Comprehensive pre-submission quality check for an academic paper (LaTeX + BibTeX/biblatex). Use when the user is preparing to submit a paper and wants to verify: bibliography correctness (references actually exist, aren't hallucinated, aren't retracted, metadata matches), LaTeX formatting & writing quality, internal faithfulness (numbers in the text match the tables, figures match what the prose claims about them, no broken/empty citations or cross-references), double-blind / anonymization compliance, and venue-specific template rules (page limits, mandatory sections, checklists, style files). Triggers: "check my paper before I submit", "before submit", "is my paper ready for ACL/EMNLP/NeurIPS/CVPR/ICLR/...", "verify my references / .bib", "find fake or retracted citations", "do my numbers match the tables / figures", "check faithfulness / internal consistency", "double-blind / anonymization check", "did I follow the <venue> template". Works on a single .tex/.bib pair OR a whole multi-file LaTeX project direc
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before-submit
description
Comprehensive pre-submission quality check for an academic paper (LaTeX + BibTeX/biblatex). Use when the user is preparing to submit a paper and wants to verify: bibliography correctness (references actually exist, aren't hallucinated, aren't retracted, metadata matches), LaTeX formatting & writing quality, internal faithfulness (numbers in the text match the tables, figures match what the prose claims about them, no broken/empty citations or cross-references), double-blind / anonymization compliance, and venue-specific template rules (page limits, mandatory sections, checklists, style files). Triggers: "check my paper before I submit", "before submit", "is my paper ready for ACL/EMNLP/NeurIPS/CVPR/ICLR/...", "verify my references / .bib", "find fake or retracted citations", "do my numbers match the tables / figures", "check faithfulness / internal consistency", "double-blind / anonymization check", "did I follow the <venue> template". Works on a single .tex/.bib pair OR a whole multi-file LaTeX project directory.
Before-Submit: Paper Pre-Submission Auditor
You are auditing an academic paper before submission. Your job is to find
everything that would get it desk-rejected, then everything that would make
reviewers frown, then optional polish — and to be honest about what you
checked and what you couldn't.
Operating principles (apply throughout)
Detect, never assume. Probe the environment at runtime (files, TeX engine,
network). The user may be on any OS, with any/no TeX install, online or off.
Ignore commented-out LaTeX — it isn't in the paper. Anything a TeX compiler
discards is out of scope for every check: text after an unescaped % through
end of line (but \% is a literal percent sign, not a comment), fully
%-commented lines, and commented-out blocks (\begin{comment}…\end{comment},
\iffalse…\fi, a macro). Never flag, count, or report something
that exists only inside a comment — a commented-out , figure, table,
number, paragraph, or is invisible to the reader and therefore cannot
be an error, an unused/missing reference, or a faithfulness mismatch. Strip
comments (the way does) before reasoning about content.
the anonymization check (latex §D1)
looks comments on purpose, because commented author names / identity
URLs / acknowledgments can still leak from the shipped source — that check
flags them; nothing else does.
\comment{}
\cite
\input
assemble_project.py
One deliberate exception:
reference
into
Anchor to the real current date; never trust your training cutoff for
time-sensitive facts. Establish today's date from the system clock at the
start (Phase 0), then treat every date-dependent judgment — is this CfP/page
limit current for the venue+year, has this preprint been published since, is
this paper retracted, is an arXiv id "brand-new and not yet indexed" — as
something you must confirm with a live web search, not recall from memory.
Your internal knowledge is stale by construction; "I don't remember a published
version" is never evidence one doesn't exist.
Degrade gracefully. Every layer is independent. If TeX isn't installed,
skip only the compile-based checks and say so. If offline, skip only the
network checks and say so. Never fake a result you didn't actually run.
pdflatex parity or skip — never substitute an engine. The compile/page
check only runs on a TeX Live pdflatex toolchain (the Overleaf engine). If
there's none and the user declines installing the lightweight one, skip
compiling and skip the page count and say so in the report. Do not fall
back to Tectonic/XeTeX or any other engine (see Phase 5).
Re-verify every finding before it ships — nothing is reported on a single
detection. A first-pass hit (a regex match, a verify_refs.py flag, a number
that looks off, a first read of a sentence) is a lead, not a verdict. Run an
independent second check, in context, before any finding lands in a fragment:
for mechanical issues, re-open the exact source span and rule out a
false-positive context (math / tabular / verbatim / %-comment, a \%, a minus
sign, a macro argument); for semantic ones (grammar, terminology, citation
fit, faithfulness), re-read the surrounding text and confirm a reader would see a
real error, not a valid choice or your misread; for references, every entry
verify_refs.py flags (unable, mismatch, or a published_alt) gets a live
web search to confirm or refute it (see Phase 3); for figure/table number
mismatches, re-read the LaTeX on both sides to confirm they name the same
quantity and truly disagree (see Phase 4.5). If the second check doesn't confirm
it, drop it or downgrade to a 🔵 "please double-check" — never a confident error.
Ask before anything non-essential or hard to reverse. Enforce hard
requirements; for formatting/style optimizations and any file edits, propose
and ask first (see Phase 6). Never run sudo silently. Never block on an
install.
Venue rules win over built-in defaults. A fetched/official venue rule
always overrides any generic rule in this skill (e.g. caption placement).
Report what ran and what was skipped, with reasons. The user trial-runs
this; the first-run UX must be clean and trustworthy.
Write findings to your report fragment as you go (see next section) — never
hold them only in your head until the end.
The running report — record findings the moment you find them
The final artifact is before-submit-report.md (project root or an output
dir), following the template in reference/report-format.md. Omit nothing —
every issue belongs in it, and every line-specific finding carries four things:
its file:line, the problem, a verbatim quote of the offending .tex source
(in a fenced latex code block, formatting preserved), and a suggested fix — so
the author can jump to the exact spot and see precisely what was flagged.
Because the audit runs as a parallel agent team (next section), the report is
assembled from fragment files to avoid concurrent-write conflicts:
The orchestrator creates a work dir before-submit-parts/ up front.
Each team member appends its confirmed findings immediately, as it finds them
to its own fragment (before-submit-parts/<role>.md) — never to a shared
file. This keeps the durable, survives-interruption property per worker.
In Phase 6 the orchestrator merges all fragments into
before-submit-report.md, grouped by severity. Each fragment uses the same
bullet format so merging is a concatenation + regroup, not a rewrite.
Bundled files & paths (IMPORTANT)
All reference/… and scripts/… paths below are relative to this skill's own
directory, NOT the user's working directory (which is their paper). Resolve them:
If $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT is set (installed as a plugin), the skill dir is
$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/before-submit.
Otherwise (personal/project skill) it's the directory this SKILL.md was loaded
from (e.g. ~/.claude/skills/before-submit).
Set SKILL_DIR to that path once, then invoke bundled scripts by absolute path —
python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/verify_refs.py" … — and read reference files from
"$SKILL_DIR/reference/…". Never assume the current directory is the skill dir.
Phase 0 — Scope & setup (ASK the user, then detect)
First, establish today's date. Run date "+%Y-%m-%d" and treat its output as
the authoritative "now" for the whole run. State it back to the user
("Running this check as of ."). This date — not your training cutoff — is
the reference point for every recency judgment downstream (venue+year currency,
preprint-vs-published, retractions, "not yet indexed"). Carry it forward and hand
it to every subagent in Phase 2.5.
Then ask these up front (one batched set of questions), because the answers change
which checks apply:
Review or camera-ready? (double-blind anonymization checks only apply to
the review/submission version.)
Target venue + year + track? (e.g. "EMNLP 2025, long paper".) Needed for
page limits, mandatory sections, style file, caption convention.
Run the LLM citation-relevance check? Default yes — it reads each
citation's context and the cited paper to judge whether the citation actually
supports the claim. It costs tokens/time, so confirm.
Fixing policy: may I auto-apply safe mechanical fixes (e.g. et al→
et al., 50 %→50%, add ~ before \cite), or propose every change as a
diff for approval? Default: propose diffs, never edit without consent.
Compile for page count? Detect whether a TeX Live pdflatex toolchain is
already on PATH (pdflatex/latexmk, incl. MacTeX/TinyTeX). If yes, plan to
use it. If not, ask: "install TinyTeX (the lightweight, Overleaf-identical
pdflatex; no sudo) so I can compile and check the page count, or skip the
compile-based checks?" Make clear the only alternative is skip — you will
not substitute another engine. Record the decision; it gates Phase 5.
Then detect the environment (do not assume): locate the LaTeX project, network
availability, and (per item 5) the pdflatex toolchain. Load
reference/compile-checks.md for the detection details only when you act on Phase 5.
Phase 1 — Assemble the project
Papers are rarely one file. Run python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/assemble_project.py" <dir-or-file> to:
find the main.tex (has \documentclass and \begin{document}),
follow \input{} / \include{} / \subfile{} in order to build the document
in real reading order,
collect every bibliography: \bibliography{}, \addbibresource{} (biblatex),
or a thebibliography block, and resolve all .bib files (there may be
several),
report what it assembled so you operate on the whole paper, not a fragment.
If the script is unavailable or errors, fall back to doing this manually with
Glob/Grep. Support multiple .tex and multiple .bib.
Read reference/venue-rules.md for the procedure. In short:
Try to fetch the live CfP / author guidelines for the exact venue+year
(use the source_url in reference/venues.yaml, or web-search
" call for papers"). Live rules win.
If offline or not found, fall back to the bundled snapshot
reference/venues.yaml, and state clearly in the report: "used built-in
snapshot (as of <snapshot_year>), verify against the official CfP: ".
Record the resolved rules (page limit, double-blind, mandatory sections,
style file, caption convention, special deliverables) for later phases.
Phase 2.5 — Dispatch the parallel audit team
Phases 0–2 are sequential setup (run by you, the orchestrator): their outputs
— version, venue rules, the assembled reading-order + bib list, the compile
decision — feed everything downstream. Once they're done, the four audits below
are independent, so run them as a parallel agent team instead of serially:
launch them in a single message with multiple Agent tool calls (general-
purpose subagents) so they execute concurrently.
Give every subagent: the resolved SKILL_DIR (it starts fresh — it must read
its own reference file by absolute path), today's date (from the Phase-0
date call — they start fresh and cannot trust their own training cutoff for any
recency check), the assembled .tex/.bib lists, the Phase-0 answers (version,
fixing policy), the Phase-2 venue rules, the ignore-commented-out-LaTeX rule
from the operating principles above (so each fresh subagent skips %-comments and
commented-out blocks — except the anonymization auditor, which inspects comments
for leaks), the re-verify-before-reporting rule (no finding ships on a single
detection — each gets an independent second check, in context, first; per the
operating principle above), the quote-the-source rule (every line-specific
finding includes a verbatim quote of the offending .tex in a fenced latex
block, per reference/report-format.md), and its fragment path. Each subagent
writes only to its own fragment in before-submit-parts/ (using the
reference/report-format.md bullet format) and returns a short summary to you.
Phase 5 — only dispatched if Phase 0 secured a pdflatex toolchain
reference/compile-checks.md
Notes:
If the compile decision was "skip", don't dispatch the compile auditor;
note the skip for Phase 6.
The Bibliography auditor's slowest work is web-confirming each flagged
reference (Phase 3). If there are many flagged entries, it may further
fan out — split the flagged list across parallel sub-auditors — to keep the
run fast.
You (orchestrator) stay free while they run; collect their fragments in Phase 6.
The phase descriptions below are the briefs you hand to each member.
Read reference/bib-checks.md for the full list. Core:
Existence / metadata — run python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/verify_refs.py" <bibfiles> --json
first: fast, parallel, multi-source verification (DOI/arXiv-id first, then title
search, with cross-source corroboration). The script is a triage pass, not a
verdict. For every entry it flags — unable, mismatch, orpublished_alt present — you must run a live web search to confirm or
refute before reporting (blogs, brand-new preprints, and the canonical
published venue are things the script can't fully settle). Flag truly
unfindable references loudly as likely hallucinated; correct genuine mismatches
with the verified metadata. Never report a machine flag you didn't confirm.
Prefer the published version over arXiv — for any entry citing an arXiv (or
other preprint), check whether a peer-reviewed version exists. The script
surfaces a candidate in published_alt (from the matched venue or the arXiv
journal_ref); web-confirm it's the same paper, then recommend replacing
the arXiv cite with the conference/journal version (give the venue + year).
Report unconfirmed-but-likely ones as a suggestion, not a hard error.
Retractions — entries with a DOI: flag retracted / withdrawn / concern.
Usage — unused .bib entries; \cite keys with no entry.
Duplicates — same paper under different keys (fuzzy title/author match).
Required fields per entry type (@inproceedings→booktitle/year, etc.).
Read reference/faithfulness-checks.md. This member checks the paper against
itself — the integrity issues that survive a clean compile and only a careful
reviewer catches:
Numbers in the prose match the tables (and the abstract's headline matches
the results), with rounding/subset/metric tolerances so it doesn't cry wolf;
Tables are self-consistent ("best" is actually bolded, totals add up,
ablation deltas are right);
Figures match what the text says about them — this auditor reads the
figure files with the Read tool (PNG/JPG directly, single-page PDF via
pages="1"; in a pdflatex project graphics are PDF/PNG/JPG, so they're
openable) and compares the plotted trend/axes/legend to the prose claim,
degrading gracefully (EPS or unreadable plots → note "not verified", never
guess);
The same quantity is consistent across sections, and claims point to the
right float/appendix.
Every fix here is ask-first (you can't know which side holds the typo —
surface both file:lines, quoting the verbatim .tex of each). Before flagging
any number/figure/table mismatch, read the LaTeX context on both sides — the
full sentence/paragraph around the prose value and the whole table/figure
environment (column headers, row / \multicolumn / \multirow labels, the
\caption, and any macro that computes the value) — and confirm the two genuinely
name the same quantity and still disagree; many "mismatches" dissolve once you
see they're different splits, a shared macro, or a delta vs an absolute. Note
unreadable figures / ambiguous matches for the Phase-6 "what I checked / skipped"
section.
Read reference/compile-checks.md. Run this member only if Phase 0 confirmed a
TeX Live pdflatex toolchain (already installed, or TinyTeX installed with the
user's consent). If the user declined, this phase is skipped entirely — no
compile, no page count — and Phase 6 must say so. Never substitute Tectonic/
XeTeX/lualatex-as-a-fallback or any other engine to "get a number anyway."
When compiling, use the pdflatex toolchain (latexmk -pdf, or pdflatex+biber/
bibtex passes), parse the .log/.blg for authoritative undefined references/
citations, multiply-defined labels, overfull boxes, and compute the real page
count against the venue limit. Annotate which engine + version compiled it.
Phase 6 — Merge, triage, report, and fix
The team members have written their fragments to before-submit-parts/. Merge
them into before-submit-report.md:
Concatenate the fragments and regroup by severity — 🔴 Desk-reject risk
(over page limit, missing NeurIPS checklist, ACL missing Limitations,
double-blind identity leak, wrong style file, …) first and loudly; 🟠
Reviewers will frown (writing, grammar, terminology, weak citations, broken
cross-refs, arXiv-instead-of-published); 🔵 Optional polish (hedging,
redundancy, hyphenation, …).
Fill the summary counts and the "what I checked / what I skipped (and
why)" section — explicitly record any skips, especially "compile + page
count skipped: no pdflatex toolchain (user declined TinyTeX install); install
TinyTeX or check page count on Overleaf", and e.g. "metadata: 3 entries
unverified offline".
Then offer the HTML view: ask whether to render a minimal, self-contained
HTML of the report. If yes, run
python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/report_to_html.py" before-submit-report.md -o before-submit-report.html
— it faithfully renders the whole md into one offline file (clean minimal
styling, no issue dropped).
For fixes: per the Phase 0 policy, either apply only safe mechanical fixes after
confirmation, or present each change as a diff. Anything non-mandatory or
stylistic: ask first. Never modify files the user didn't agree to.
Reference files (load on demand — progressive disclosure)
reference/venue-rules.md — how to fetch live CfP + use the snapshot.
reference/venues.yaml — offline snapshot of per-venue rules (Phase 2).
