| name | manuscript-review-council |
| description | Run a multi-agent manuscript critique with specialist reports, disagreement checks, and editor synthesis. Use for scientific review, revision assessment, or judging whether an author response resolves prior concerns. |
Manuscript Review Council
Run a journal-style review council instead of a single blended opinion. This skill is self-contained and works in both Codex and Claude Code.
The council definition lives in local files:
- role roster:
references/reviewer-roles.md
- workflow and artifact bundle:
references/council-workflow.md
- per-reviewer handoff template:
templates/reviewer-brief.md
- editor synthesis template:
templates/editor-meta-review.md
Instructions
- Confirm the review context: manuscript or revision stage, target venue if known, desired decision scale, and whether the user wants a full review, triage, version comparison, or rebuttal assessment.
- Gather the review packet before delegating:
- manuscript text or accessible PDF/DOCX
- title, abstract, main claims, methods snapshot, and figure or table list
- user priorities such as novelty, rigor, statistics, reproducibility, or journal fit
- prior reviews or author response if this is a revision
- Normalize the manuscript into a shared packet for every reviewer. At minimum, preserve section boundaries, figure references, and the claims being evaluated. If the source is a PDF or DOCX, extract a sectioned text view before review. Use
references/council-workflow.md for the packet contents.
- Load the local council definition before delegating:
- reviewer roles and activation rules:
references/reviewer-roles.md
- stage flow and artifact bundle:
references/council-workflow.md
- reviewer prompt skeleton:
templates/reviewer-brief.md
- editor synthesis skeleton:
templates/editor-meta-review.md
- Use the platform's native delegation primitive when available:
- Codex: spawn specialist sub-agents or workers
- Claude Code: spawn Task agents or equivalent delegated runs
- If delegation is unavailable, emulate the same reviewer roles sequentially and keep outputs role-separated
- Launch these three default reviewers in parallel:
- Domain reviewer: novelty, significance, positioning against prior work, and overclaiming
- Methods and statistics reviewer: design, controls, benchmarks, sample size, figure interpretation, and analysis validity
- Skeptical reviewer: weakest links, alternate explanations, unsupported causal claims, and missing controls
- Add support reviewers only when triggered by the manuscript:
- Reproducibility reviewer for computational papers, code or data availability, workflow clarity, and parameter transparency
- Ethics or compliance reviewer for human subjects, animal work, privacy, conflicts, dual-use, or citation bias concerns
- Translational reviewer when the manuscript makes clinical, ecological, or deployment claims that need reality checks
- Give every reviewer the same structured contract:
- one-paragraph summary
- top strengths
- major concerns
- minor concerns
- must-fix experiments or analyses
- confidence level
- provisional recommendation:
accept, minor_revision, major_revision, or reject
- direct grounding in manuscript sections, figures, tables, or explicit missing information
- Require reviewers to ground criticisms in the manuscript text or in clearly missing information. Do not invent citations, datasets, reviewer expectations, or unstated experiments.
- Run a cross-review pass after the first round:
- compare disagreements
- merge duplicate concerns
- identify the few issues that actually drive the decision
- separate fatal flaws from fixable revision items
- Capture a lightweight artifact bundle even if the user only asked for prose:
- shared review packet
- reviewer reports
- disagreement or conflict notes
- editor meta-review
- validate deterministic paths and machine-readable issues against
schemas/review-bundle.schema.json with scripts/validate_review_bundle.py
- Write an editor meta-review that includes:
- headline recommendation
- rationale across novelty, rigor, evidence strength, clarity, reproducibility, and significance
- ranked major revisions
- ranked minor revisions
- questions for the authors
- a short decision letter or reviewer summary
- If outside validation is needed, do targeted spot-checks instead of broad literature review:
- use
/polars-dovmed for claim-specific literature context
- use
/bio-logic for evidence-strength and causal-claim stress tests
- never fabricate supporting papers
- If the user wants polished review prose, a rebuttal outline, or a cleaned-up decision letter, use
/scientific-writing after the council establishes the factual review skeleton.
- Requests to rewrite manuscript prose or draft an author rebuttal/response letter route directly to
/scientific-writing; do not start a council unless the user also asks for scientific critique or resolution assessment.
- Preserve provenance in the final deliverable:
- keep per-reviewer notes separate from the editor synthesis
- point to sections, figures, or tables when possible
- clearly mark inference versus explicit manuscript statement
Quick Reference
| Task | Action |
|---|
| Full manuscript review | Run the 3-reviewer council plus editor synthesis |
| Computational manuscript | Add a reproducibility reviewer |
| Human, animal, or clinical manuscript | Add an ethics or compliance reviewer |
| Revision assessment | Compare prior critiques to the new draft and label each issue resolved, partial, or unresolved |
| Fast triage | Use domain reviewer plus skeptic, then write a short editor recommendation |
| Rebuttal check | Judge whether the author response closes the decision-driving issues |
| Reviewer definitions | Read references/reviewer-roles.md |
| Stage flow and artifacts | Read references/council-workflow.md |
Input Requirements
- Manuscript text or an accessible PDF/DOCX
- Optional journal rubric, scorecard, or decision scale
- Optional prior reviews, decision letter, rebuttal, or previous manuscript version
- Optional focus areas such as novelty, methods, statistics, reproducibility, or clarity
Output
- Role-separated reviewer notes
- A short disagreement or adjudication log
- An editor meta-review with a clear recommendation
- A prioritized major and minor revision list
- Specific questions for the authors
- Optional decision letter, rebuttal assessment, or version-delta summary
Quality Gates
Examples
Example 1: Full journal-style review
Review this microbiome manuscript with a multi-agent council. Use domain,
methods/statistics, skeptic, and reproducibility reviewers. End with an editor
meta-review, a recommendation, and ranked major/minor revisions.
Example 2: Revision comparison
Compare this revised manuscript against the prior decision letter. Tell me
which major issues are resolved, partially resolved, or still open, then write
an editor recommendation.
Example 3: Fast triage
Give me a fast desk-review style assessment of this preprint. Use only a domain
reviewer and a skeptic, then summarize whether it is promising, immature, or
fatally flawed.
Troubleshooting
Issue: The manuscript is too long for every reviewer to read in full.
Solution: Build a shared review packet first, then route only the relevant sections, claims, and figures to each reviewer while keeping a common abstract and methods snapshot.
Issue: Reviewers disagree sharply.
Solution: Make the disagreement explicit, identify the evidence each reviewer is using, and let the editor resolve the conflict instead of averaging positions.
Issue: No journal rubric or venue is provided.
Solution: State the default criteria being applied: novelty, rigor, evidence strength, clarity, reproducibility, and significance.
Issue: Only one agent can run.
Solution: Emulate the council sequentially with role-scoped passes and keep the notes separated until the editor synthesis step.
Related Skills
/scientific-writing — apply the reviewer feedback to the manuscript/bio-logic — deeper reasoning about evidence strength/ai-scientist-evaluator — equivalent pipeline for AI scientist outputs
