preflight-check

name

preflight-check

description

Deterministic desk-reject preflight linter for LaTeX paper submissions. Use it when a researcher asks "is my paper ready to submit", or mentions preflight, desk reject, submission check, page limit, anonymization, double-blind, missing checklist, or format/template compliance for a conference (NeurIPS, ICML, CHI, SIGSPATIAL, SIGMOD, ICDE, CVPR, LNCS...). Lints the .tex source against a machine-readable venue profile for documentclass and style-file options, margin/template tampering (geometry, savetrees, spacing hacks), anonymization leaks (author block, acknowledgments, repo links, first-person self-citations, \thanks, pdfauthor), required sections (NeurIPS checklist, ICML impact statement, AI-use acknowledgement, COI, CCS concepts/keywords), abstract length, keywords format, and page-limit risk. Every finding is reported with file:line. Runs bundled stdlib-only Python scripts; advisory only, never submits anything.

Preflight Check

Run a deterministic desk-reject lint over a LaTeX submission before the authors hit "submit". Venues explicitly desk-reject — without review — for page-limit violations, template tampering, anonymization leaks, and missing mandatory sections. Every one of those is machine-checkable from the source. This skill catches them while there is still time to fix them.

When to use

• "Is my paper ready to submit to NeurIPS / SIGSPATIAL / CHI / ...?"
• "Check my paper for desk-reject risks" / "run a preflight"
• "Did I anonymize this properly?" / "double-blind check"
• "Am I over the page limit?" / "is my template compliant?"
• Right after tailor-to-venue, and always before any actual submission.

Inputs

1. The main .tex file of the submission (the one with \documentclass). \input/\include files are followed automatically.
2. A venue profile: venues/conferences/<venue>-<year>.yml (schema in venues/schema.yml). If the venue has no profile yet, create one first with parse-cfp (or copy the nearest family file and fill it in).
3. Optional but strongly recommended: a compiled .log or .pdf next to the .tex (same basename) so the page-count risk check can run.

Process

1. Resolve the venue profile. Find the matching file under venues/conferences/. Confirm the year matches the target deadline cycle. Ask the user which track they are submitting to — page limits differ per track (e.g. SIGSPATIAL Research = 10 pages excl. references, Demo = 4 incl.). Sanity-check the merged profile with: python3 scripts/venue_profile.py venues/conferences/<venue>.yml --track <name>

2. Re-verify critical facts against the live CFP — mandatory. Profiles are a starting point, never ground truth; a stale page limit causes the exact desk reject this skill exists to prevent. Fetch the profile's cfp_url and confirm: page limit + what it excludes, blind level, template invocation, required sections, and the deadline. If anything differs, update the profile YAML first and say so in the report.

3. Run the full preflight:

   python3 scripts/run_preflight.py paper.tex \
       --venue venues/conferences/<venue>-<year>.yml --track "<track>"
   

   Or run checkers individually when the user asks about one dimension:

   Script	Checks	Run
   scripts/check_template.py	documentclass + options vs profile, year-versioned .sty (NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR), geometry/savetrees/fullpage, \setlength on layout dims, \linespread<1, negative \vspace patterns, column count, page-limit risk from .log/.pdf	python3 scripts/check_template.py paper.tex --venue <yml> --track <t>
   scripts/check_anonymization.py	\author/\affiliation/\email/\orcid/\thanks content, acknowledgments sections, funding/grant lines, identifying links (GitHub, personal pages) vs anonymized mirrors, first-person self-citations, hyperref pdfauthor	python3 scripts/check_anonymization.py paper.tex --venue <yml>
   scripts/check_sections.py	every format.required_sections token: NeurIPS checklist, ICML impact statement, AI-use acknowledgement (ICDE), COI declaration, CCS concepts + \keywords, plus title/abstract/bibliography presence	python3 scripts/check_sections.py paper.tex --venue <yml>
   scripts/check_abstract.py	abstract word count vs venue bounds (or the 150–250 norm), single-paragraph rule, citations/URLs in abstract, keywords format (ACM/IEEE Index Terms/LNCS 3–6)	python3 scripts/check_abstract.py paper.tex --venue <yml>

   Useful flags on every script: --json (machine-readable), --strict (warnings also fail), --track <substring>, --venues-dir <dir> (when the profile lives outside this repo), --no-inputs. Anonymization adds --force to scan even at single-blind venues.

4. Interpret severities for the user.

   • ERROR — documented desk-reject grounds at this venue. Must fix.
   • WARN — judgment call (e.g. one negative \vspace is normal; eight is space compression). Walk through each with the user.
   • INFO — confirmations and pointers to manual checks. Do not pad the report with these; summarize. Exit codes: 0 = no errors, 1 = errors found (or warnings with --strict), 2 = bad arguments/missing files.

5. Do the manual checks the linter cannot do. Source-level linting cannot see compiled-PDF metadata, where the references actually start, supplementary files, or submission-form fields (COI declarations at ICDE live in CMT, not the PDF). Work through references/manual-checks.md with the user.

6. Fix and re-run until clean. Quote each finding's file:line, propose the minimal edit, apply it if asked, and re-run the affected checker. For the reasoning behind each check (which venue desk-rejects for what, with sources), see references/desk-reject-triggers.md.

Output

A findings report (text or --json) per checker or combined via run_preflight.py: severity, check id, file:line, message, summary counts, and a verdict (FAIL if any ERROR, PASS with warnings if only WARNs, else PASS). Present it to the user as a fix-list ordered by severity, then offer to apply fixes one at a time.

Worked example

A NeurIPS submission that still carries author identity and last year's style file. Running the combined checker:

python3 scripts/run_preflight.py paper.tex \
    --venue venues/conferences/neurips-2026.yml

=============================================================================
PREFLIGHT REPORT  paper.tex
venue: neurips-2026   track: main
=============================================================================

-- template --------------------------------------------------------------
   [ERROR] template/style-file-year             paper.tex:1 — uses neurips_2025.sty; NeurIPS 2026 requires neurips_2026.sty
   [WARN ] template/negative-vspace             paper.tex:312 — negative \vspace before figure; isolated, likely fine

-- anonymization ---------------------------------------------------------
   [ERROR] anonymization/pdf-metadata           paper.tex:14 — \hypersetup{pdfauthor=...} leaks the author into PDF metadata
   [WARN ] anonymization/author-block           paper.tex:22 — \author populated; the .sty hides it at submission, but scrub the source
   [WARN ] anonymization/self-citation          paper.tex:88 — "our previous work [12]" — rewrite in third person

-- sections --------------------------------------------------------------
   [ERROR] sections/missing:neurips-checklist   paper.tex — no NeurIPS checklist found; a missing checklist is a desk reject

-- abstract --------------------------------------------------------------
   clean.

=============================================================================
VERDICT: FAIL — fix ERRORs before submitting   (3 error(s), 3 warning(s), 0 info)
Profiles can go stale: re-verify limits/policies at https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2026/CallForPapers
=============================================================================

How to present this: lead with the three ERRORs as a numbered fix-list (neurips_2026.sty, drop the pdfauthor leak, add the checklist), each with its file:line and the one-line edit; then walk the WARNs as judgment calls. Re-verify the page limit and checklist requirement at the cfp_url before the user relies on the verdict, then re-run the affected checker after each fix.

Adapt to your discipline

Profiles can represent conferences, journals, and workshops in any field. Add venue YAMLs with your community's rules — the checkers only read the profile, so new disciplines need data, not code.

Guardrails

• A clean preflight is necessary, not sufficient — never tell the user the paper "will not be desk-rejected"; say "no machine-checkable desk-reject triggers found".
• Always re-verify page limits/deadlines/policies against the live cfp_url before the user relies on them (step 2 is not optional).
• Never submit to any system on the user's behalf; stop at the report.
• Never paste large portions of the user's paper into the report — quote at most the flagged line.
• Citation problems are out of scope here: route them through verify-citations.

Memory

This skill uses the shared .paper-memory/ convention in the user's paper directory, following paper-memory-convention.md.

• At start: read .paper-memory/lessons.md (and profile.yml for venue tier / constraints). Skip re-flagging issues already recorded and acted on; lead with any recurring desk-reject habits this author has (e.g. "you tend to compress layout near the page limit").
• At end: append each finding worth remembering as one dated entry in the shared format - [YYYY-MM-DD] (preflight-check | <scope>) issue -> recommendation (use reflect-and-improve's reflect_log.py append, which dedupes and dates). Tag a repeat-across-papers habit recurring, a one-off this-paper.
• Create .paper-memory/ on demand if absent and offer to add it to the project .gitignore. It is local-only; never upload it or copy it into this repo.