sci-comparative-positioning

name	sci-comparative-positioning
description	Use when a manuscript claims novelty, improvement, efficiency, speedup, superiority, reduced cost, better performance, or contribution relative to prior work, baselines, surveys, systems, or benchmarks

SCI Comparative Positioning

Overview

Audit whether comparison language is legitimate before it enters the paper.

Core principle: no "better/faster/improved" claim until task, data, hardware, metric, and evidence level are comparable.

Trigger Words

Run this skill when text contains or implies:

• faster, better, improves, reduces, efficient, outperforms
• SOTA, first, novel, superior, significant gain
• baseline, comparison, prior work, compared with
• practical value over existing systems

Required Tables

Comparable Literature Matrix

Work	Task	Hardware/environment	Metric	Evidence level	Comparable?

Comparison Validity Table

Claim type	Required conditions	Allowed wording
Direct quantitative improvement	same task, metric, data, and controlled hardware	"X improved by Y under Z."
Weak quantitative reference	similar metric, different task/hardware/data	"same order/context, not direct baseline."
Qualitative positioning	different layer or workflow	"Unlike model-level studies, this evaluates an end-to-end workflow."
Not comparable	missing or incompatible basis	Do not write improvement language.

Contribution Delta Table

Prior layer	Current paper layer	Safe wording

Evidence Gap Table

Desired stronger claim	Missing evidence	Recommended experiment

Output

• safe comparative paragraph
• prohibited phrases
• evidence gaps
• recommended experiments

Red Flags

• Comparing model latency to full workflow latency.
• Comparing different datasets as if controlled.
• Using survey claims as baselines.
• Turning COTS HIL evidence into flight validation.

See references/pressure-scenarios.md for reusable failure cases from satellite/edge-agent manuscript practice.