| name | paper-reviewer |
| description | Use when reviewing, critiquing, commenting on, or fact-checking an existing scientific manuscript — "comment on my paper", "review my draft", "check my references", "verify my claims", or a referee-style read of a .tex/.typ/.md paper. Not for drafting from scratch (use paper-writer) or for technology/field assessments (use survey-writer). |
Paper Reviewer
Run a structured review-and-enhance pass over an existing scientific manuscript. The skill reads the whole paper, produces location-anchored comments first, then applies only the edits the user approves and re-checks that the manuscript still compiles.
Scope note. This is the reviewing/revising counterpart to paper-writer (which drafts a manuscript figures-first). It is not survey-writer, which writes technology/field-assessment reports from a literature survey. Use paper-reviewer when a manuscript already exists and the user wants comments, a referee-style critique, reference/fact verification, or guideline-driven polish. If no manuscript exists yet, redirect to paper-writer.
The eight guidelines below come from a manuscript-quality rubric. Where a rule is already defined as an authoring rule in paper-writer/SKILL.md (sentence/notation/figure discipline), this skill references it rather than restating it — consult skills/paper-writer/SKILL.md and skills/paper-writer/references.md for the why behind a rule. The full rubric lives in skills/paper-reviewer/checklist.md.
Use skills/_shared/writing-workflow.md for KB/context loading, citation handling, the BibTeX lookup chain, and output mechanics.
Operating principle
Comment-first, non-destructive. Never edit the manuscript before the user has seen and approved the findings. Read the whole paper, deliver the comments, let the user choose what to apply, then edit. This mirrors paper-writer's "iterate the story with the user" philosophy: the author keeps control of judgment calls.
The eight guidelines → where each is handled
| # | Guideline | Phase | Source |
|---|
| 1 | Break long sentences; one concept per sentence | 1 | paper-writer Sentence-Level Rules |
| 2 | Define every concept/symbol before use | 1 | paper-writer Notation Rulebook |
| 3 | Each paragraph has one well-defined job | 1 | paper-writer Sentence-Level Rules |
| 4 | DRY — avoid repeated explanations/definitions | 1 | new to this skill |
| 5 | Display math reserved for emphasis only | 1 | paper-writer Notation Rulebook |
| 6 | Read the whole paper first; grasp the story, then each section's mission | 0 | new — the gate before critique |
| 7 | Every figure referenced ≥1× and its striking features discussed | 1 | paper-writer Figure Rulebook |
| 8 | Verify factual claims & references; flag the uncertain | 2 | new — the standout capability |
Severity rubric
Rank every finding so the user can triage:
- high — wrong or misleading: undefined-but-used symbol, broken/missing citation, a factual or numerical claim that fails verification, an orphan figure central to a result, a claim the cited work does not support.
- med — hurts clarity but not correctness: overlong multi-concept sentences, a purposeless paragraph, a repeated explanation (DRY), display math that doesn't earn emphasis.
- low — polish: minor signposting, parallelism, caption tightening, a striking figure feature left undiscussed.
Phase 0 — Load & understand (guideline #6)
- Resolve the manuscript. Accept an explicit path; else auto-detect from
articles/<slug>/ or the working directory. Detect format from the extension: LaTeX (.tex) is primary; Typst (.typ) and Markdown (.md) are supported.
- Read the whole manuscript end to end — and its bibliography. Resolve the bibliography in this order: the manuscript's own
\bibliography{…} / \addbibresource{…} target (or embedded thebibliography / Typst bibliography(…)), then fall back to $KB/references.bib. Handle both; note which one you used.
- Load shared context. Follow
skills/_shared/writing-workflow.md: resolve KB=$(python3 skills/download-ref/helpers/resolve_kb.py), read $KB/INDEX.md, $KB/NOTES.md, $KB/references.bib, and docs/discussion/user-profile.md if present. This is the literature backdrop for fact-checking.
- Emit the story summary + per-section missions. One paragraph capturing the paper's story, plus a one-line "mission" for each section. Confirm the story with the user before any critique. This gate prevents local nitpicks that fight the global narrative — if the reviewer misread the story, fix that before producing findings.
Do not proceed to Phase 1 until the user confirms (or corrects) the story summary.
Phase 1 — Structured review (guidelines #1–5, #7)
Walk the manuscript and produce findings. Each finding has this shape:
{ guideline: 1–8,
location: section + line/anchor (and the offending snippet),
severity: high | med | low,
problem: what's wrong, in one sentence,
fix: a concrete suggested edit }
Checks:
- Sentence length / one concept per sentence. Flag overlong or triple-idea sentences; propose splits. (
paper-writer Sentence-Level Rules.)
- Define before use. Build a symbol/notation table as you read. Flag any symbol or concept used before its definition (a forward-reference), and any symbol never defined. Require that every symbol is defined before use, in logical order. (
paper-writer Notation Rulebook.)
- Paragraph purpose. Flag purposeless or double-duty paragraphs; suggest a topic sentence and a single job per paragraph.
- DRY / anti-repetition. Detect explanations or definitions repeated across sections; suggest consolidate-and-cross-reference. (New — keep one canonical statement, reference it elsewhere.)
- Display-math discipline. Flag display equations that don't earn emphasis; suggest inlining or cutting. Reserve display math for key/flagship results, non-obvious steps, or figure-referenced equations. (
paper-writer Notation Rulebook.)
- Figure integration. Flag orphan figures (never referenced in the main text) and figures whose striking features (peaks, kinks, jumps) aren't discussed. (
paper-writer Figure Rulebook.)
Also run a per-section "did this section deliver its Phase-0 mission?" check (guideline #6 carried into the body).
Phase 2 — Fact & reference verification (guideline #8)
The standout capability. Follow the repo discipline: never invent BibTeX from memory; use the lookup chain CrossRef → Semantic Scholar → MCP → WebFetch; verify only what supports the main claims (completeness is not the goal — see skills/_shared/writing-workflow.md).
- References. For each
\cite key: confirm the entry exists in the resolved bibliography, then verify authors / year / title / venue against the lookup chain. Flag broken, missing, or mismatched citations. Offer to repair via /download-ref (it owns references.bib appends and metadata fetching).
- Claim ↔ citation support. For key claims attached to a citation, best-effort sanity-check that the cited work actually supports the claim. Flag uncertain — do not assert.
- Standalone factual claims. Identify checkable factual/numerical claims not tied to a citation; verify via WebSearch. Flag the uncertain or unsupported — never silently "correct" a claim, and never fabricate a citation to prop one up.
Phase 3 — Deliver the review report
Write a timestamped report to articles/<slug>/review-YYYY-MM-DD.md (the repo's dated-output convention). Structure:
- Story summary + per-section missions (from Phase 0).
- Findings grouped by guideline, severity-ranked (high → low).
- Reference / fact-check table — cite key → status (ok / broken / missing / mismatch / unverifiable) → note.
- Top fixes — a prioritized list of the highest-leverage changes.
Then present a short summary to the user and ask which findings to apply.
Phase 4 — Apply approved edits
- User selects scope: all / by-severity (e.g. "apply all high") / individually. Do not edit anything the user didn't approve.
- Apply edits to the manuscript, preserving LaTeX macros, environments, labels, and structure (and Typst/Markdown structure for those formats). Where a fix genuinely needs author judgment, insert a
% [reviewer] … margin comment instead of rewriting silently (use // [reviewer] for Typst, an HTML comment for Markdown).
- Verify it still compiles —
latexmk (or pdflatex) for .tex, typst compile for .typ; for .md, confirm it still renders. Report pass/fail with the actual command output (per verification-before-completion: evidence before assertions). If it breaks, fix or revert the offending edit before claiming done.
- Append a changelog to the top of the review report: what was applied, what was skipped, and the compile result.
Reused vs. new
Reused (no duplication): skills/_shared/writing-workflow.md (context, citations, output mechanics); the BibTeX lookup chain (CrossRef → Semantic Scholar → MCP → WebFetch); download-ref for reference repair; paper-writer's sentence/notation/figure rule definitions (referenced).
New here: the read-whole-first review protocol (Phase 0), DRY/anti-repetition detection (#4), fact & reference verification (#8), and the comment-then-apply loop plus compile-check (Phases 3–4).
Common mistakes
| Mistake | Instead |
|---|
| Editing before the user approves | Comment-first. Phase 3 → user picks → Phase 4. |
| Nitpicking sentences before confirming the story | Phase 0 gate: confirm the story summary first. |
| Inventing a BibTeX entry to "fix" a citation | Never. Use the lookup chain / /download-ref, or flag as unverifiable. |
| Silently "correcting" a factual claim | Flag uncertain claims; the author decides. |
| Claiming done without compiling | Run latexmk / typst compile and paste the result. |
| Chasing completeness on fact-checks | Verify only what supports the main claims. |
Integrations
- Context, citations, output mechanics:
skills/_shared/writing-workflow.md.
- Rule definitions (sentence/notation/figure):
skills/paper-writer/SKILL.md + skills/paper-writer/references.md.
- Reference repair / adding a missing paper:
/download-ref.
- Full rubric checklist:
skills/paper-reviewer/checklist.md.
