Menu
Use when a humanities manuscript needs an evidence-based, whole-document review of research question, scope, concepts, argument, interpretation, citations, structure, and contribution.
Install with Codex or Claude Copy this prompt, paste it into Codex, Claude, or another assistant, and let it review the skill page and install it for you.
Based on SOC occupation classification
Use when citations, quotations, page numbers, bibliography entries, or source-supported claims must be checked for existence, metadata accuracy, textual fidelity, and claim–source fit.
Use when a manuscript contains recurring concepts, translations, abbreviations, proper names, or near-synonyms whose meanings and forms must remain stable across the argument.
Use when a humanities researcher needs to transform verified sources into a structured scholarly conversation rather than a chronological list of summaries.
Use when a humanities researcher has a broad topic, intuition, corpus, or problem but does not yet have a precise, contestable, and researchable question.
Use when a humanities argument depends on a concept whose history, competing definitions, translations, or boundaries must be reconstructed before the concept can support new claims.
Use when an interpretation must be grounded in specific textual, visual, rhetorical, formal, interface, archival, performative, or material features rather than thematic summary or theoretical labeling.
| name | reviewing-manuscript |
| description | Use when a humanities manuscript needs an evidence-based, whole-document review of research question, scope, concepts, argument, interpretation, citations, structure, and contribution. |
| version | 1.0.0 |
| language | en |
| license | MIT |
Review a manuscript as an integrated scholarly argument rather than as a collection of polished paragraphs. The review identifies strengths, blocking weaknesses, revision priorities, and decisions that remain the researcher's responsibility.
This skill is not a simulated hostile reviewer and not a guarantee of acceptance. Its task is to reconstruct the manuscript fairly, test whether its parts support one another, and produce an actionable revision map.
Accepts a complete or substantial manuscript, research brief, argument map, journal guidelines, prior gate reports, citation audit, terminology ledger, or reviewer criteria.
Requires enough of the manuscript to reconstruct its central question, thesis, evidence, method, and contribution. A target genre or venue is strongly recommended.
Produces a manuscript review, reconstructed argument, strengths, findings by severity, revision priorities, venue-fit observations where evidence is available, and a manuscript-review gate report.
May produce section-level annotations, a revision sequence, an editorial triage table, or handoffs to citation, terminology, scope, argument, or peer-review-response skills.
Fails when the manuscript is unavailable, only a title or abstract is supplied for whole-manuscript judgment, the requested review requires invented sources or reviewer opinions, or venue criteria cannot be verified.
Guarantees that major criticisms are linked to observable manuscript evidence and that severity is distinguished from stylistic preference.
Does not guarantee publication, reviewer agreement, originality, factual truth, or disciplinary adequacy beyond the materials and expertise available.
Use after a coherent draft exists, before external circulation, after major structural revision, before selecting final submission status, or when a researcher needs a prioritized diagnosis rather than line editing.
Do not use this skill as a substitute for citation audit, specialist fact checking, or copyediting. It may identify the need for those operations and route the manuscript accordingly.
Provide:
If the stated thesis differs from what the manuscript actually argues, preserve both and report the discrepancy.
State what was received, what was not received, which criteria will be used, and whether citation content, factual claims, language quality, and venue fit are included or only flagged for separate review.
Before criticizing, summarize:
Use the manuscript's strongest defensible formulation. If reconstruction requires guessing, mark the ambiguity.
Determine whether the thesis answers the research question and whether the conclusion answers the same question introduced at the beginning. Flag a moving research object, broadened conclusion, or question that is descriptive while the thesis is causal or normative.
Compare the manuscript's claims with its corpus, historical range, linguistic range, and method. Identify where local readings become field-wide, historical, technological, social, or universal claims without sufficient bridge evidence.
Check whether central concepts are defined, distinguished from adjacent terms, used at a stable level of analysis, and connected to their sources or lineage. A theoretically impressive vocabulary is not a contribution if it does no identifiable analytical work.
Reconstruct major claims, evidence, warrants, objections, and consequences. Identify missing warrants, circular reasoning, unsupported transitions, redundant sections, late definitions, and conclusions introduced before evidence.
Ask whether each section changes what the reader can reasonably accept. Sections that only repeat context or theorist summaries may need compression or relocation.
Assess whether observed features are distinguished from interpretation, whether alternative readings are addressed, and whether examples support the scale of the claim. Do not judge an interpretation solely because another reading is possible; judge whether the manuscript makes its interpretive path accountable.
Determine whether prior work is represented as a structured scholarly conversation rather than a list. Evaluate whether the contribution is stated as a bounded intervention: new object, relation, distinction, reinterpretation, method, synthesis, or consequence.
Do not accept “no one has studied this” without documented review scope.
Use existing audit reports if provided. Otherwise flag risks without claiming full verification. Identify central claims whose support is unclear, direct quotations needing audit, inconsistent key terms, and translations requiring specialist confirmation.
Use:
Severity MUST reflect argumentative consequence, not reviewer irritation.
Organize recommendations in dependency order. Do not begin with prose polishing when the research question, evidence, or argument structure may change. A typical sequence is:
question/scope -> concept -> evidence -> argument -> objections -> citations -> terminology -> prose/format
For each major issue state the observed evidence, why it matters, the smallest adequate remedy, and which skill should handle it.
Return PASS only when no blocking issue remains within the declared review scope. Use CONDITIONAL PASS when the argument is viable but external audit, specialist review, or localized revision remains. Return FAIL when central evidence, scope, concept, or logic does not support the thesis.
Stop or narrow the review when:
A review is complete when:
Do not invent reviewer consensus, journal preferences, source contents, missing sections, disciplinary trends, or likely acceptance rates. Do not claim a manuscript is original because no duplicate wording was noticed. Do not attribute motives to the author. Do not manufacture criticisms merely to appear rigorous.
When evidence is unavailable, write “not assessed” or route to the appropriate audit.
Provide:
Gate: Manuscript Review
Status: PASS | CONDITIONAL PASS | FAIL
Evidence checked:
Blocking issues:
Non-blocking risks:
Researcher decisions required:
Required next action:
Next skill:
Review this article as an integrated humanities argument. Reconstruct it fairly, rank problems by severity, cite section locations, and do not claim that citations are verified unless an audit report supports that claim.
Pretend to be an angry Reviewer 2, invent devastating objections, and tell me the journal will reject it.
The bad invocation requests theater and unsupported prediction rather than evidence-based review.
stress-testing-argument for major objections.auditing-citations for evidentiary verification.checking-terminology-consistency for concept drift.responding-to-peer-review when real reviewer comments exist.verifying-before-submission after revision.A manuscript review is conditional on disciplinary context, source access, and the declared criteria. It cannot replace expert peer review, editor judgment, language editing, legal review, ethics review, or empirical validation. Different qualified reviewers may disagree; the skill makes reasons and dependencies explicit rather than claiming a single final verdict.