drafting

name

drafting

description

Use when turning an approved outline and its claim stubs into LaTeX manuscript prose, writing each section's paragraphs under the claim-first discipline (resolve evidence, then write `% claim: id`-tagged prose). Reads the per-section writing standards, style cautions, and terminology ledger. Trigger after outlining, when `.writing/manuscript/*.tex` is empty or a section still needs prose; before claim-verification and polish. Also trigger on "draft the paper", "write the Methods section", "turn the outline into prose".

Drafting

Turn claims into sentences. You draft each section yourself, in outline order, no mode selection, no parallel subagents, no review pipeline. The hard rule is claim-first: no prose may cite a claim whose STATUS is still stub. Resolve evidence, then write.

Announce at start: "I'm using the drafting skill to write manuscript prose."

Preconditions

Draft only once outlining has produced:

• .writing/outline.md (approved) and .writing/claims/section_*.md (stub entries per section).
• .writing/metadata.yaml filled (note writing_profile, zotero.enabled, zotero.auto_push_new_citations).
• .writing/manuscript/ exists (from init-writing-dir.sh).

Skip this skill to copy-edit existing prose (use polish) or to verify a finished draft (use claim-verification).

The protocol

Read references/claim-first.md and follow it for every section. It is the load-bearing doorway to the rest of the writing references, so read it before your first section. In short, per section:

1. Resolve evidence first (Step A). For each STATUS: stub claim, resolve its source Zotero-first, then via superpower-writing:literature / superpower-writing:citations as fallback. Advance to evidence_ready. No prose until every claim in the section is resolved.
2. Write LaTeX prose (Step B). Tag each load-bearing paragraph % claim: id (or % draft-only) at column 0. Never invent citekeys.
3. Bookkeeping (Step C). Quick self-read, update .writing/progress.md, commit. The exhaustive mechanical sweep is claim-verification's job, not a gate to rebuild here.

Writing standards (read as guidance, not gates)

• Per-section shape. For each section read the matching references/section-standards/<slug>.md (resolve by slug-ending). It describes paragraph shape, required structural tags, tense and length. Treat it as guidance that refines references/writing-principles.md; if it genuinely conflicts with the outline, surface the conflict rather than silently picking one.
• Terminology ledger. Before the first section, build the canonical-term table from ../_shared/core/terminology-ledger.md: one name per thing across sections. Surface collisions and let the user pick; never coin a name to fill a gap.
• Style cautions. Read references/style-cautions.md before writing any section intro, overview paragraph, or thesis sentence, and clear its scans.
• Systems papers. When metadata.yaml has writing_profile: systems, read references/systems-evidence-contract.md for structured analysis/artifact evidence and the Results/Discussion boundary.

Figures

Figures are their own tasks, not inlined into a prose section. Dispatch per type and \input/\includegraphics the result:

• Structural (architecture / flowchart / pipeline / timeline) → superpower-writing:tikz-figures.
• Data plots (bars / scaling / heatmap / cost curves) → superpower-writing:scientific-visualization.
• Pictorial concept art or a graphical abstract (systems papers usually omit it) → superpower-writing:scientific-schematics.

The prose paragraph that introduces a figure still carries a % claim: id tag for the claim it supports; figure files themselves carry no claim tags. See references/figures-and-tables.md.

After drafting

Hand the manuscript to superpower-writing:claim-verification (mechanical evidence + citation check), then superpower-writing:polish (prose quality).

Key principles

Claim-first, always. Evidence before prose is the plugin's central discipline, not an optional gate. If drafting ever feels fast because you skipped evidence resolution, the gap resurfaces at claim-verification and you redo the work.

You draft inline. A strong model writes the sections directly. There is no orchestration to configure and no subagent to dispatch, the value here is the discipline and the standards, not a pipeline.

Locked-term renames cross the prose/spec boundary. If a rename touches a term already locked in .writing/progress.md, outline.md, or prior drafted prose, do not apply it as a single-file edit. Grep every .writing/manuscript/*.tex, outline.md, and findings.md, update them together, and record the rename in findings.md so the audit trail survives.

Define terms before use. When .writing/glossary.md is present, do not use a term before its declared definition section; fix by moving the % define: <id> or reordering sections.