| name | paper-planning |
| description | Guides pre-writing planning for academic papers with 4 structured steps: story design (task-challenge-insight-contribution-advantage), experiment planning (comparisons + ablations), figure design (pipeline + teaser), and 4-week timeline management. Includes counterintuitive planning tactics (write a mock rejection letter to identify weaknesses before writing, narrow before broad claims, design ablations first). Use when: user wants to plan a paper before writing, design story/contributions, plan experiments, create figure sketches, set a writing timeline, or write a pre-emptive rejection letter for planning purposes. Do NOT use for actual writing (use paper-writing), running experiments (use experiment-pipeline), self-reviewing a finished draft (use paper-review), or finding research problems (use research-ideation). |
| allowed-tools | write_file edit_file read_file think_tool |
| metadata | {"author":"EvoScientist","version":"1.0.0","tags":["core","research","writing","academic-writing","experiment-design"]} |
Paper Planning
A structured approach to planning academic papers before writing begins. Covers four key activities: Story design, Experiment planning, Figure design, and Timeline management.
When to Use This Skill
If you don't yet have an idea, use the research-ideation skill first to find a problem and design a solution.
- User wants to plan a paper before writing
- User asks about structuring a paper's story or contributions
- User needs to plan experiments (comparisons, ablations)
- User wants to design pipeline figures or teaser figures
- User asks about writing timelines or submission schedules
Planning Overview
Paper planning follows four steps, ideally completed before writing begins:
Step 1: Story Design → What is the narrative? What are the contributions?
Step 2: Experiment Plan → What experiments prove our claims?
Step 3: Figure Design → How do we visually communicate the method?
Step 4: Timeline → When does each section get written?
Counterintuitive Planning First
Prioritize these counterintuitive rules before regular planning:
- Write your rejection letter first: Draft the top-5 likely rejection comments ("limited novelty", "missing baseline", "not robust", etc.), then plan experiments that directly preempt each one.
- Narrow claim before broad claim: Define the smallest defensible core claim first. Expand only after evidence is strong. Over-broad claims fail review more often than narrow strong claims.
- Design ablations before polishing method text: If a module cannot be ablated cleanly, its contribution claim is weak.
- Allocate compute to stress tests, not only benchmarks: A single convincing stress-test figure often contributes more than multiple small benchmark gains.
- Plan a fallback narrative now: If SOTA gain is marginal, predefine a secondary value proposition (efficiency, robustness, fewer assumptions, wider applicability).
See references/counterintuitive-planning.md
Step 1: Story Design
The "story" is the logical narrative that connects the problem, insight, method, and results.
Reverse Engineering the Story
Work backwards to build the story:
- What is the technical problem? — The specific challenge that existing methods cannot solve well
- What are our contributions? — The concrete technical novelties
- What are the benefits and new insights? — What advantages does our approach provide?
- How do we lead into the challenge? — How to frame the task and previous methods to naturally arrive at the challenge
Then write forward: Task → Previous methods → Challenge → Our contributions → Advantages
Core Elements to Define
Before writing any section, clearly articulate:
| Element | Question | Example |
|---|
| Task | What problem does this paper address? | "Real-time 3D scene reconstruction" |
| Challenge | Why can't existing methods solve it well? | "Cannot handle dynamic objects efficiently" |
| Insight | What key observation drives our approach? | "Motion patterns are temporally sparse" |
| Contribution | What do we propose? | "Sparse temporal attention for dynamic regions" |
| Advantage | Why is our approach better? | "Reduces computation while preserving quality" |
Starting Point: Pipeline Figure Sketch
Start by drawing a pipeline figure sketch. This forces you to clarify the overall method before writing.
The pipeline figure sketch serves as the paper's visual backbone:
- Draw it before writing anything
- It reveals whether the method is clear enough to explain
- It identifies the novel modules vs. standard components
- It determines subsection structure for the Method section
See references/story-design.md
Step 2: Experiment Planning
Plan experiments before writing to avoid discovering gaps late.
Two Categories of Experiments
Comparison Experiments — Prove our method is better:
- Which baseline methods to compare against?
- Which datasets and metrics?
- What is the evaluation protocol?
Ablation Studies — Prove each module is effective:
- Part 1: One big table showing impact of core contributions
- Part 2: Several small tables for design choices and hyperparameters
Planning Checklist
See references/experiment-planning.md
Experiment Plan Template
Use the template at assets/experiment-plan-template.md to organize your experiment plan.
Step 3: Figure Design
The pipeline figure is for highlighting novelty, not for making readers understand. The Method text is what makes readers understand.
Pipeline Figure Principles
- Highlight novelty: The pipeline figure showcases what is new, not just the workflow
- Differentiate from prior work: The figure must look different from previous methods
- Novel modules stand out: If the overall pipeline is standard, zoom in on novel modules
- Focus on clarity of the novel parts; standard components can be simplified
Teaser Figure
The teaser (usually Figure 1) shows the key result at a glance:
- Place it at the top of the first page
- Should be immediately compelling
- Reference it from the Introduction
Visual Quality Matters
Visual polish directly influences review outcomes. See references/figure-design.md for the full visual quality guide (pipeline figures, tables, typography)
Step 4: Timeline
4-Week Countdown
Start writing at least 1 month before the deadline.
| Week | Tasks |
|---|
| 4 weeks before | 1. Organize story (core contribution, module motivations). 2. List comparison experiments and ablation studies. 3. Write Introduction first draft. |
| 3 weeks before | 1. Finalize the pipeline figure sketch. 2. Write Method first draft (use \todo{} for unsettled details). Deadline: give Introduction + Method draft to advisor. |
| 2 weeks before | Write first drafts of Experiments, Abstract, Related Work. |
| Last week | Revise paper, polish pipeline figure and teaser, run demos. |
Critical: By the end of Week 3, you must send the Introduction and Method drafts to your advisor — otherwise the advisor likely will not have enough time to finish reviewing the paper.
See references/timeline-4week.md for the detailed schedule and progress tracking template.
Handoff to Writing
When planning is complete, pass these artifacts to paper-writing:
| Artifact | Source Step | Used By |
|---|
| Story summary (task → challenge → insight → contribution → advantage) | Step 1 | Introduction |
| Module Motivation Mapping table | Step 1 | Method subsections |
| Experiment plan (comparisons + ablations + demos) | Step 2 | Experiments section |
| Pipeline figure sketch | Step 1 / Step 3 | Method overview + Figure 2 |
| Claim-to-experiment mapping | Step 2 | Abstract, Introduction, Experiments |
| Fallback narrative (if planned) | Counterintuitive Rule 5 | Introduction / Conclusion pivot |
| Rejection-risk table | Counterintuitive Rule 1 | Self-review prioritization |
Reference Navigation
Handoff to Presentation
If preparing a conference talk or slide deck, the academic-slides skill guides slide creation from your planning artifacts — including translating your story design and pipeline figure into presentation structure.
