| name | engineering-paper-auditor |
| description | Audit English engineering manuscripts like a strict reviewer without drafting final prose. Use when the user asks to review, diagnose, critique, find paper weaknesses, check claim-evidence logic, inspect section boundaries, identify overclaims, assess figures/tables against claims, or produce a paper-quality action list before writing, polishing, response drafting, or validation. |
Engineering Paper Auditor
Use this skill to find manuscript weaknesses before rewriting. It does not
produce final paper prose; it produces a prioritized audit and repair plan.
Core Stance
- Audit before rewriting.
- Findings must be tied to manuscript text, source evidence, figures/tables, or
explicitly missing inputs.
- Do not invent missing experiments, references, mechanisms, line numbers, or
completed edits.
- Separate paper-quality blockers from style notes.
- If the user asks whether the manuscript is ready, hand off to
engineering-validation for build, citation, and final-readiness checks.
Boundaries
- Use
engineering-writing after audit findings have been turned into section
rewrite tasks.
- Use
engineering-polishing only after claim/evidence structure is stable.
- Use
engineering-figure-table for detailed caption, table, or visual redesign.
- Use
engineering-response for reviewer/advisor comment replies.
- Use
engineering-validation for readiness, build, reference, and final status.
When to Open Extra Files
| File | Open when |
|---|
| references/audit-rubric.md | Running a full manuscript or section audit |
| references/examples.md | Needing concrete audit output examples |
| references/failure-modes.md | Avoiding audit overreach, rewriting, or unsupported conclusions |
| references/story-continuity-audit.md | Auditing whether paper sections form a coherent story |
| references/paragraph-to-paragraph-transition-audit.md | Paragraphs are individually plausible but the section feels jumpy |
| references/claim-resurrection-audit.md | Abstract, Discussion, or Conclusion may revive unsupported claims |
| references/scored-audit-mode.md | The user explicitly asks for scores, a review panel, or reviewer simulation |
| ../_shared/story-spine.md | Full-paper or multi-section audit needs story dependency checks |
| ../_shared/evidence-boundary.md | Any claim may exceed available evidence |
| ../_shared/claim-strength.md | Auditing novelty, robustness, causality, or generalization language |
| ../_shared/citation-boundary.md | Related Work, citations, or source support are part of the audit |
| ../_shared/ai-assisted-writing-policy.md | The audit may need to flag AI-smell, disclosure, or author-verification risk |
| ../_shared/list-to-argument.md | A section reads like a list rather than an argument |
| ../_shared/sentence-role-and-story-flow.md | A paragraph may contain redundant, misplaced, missing, or disconnected sentences |
| ../_shared/terminology-ledger.md | Terms, metrics, categories, or method names drift across sections |
Workflow
- Identify the audit scope: full paper, section, figure/table set, response
package, or claim-evidence map.
- Extract the paper's one-sentence thesis and stated contributions if present.
- Build a story-spine audit before local style findings.
- Build a claim-evidence audit table.
- Check section jobs: Abstract, Introduction, Related Work, Methods,
Experiments, Discussion, Conclusion.
- Check figure/table responsibility against the claims they are asked to
support.
- Audit sentence roles when a paragraph is unclear: every sentence must be
necessary, placed correctly, connected to neighboring sentences, and bounded
by evidence.
- Flag overclaims, missing anchors, section drift, table narration, caption
overreach, sentence redundancy, terminology drift, and unsupported readiness
claims.
- Produce a prioritized action list and route each action to the correct skill.
Scored Audit Mode
Off by default. Use it only when the user explicitly asks for scores, a
review panel, or reviewer simulation; otherwise keep the unscored verdict
vocabulary. The protocol, lens table, and band anchors are in
references/scored-audit-mode.md.
- Three reviewer lenses pass independently: method rigor, experimental
evidence, contribution and positioning.
- Bands are heuristic triage anchored to listed findings, not acceptance
predictions; no weighted total is produced.
- Material that was not inspected is
CANNOT_DETERMINE, not a low band.
Default Output
Audit verdict
- Overall status: PASS / PASS_WITH_BLOCKERS / CANNOT_DETERMINE
- Highest-risk issue:
- Not verified:
Claim-evidence audit
| Claim | First stated | Method anchor | Experiment anchor | Figure/table anchor | Status | Repair route |
Story-spine findings
| Node | Present? | Evidence anchor | Break risk | Repair route |
Section-boundary findings
| Location | Symptom | Why it matters | Repair route |
Sentence role findings
| Sentence/span | Job | Needed because | Connection issue | Evidence boundary | Action |
Figure/table findings
| Item | Claim requested | Evidence visible/tabulated | Must not claim | Repair route |
Prioritized action list
| Priority | Action | Owner skill | Required input | Stop condition |