masters, PhD) | 10K-100K words | Formal; full literature chapter | University-specific |
The skill enforces two tiers of voice rules so it does not over-enforce across disciplines.
Tier 1 (universal hard-rejects) scanned on every paragraph:
- Em dashes in formal prose
- Contractions in formal prose
- "As an AI," "As a language model"
- Filler openings ("It's worth noting," "In today's world," "Since the dawn of")
- Overclaiming ("groundbreaking," "revolutionary," "very unique")
- "Clearly shows," "obviously" (without hedge)
Tier 2 (contextual warnings) flagged for human review:
- Passive voice outside Methods
- Nominalizations where verb form is clearer
- Hedging where boosters are warranted (and vice versa)
- First-person "I" in a "we" venue
The user can override any Tier 2 flag based on disciplinary convention.
This skill is auditable. See verify.md in the repository root for 20 ablation test scenarios.
Each test provides a deliberately flawed input and lists the issues the skill should catch, plus false-positive watch items the skill should NOT flag. Run the tests in a fresh Claude Code session to confirm the skill works as documented.
cat verify.mdRead through the tests. Pick three or four. Try them in a fresh Claude Code session. If the skill catches the expected issues and does not over-flag, it passes.
The skill body is in skills/paper-audit-skill/. It contains:
SKILL.md # Top-level rules and routing
references/
00-paper-types.md # Six types, structure per type
01-venues.md # Five venues, conventions per venue
02-section-moves.md # Swales moves per section
03-voice-positive.md # What to do: character-subject, old-new, hedging
04-voice-negative.md # What to avoid: tiered forbidden phrases
05-argument-structure.md # Booth: claim, reason, evidence, warrant, acknowledgment
06-citation-triangle.md # Every claim has evidence, evidence has citation
07-citation-styles.md # APA, Chicago, IEEE, ACM, Vancouver, natbib, biblatex
08-latex-conventions.md # Multi-venue LaTeX, .bbl gotcha
09-defense-playbooks.md # Reviewer risks per paper type, preemption
10-abstract-craft.md # 150-250 word formula, four moves
11-revision-discipline.md # Williams Style six-pass revision
12-ai-ethics.md # Disclosure rules per venue (2024-2026)
assets/
templates/
arxiv-generic.tex # Open-license arxiv scaffold
journal-generic.tex # Generic journal scaffold
POINTERS.md # Where to get venue-specific templates
bibliography-templates.bib # BibTeX entry templates per source type
- Claude Code installed.
- No additional runtime dependencies.
- Target: academic writing in English, Latin-script. Non-Latin-script conventions are out of scope for v1.
Academic writing is a craft. The skill does not replace the writer; it enforces the conventions the writer needs to respect to be taken seriously. Every rule in the skill is derived from:
- Swales & Feak, Academic Writing for Graduate Students.
- Booth, Colomb, & Williams, The Craft of Research.
- Williams & Bizup, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.
- PRISMA 2020 reporting standards.
- Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, autoethnography tradition.
- Yin, Case Study Research.
- APA, Chicago, IEEE, ACM, Vancouver citation standards.
- Current (2024-2026) AI-assisted writing disclosure policies at ACM, ICML, CHI, and major journals.
MIT. See LICENSE.
Issues and pull requests welcome. Particularly: domain-specific additions (e.g., biomedical reporting standards beyond Vancouver, humanities conventions beyond Chicago), venue-specific templates, and translations of the voice rules for non-English academic contexts.
- web-reader — Read any URL from Claude Code. Same repo pattern; reads websites instead of writing papers.