UMaT Thesis — a Claude Code skill

Write, format and check University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), Tarkwa theses, dissertations and BSc/MSc/MPhil/PhD project reports in LaTeX, to the university's Format for the Presentation of Theses and Project Reports (May 2011).

It is two things at once:

• A LaTeX document class (umatthesis.cls) that encodes the layout rules, so you write ordinary \chapter / \caption / \parencite and get a compliant document.
• A Claude Code skill — reference material and a checker that let Claude answer "does this comply?" from the actual rules instead of guessing.

You can use the template on its own without Claude.

What it handles

Page setup	A4, 2.54 cm margins with 3.05 cm on the left for binding, 12 pt Times, 1.5 spacing, no headers or footers beyond the page number
Front matter	Title page and declaration with the exact per-degree wording, abstract, dedication, acknowledgements, contents, lists of figures/tables/symbols — in the prescribed order, Roman-numbered
Headings	CHAPTER 1 at 14 pt above the title at 12 pt, numbering stopped at three levels, unnumbered italic levels 4 and 5
Floats	Table titles above, figure captions below, chapter.n numbering, Table A1 form in appendices, consistent Figure/Fig.
Maths	Per-chapter equation numbers, the where, symbol list, SI unit and symbol conventions
References	Harvard as adopted by UMaT — biblatex drivers written to match the guide's specimen list
Checking	A linter for the mechanically checkable rules, and the guide's three-pass edit as a checklist

Requirements

• TeX Live or MacTeX (XeLaTeX, LuaLaTeX or pdfLaTeX — all three work)
• biber, which is not bundled with the Homebrew TeX Live formula:

  brew install biber

• Python 3 for the format checker

Quick start — the template alone

git clone https://github.com/aNasiusA/umat-thesis-guide.git
cp -R umat-thesis-guide/assets my-thesis
cd my-thesis
latexmk -xelatex main.tex

Then edit the metadata block at the top of main.tex and write your chapters. See assets/README.md for the class options and the full command list.

Quick start — as a Claude Code skill

git clone https://github.com/aNasiusA/umat-thesis-guide.git ~/.claude/skills/umat-thesis

The target directory must be umat-thesis — it has to match the skill name in SKILL.md, which is why it is spelled out rather than left to the repository name.

Claude picks it up on the next session. Ask it to scaffold a thesis, fix your front matter, format a reference, or audit a draft, and it works from the guide's rules.

Checking a draft

python3 scripts/check_format.py path/to/thesis --degree bsc

Reports errors (spec violations — caption placement, heading depth, Figure/Fig. mixing, banned constructs, abstract length, uncited floats) and warnings (things the guide calls defects but which need judgement — sentences over 25 words, paragraphs over 100, American spellings, empty phrases).

The bundled template is kept at zero errors and zero warnings, so anything reported in your thesis is yours.

Layout

SKILL.md                    what Claude reads first
references/                 the guide, split by task
  structure.md              front-matter order, what belongs in each chapter
  formatting-rules.md       page setup, headings, floats, maths, SI units
  referencing.md            Harvard citations and the reference list
  style-guide.md            tenses, numerals, capitals, acronyms, spelling
  editing-checklist.md      the three-pass edit and submission requirements
assets/                     the LaTeX template (copy this to start a thesis)
  umatthesis.cls            all layout lives here
  umatharvard.tex           Harvard bibliography drivers
  main.tex, front/, chapters/, references.bib
scripts/check_format.py     the format checker

Two places the guide contradicts itself

Both are decided in the class, and both are worth confirming with your supervisor.

• Justification. §6.1.3 says work should be "justified to the margin" and then says to "avoid right justification … it reduces the readability". The class defaults to ragged right, which honours the stated reason. \documentclass[justified]{umatthesis} overrides it.
• Footer height. §6.1.3 lists Footer: 0.0 cm while §4.2.6 requires the page number in the footer. The class reserves the minimum space that lets it print.

A few smaller ones — reference sorting, how literally to read "triple space" between paragraphs — are documented in SKILL.md.

Status and attribution

Unofficial. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the University of Mines and Technology. It encodes the formatting requirements of UMaT's Format for the Presentation of Theses and Project Reports (May 2011), compiled by Prof. Newton Amegbey and committee and revised by Prof. Raymond Suglo and committee; the guide itself is not redistributed here.

Requirements change and departments differ. Your supervisor and department are the authority — where this disagrees with them, they win. Corrections and departmental variations are welcome as issues or pull requests.

Licensed under the MIT License.