Produce academic LaTeX whitepapers that look expensive, not cheap. Use when writing or revising a technical whitepaper (.tex), designing its TikZ figures, or reviewing one that "looks cheap." Encodes a restraint-first house style (one serif typeface, one accent color, consistent figure craft), the anti-cheap checklist, the pedagogic apparatus (callouts, exercises, reader's-map, pull-quotes), and a mandatory render-read-audit loop.
التثبيت
التثبيت باستخدام Codex أو Claude انسخ هذا Prompt والصقه في Codex أو Claude أو مساعد آخر ليراجع صفحة Skill ويثبّتها لك.
Produce academic LaTeX whitepapers that look expensive, not cheap. Use when writing or revising a technical whitepaper (.tex), designing its TikZ figures, or reviewing one that "looks cheap." Encodes a restraint-first house style (one serif typeface, one accent color, consistent figure craft), the anti-cheap checklist, the pedagogic apparatus (callouts, exercises, reader's-map, pull-quotes), and a mandatory render-read-audit loop.
io-contract
{"kind":"deliverable","produces":[{"kind":"code","description":"LaTeX whitepaper source with bibliography, figures, and build configuration"},{"kind":"critique","description":"Revision review of an existing whitepaper draft"}]}
High-Quality LaTeX Whitepaper
A whitepaper is a credibility object. It is judged in the first three seconds, by
its look, before a word is read. Cheap-looking typesetting tells the reader "a
script made this," and no amount of good content recovers that first impression.
This skill is the discipline that makes a paper look like it came from a press.
The cardinal rule: restraint reads as authority. One typeface. One accent
color. Consistent figures. Generous whitespace. Every time you reach for a
second font, a third color, or a saturated fill, you are spending credibility.
When to use
Writing or revising a technical whitepaper in LaTeX.
Designing or fixing its TikZ figures.
Someone said the PDF "looks cheap," "looks like a script made it," or "yikes."
Building a multi-paper volume that must read as one set.
The argument itself (use research-craft) or doc structure (use technical-writer).
The seven cheap tells (find and kill every one)
These are the exact defects that make a paper look amateur. Grep, look, fix.
#
Cheap tell
Why it reads cheap
The fix
1
Off-palette color (a lime-green bar, a neon rule, a primary-blue box)
One wrong color screams "default" and destroys the page's restraint
Every color comes from the defined palette. No raw green/blue/red; no decorative bars. Grep \definecolor — if a color isn't in your palette block, it doesn't exist.
2
Sans-serif text inside figures on a serif body
The font-clash is the #1 "a script assembled this" signal
Figures use the same serif as the body. Never \sffamily in a figure unless the whole document is sans.
3
Multi-colored / multi-weight bold (a rainbow status key)
Busy, juvenile, no hierarchy
One accent color, used once per figure for the single most important thing. Status labels: muted ink/gray, differentiated by weight or small-caps, not by hue.
One subtle fill (sand at ~15–40% opacity), identical across every figure in the paper.
5
Labels riding on lines; cramped boxes
The eye can't parse it; feels unfinished
Labels sit in clear bands beside/above arrows, never on them. Generous inner padding, consistent node sizes.
6
Inconsistent scale/spacing between figures
Each figure looks like a different author
Define box/arrow/label styles once in the preamble; every figure uses them. Same line width, font size, palette.
7
A status key / footer shouting in color
Internal bookkeeping leaking into the artifact's chrome
Footer is quiet (small, single ink color, a thin rule). Status labels live in an appendix table, not a colored footer band.
If a figure has any of these, it is a defect, not a style choice.
The house style (the load-bearing rules)
The full canonical preamble — packages, palette, theorem envs, fancyhdr, the
\keyidea/\pitfall/exercises/\pullquote commands, and the shared TikZ
styles — is in references/preamble.tex. Copy it verbatim; do not improvise a
parallel one. The rules it enforces:
One typeface family for the whole document, body and figures: the serif.
Hierarchy comes from size, weight, and small-caps (\textsc) — not color, not a second font.
microtype on. Real ligatures, em-dashes, quotes.
Color — the discipline that matters most
A named palette block at the top (warm paper, ink, one accent, a few muted structural tones). Nothing outside it.
One accent color (e.g. a cinnabar/oxblood). It marks the single most important thing on a page or in a figure — the "you are here," the one warning, the one result. Used more than once per view, it stops meaning anything.
Structural color is muted and functional: arrows, rules, a subtle fill. Never decorative, never saturated.
Banned: raw red/green/blue, neon/lime anything, colored footer bars, full-opacity fills, more than one accent.
Figures (TikZ)
Define box, accentbox, arrow, label styles once in the preamble; reuse everywhere.
One fill (paper-sand, low opacity). One stroke (ink). The accent only on the one node that earns it.
Figure text = the body serif, ~\small/\footnotesize, consistent across figures.
Labels in clear bands; arrows -{Stealth} (arrows.meta), consistent width.
Every figure's \caption states the takeaway, not just names the parts.
Pedagogic apparatus (tasteful, not loud)
Callouts (\keyidea, \pitfall): a thin left rule + a very subtle fill, label in small-caps. A \pitfall may use the accent on its label only, never a saturated box.
exercises environment: a quiet boxed list — check / trace / starred-open-problem.
Pull-quotes: large italic, a single accent left-stripe, generous margin.
Reader's-Map table at the top (reader type → section). Honest-status mapping (built/partial/specified/proposed) goes in an appendix table, muted ink with small-caps/weight differences — never a colored key in the running chrome.
The render → read → audit loop (mandatory, not optional)
A figure you have not looked at is not done. For every figure:
Compile (or the whole paper) with pdflatex (3 passes for refs/TOC).
Render the page to PNG (pdftoppm -png -r 150, or magick).
Read the PNG with your own eyes (the Read tool shows images).
Audit against the seven cheap tells + this paper's other figures (same scale? same fill? labels clear? accent used once?).
Fix and re-render until clean.
"It compiles" is not the bar. "It looks like a press made it, and it matches its siblings" is the bar.
One typeface in the whole PDF (no sans-in-figures clash).
One accent color; every color traces to the palette block; no off-palette/neon/bar.
No multi-colored/multi-weight bold; status shown by weight/small-caps, not hue.
All figures share one box style, one fill, one arrow style, consistent scale.
Every figure rendered and looked at; no labels on lines; generous padding.
Callouts/pull-quotes/exercises are quiet (thin rule, subtle fill), not saturated boxes.
Footer/header small, single-ink, a thin rule — no colored band.
Real citations with \cite; first use of a term in bold; a references section.
Reader's-Map present; status/maturity table in an appendix, not the chrome.
Read one page aloud: does it look like a journal article? If you wince, fix the wince.
Anti-patterns (named, so they're refusable)
The ransom note. Three+ colors and two+ fonts on one page — the most common way a generated paper looks cheap. Cure: one font, one accent.
The wireframe. Saturated default TikZ box fills (fill=blue!20, bright beige). Cure: one subtle paper-sand fill, palette-defined.
The neon footer. A colored bar or rainbow status key in the running chrome. Cure: quiet footer; status to an appendix.
The compile-and-ship. Calling a figure done because it compiled, without rendering and looking. Cure: the render→read→audit loop.
The lonely figure. A figure that looks like a different author than its siblings (different scale/fill/font). Cure: shared preamble styles.
The decorative theorem. Color/boxes used to look rigorous. Cure: rigor is in the proof; the typesetting stays quiet.
Why this is the skill, not just a preamble
The preamble is necessary but not sufficient — an agent with the right \definecolor
block will still ship a lime-green bar if it does not look. This skill is the
judgment: a small palette, one font, and a habit of rendering and auditing every
figure against its siblings. That habit is the difference between a PDF that looks
like a press made it and one that looks like a script did.
