| name | academic-self-review-loop |
| description | Use before delivering proposal, literature review, methodology, manuscript, report, grant, supervisor-facing, reviewer-facing, client-facing, or formal academic/professional drafts to run a two-pass self-review and revision loop using intrinsic writing-quality criteria before style and document-quality gates. |
Academic Self-Review Loop
Use this skill after cognitive-frameworks and before uk-academic-writing-style, style-memory-and-revision-gate, and dissertation-document-quality-gate.
Trigger
Use for formal or high-stakes prose:
- proposal, manuscript, report, grant, protocol, thesis, dissertation, chapter, or section draft;
- literature review, methodology, introduction, discussion, or recommendations;
- supervisor, PI, client, reviewer, examiner, funder, or stakeholder-facing drafts;
- major revision of formal research text.
Do not force a two-pass review for short chat answers, simple file notes, basic summaries, or maintenance reports unless the user asks for formal delivery.
Required Standard
Use research-wiki/WRITING_QUALITY_RUBRIC.md as the intrinsic writing-quality standard.
Do not use grade bands, journal acceptance, funding chance, or client approval as the writing-quality score. Those belong to project delivery or requirement gates.
Two-Pass Loop
Pass 0: Input Lock
Save or identify the current artifact:
Artifact:
Audience:
Section type:
Purpose:
Source status:
Known limitations / TO CONFIRM:
Pass 1: Context-Naive Review
Read only the current artifact and the review question. Do not look at previous repair notes.
Find the top two or three concrete weaknesses using:
- one point per paragraph;
- mini-claim topic sentence;
- argument progression;
- evidence integration;
- reader journey;
- redundancy control.
Avoid generic praise. Every finding must identify a specific weakness and revision action.
Revision
Revise the artifact to improve argument quality, not only wording.
Revision must do at least one of:
- narrow or sharpen the main claim;
- improve paragraph topic sentence;
- add or clarify warrant;
- improve source integration or mark
TO CONFIRM;
- reduce redundancy;
- improve reader sequence;
- remove unsupported certainty.
Pass 2: Fresh Review
Review the revised artifact without copying Pass 1 wording.
Record:
Second-pass judgement:
- Improved criteria:
- Remaining weakness:
- Source or evidence risks:
- Ready for next gate: yes / no / yes with TO CONFIRM
Acceptance Criteria
The loop passes only if:
- Pass 1 names concrete weaknesses;
- the revision changes argument quality, not just style;
- Pass 2 gives a fresh judgement;
- no unsupported citation, data, date, requirement, finding, or official claim is invented;
- unresolved evidence is marked
TO CONFIRM.
If these criteria are not met, repeat the loop or mark the draft as not ready.
Relationship To Other Gates
Sequence for formal writing:
- source-first gate;
- cognitive-frameworks;
- academic-self-review-loop;
- UK or project-specific style check;
- style-memory/revision gate;
- document-quality gate;
- formal delivery/render checks when needed.
External reviewers, including Claude Code or another model, may be used as optional independent review. They do not replace this local self-review loop and must not be treated as evidence.
