Deliver a mid-draft adversarial review of a paper — runs paper-critic + domain-reviewer + claim-verify + blindspot in parallel, optionally adds clarity-reviewer, then auto-synthesises into a prioritised revision plan. Use when the user requests a mid-draft adversarial review of a paper — runs paper-critic + domain-reviewer + claim-verify + blindspot in parallel, optionally adds clarity-reviewer, then auto-synthesises into a prioritised revision plan. Distinct from pre-submission-report (final-gate kitchen sink, 14 checks) — this is the active-drafting feedback loop. Triggers: 'review my draft', 'adversarial review', 'cluster review', 'mid-draft critique', 'feedback before pre-submission'.
Deliver a mid-draft adversarial review of a paper — runs paper-critic + domain-reviewer + claim-verify + blindspot in parallel, optionally adds clarity-reviewer, then auto-synthesises into a prioritised revision plan. Use when the user requests a mid-draft adversarial review of a paper — runs paper-critic + domain-reviewer + claim-verify + blindspot in parallel, optionally adds clarity-reviewer, then auto-synthesises into a prioritised revision plan. Distinct from pre-submission-report (final-gate kitchen sink, 14 checks) — this is the active-drafting feedback loop. Triggers: 'review my draft', 'adversarial review', 'cluster review', 'mid-draft critique', 'feedback before pre-submission'.
Parallel fan-out of a 4-agent read-only core on an active-drafting paper, optionally adding clarity-reviewer as a fifth agent, with auto-synthesise downstream. Lighter than pre-submission-report --parallel; designed for tight iteration, not final-gate verification. Outputs reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD-cluster-report.md (scope = paper slug from the paper path).
Output Path
Per rules/review-artefact-routing.md (auto-loads in research projects (path-scoped to paper-*/ and paper/)):
Source slug:review-cluster
Write reports to:reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD.md (scope = paper slug) inside the project. Path is relative to the research project root, not the Task-Management repo.
Never at project root (./CRITIC-REPORT.md-style filenames are forbidden — pre-rule layout).
Idempotency: if today's file exists, append a same-day descriptor ({date}-revision.md, {date}-r2.md, {date}-pre-submission.md) — never overwrite.
Index policy: the consolidated cluster report is an output-only artefact and receives no Check=review-cluster row. Each active reviewer receives its own row with Trigger=review-cluster.
Infrastructure repos (Task-Management, atlas-workspace, etc.): this section does not apply — the path-scoped rule won't load there.
Hard Rules
Existential — block output
All active sub-agents are read-only. No git, no latexmk, no edits. See subagent-write-guard.md.
Auto-synthesise via synthesise-reviews (unless --no-synthesise). Mid-draft work needs an actionable revision plan, not 4 raw reports.
Skip if paper isn't compile-ready — run latex first; review on broken builds is misleading. The skill checks compile-status before dispatching.
Cluster is for the user's own papers. For external papers, use peer-reviewer agent instead.
Prepare one common review input. After compile preflight, invoke in mode unless the user explicitly supplies a verified packet or requests . Record the packet archive hash and canonical PDF hash in every reviewer prompt and in the consolidated report. Packet creation itself creates no verdict row.
review-packet
fresh-review
--no-freeze-input
reviews/INDEX.md
Format — catch in review
Write one consolidated cluster report at reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD-cluster-report.md (scope = paper slug), in addition to the required per-agent reports and INDEX rows.
Findings tiered M/m/n (Major / moderate / minor) per severity-gradient.md.
Show which sub-agent flagged each finding (audit trail for traceability).
Clarity on request. With --clarity (or when the paper's prior referee reviews contain readability complaints), add clarity-reviewer as a 5th parallel agent — reader-experience stall map + the 10 clarity diagnostic classes. Its findings join the synthesis like the others.
Yardstick continuity on repeat runs. When a prior cluster report exists for the same paper (reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/), the new run reuses the prior run's frozen yardstick — same phase banner (severity-gradient), same rubric set, and the prior findings list passed to the agents as "verify addressedness + new issues only", never a fresh re-derivation of criteria from the revised text (scores across rounds must be comparable; a moved yardstick fakes improvement). If the prior report is unavailable or the user explicitly resets the phase, mark the report [YARDSTICK-REGENERATED: <reason>] under the phase banner. (Ported from ARS v3.19 re-review protocol, 2026-07-24.)
When to Use
Active drafting: paper compiles, content is taking shape, want adversarial feedback before final polish
Mid-revision: addressed first round of supervisor comments; want fresh perspective before next pass
Pre-pre-submission: ~2 weeks before submission, want to surface major issues with time to address
Before sharing draft with co-authors
When NOT to Use
Paper is in final pre-submission state — use pre-submission-report --parallel (13 sub-agents, full kitchen sink)
Paper is in early scaffold (introduction only, no method/results) — review will flag everything as missing
Reviewing someone else's paper — use peer-reviewer agent
R&R revision response — use strategic-revision --external instead (genuine venue-comment-driven)
Modes
Invocation
Behaviour
review-cluster
Full 4-agent fan-out + auto-synthesise
review-cluster <paper-path>
Same, explicit paper
review-cluster --no-synthesise
Run agents in parallel; show 4 raw reports without merging
review-cluster --clarity
Add clarity-reviewer as the 5th agent; include its report in stamping and synthesis
review-cluster --no-freeze-input
Review the live compile-ready source without sealing a packet; record this weaker snapshot regime explicitly
Architecture
Phase 1 (preflight) → latex compile check + decision-ready manuscript review packet; abort if broken
Phase 2 (dispatch) → 4 core read-only sub-agents, plus optional clarity-reviewer, in parallel
Phase 3 (math) → IF theory paper: verify-math on the model section(s) [orchestrator-run skill]
Phase 4 (consolidate) → synthesise-reviews merges (incl. math verdict) → revision plan
Phase 5 (report) → reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD-cluster-report.md
The 4-agent core and optional clarity reviewer
#
Agent
Why this lens
1
paper-critic (specialist mode if venue known)
General adversarial — structural issues, argument quality, contribution clarity. Most-cited reviewer in the family.
2
domain-reviewer
Math derivations, assumption completeness, citation fidelity at the substantive level, code-theory alignment. Catches what paper-critic doesn't have the lens for.
3
claim-verify
Citation fidelity at the per-claim level — does what's written about Smith (2024) actually match Smith (2024)? Distinct from bib-validate (existence) and paper-critic (structure).
4
blindspot
Peripheral-vision audit — vices in plain sight + virtues being overlooked. Distinct from adversarial review because it surfaces missed opportunities, not just things to fix.
5 (optional)
clarity-reviewer
Reader-ingestion stress test. Added with --clarity or when prior referee reviews contain readability complaints.
Why these four form the default core:
referee2-reviewer is excluded — it's the final-stage hostile review, used in pre-submission-report. Mid-draft, hostile review pre-empts genuine improvement.
artifact-coherence-auditor / reproducibility-auditor are excluded — relevant only when the paper is paired with a replication artifact, which is typically a pre-submission concern.
code-paper-auditor is excluded — a separate code-suite skill exists for code-side review.
proofread is excluded — editorial issues are too noisy mid-draft; deferred to pre-submission.
Dispatch contract (evidence-grounded findings)
When dispatching the active reviewer set (Phase 2), each prompt MUST carry the evidence clause from _shared/audit-integrity.md: every finding cites path:line (or §section) AND quotes the exact text it is about, verbatim — no quotable anchor, no finding. Phase 4 (synthesise-reviews) spot-verifies a sample and drops anything it cannot ground, so an agent that emits unanchored findings simply loses them. Tell the agents this up front so they anchor everything.
Phase 1: Pre-flight
# Auto-detect paper or use arg
PAPER_PATH="${1:-$(ls -d paper-*/paper 2>/dev/null | head -1)}"
[ -z "$PAPER_PATH" ] && echo"No paper-*/ directory found" && exit 1
# Check compile-readiness — exit if last latex run failed
LATEST_PDF=$(find "$PAPER_PATH/out" -name "*.pdf" -newer "$PAPER_PATH/main.tex" 2>/dev/null | head -1)
if [ -z "$LATEST_PDF" ]; thenecho"Paper not compiled or stale. Run latex first."# the available structured-question mechanism: run latex now, or proceed anyway (risky)?fi
Phase 2: Dispatch
Construct the active reviewer set as paper-critic, domain-reviewer, claim-verify, and blindspot; append clarity-reviewer when --clarity is set or prior referee reviews contain readability complaints. Launch every active reviewer in a single parallel dispatch. Each gets:
Read-only with respect to project files under review — Read, Glob, Grep, Bash (read-only commands only) against the paper / code being reviewed; the agent does NOT modify any project source files
The standard forbid-list from subagent-write-guard.md
Paper path explicitly named
Frozen review identity — the common review-packet path, archive SHA-256, and canonical PDF SHA-256. Reviewers may read the project for anchors, but findings must be compatible with that frozen artifact; if live source has drifted, stop and regenerate the packet.
Output target — two-step, both required:
Write the per-agent report to reviews/<scope>/<source-slug>/<YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM>.md (scope = paper slug, source-slug = agent name like paper-critic; run mkdir -p reviews/<scope>/<source-slug>/ first), then emit the standard stamp directive. The orchestrator-side propagation step appends the durable INDEX row.
Return a structured findings summary to the orchestrator for the Phase 4 consolidate step.
These two outputs are NOT mutually exclusive. The file under reviews/<source-slug>/ is the durable artefact and triggers the row stamp; the structured return value is the orchestrator's working copy for consolidation. Earlier wording — "not a file write" — was wrong: it suppressed the per-agent logging step and resulted in 0–1 of 4 cluster dispatches stamping a row in INDEX.md. The 2026-05-17 5-agent patch (commit 23ebcfff) made the agent-side intro unconditional; this dispatch-side fix is the orchestrator-side complement.
Wait for every active reviewer. Do not start Phase 4 (consolidate) until all return.
Phase 3: Math verification (theory papers only)
The 4-agent fan-out covers the conceptual math layer (via domain-reviewer, rung R0) but does not run the computational verification rungs. For a theory paper, add a verify-math pass so the algebra/analytic claims are machine-checked, not just read.
If there are no formal environments, skip this phase entirely.
If it IS a theory paper, invoke verify-math (via the skill-routing mechanism) scoped to the section(s) holding the model — it decomposes each proposition into atomic obligations and routes them across the spectrum (R0 conceptual · R1 numerical falsification · R2 symbolic/CAS · R3 Lean). verify-math is a skill, run by this orchestrator in the main session — this is deliberate: the computational rungs (numerical-check, symbolic-check, lean-check) need Bash + sympy/lean, which sub-agents cannot reliably obtain at runtime (the same Bash-grant fragility documented below). The orchestrator always has Bash, so the rungs run here, not inside an agent.
verify-math writes its own aggregate report to reviews/<scope>/verify-math/<YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM>.md and stamps its own INDEX.md row (it is a self-stamping skill, like proofread). Fold its aggregate verdict — and any FALSIFIED obligation — into the Phase 4 synthesis as a high-confidence finding (a machine-falsified claim outranks any single reviewer's concern).
Avoid double-work:domain-reviewer (agent #2) and verify-math's R0 rung both cover the conceptual layer. When this phase runs, tell domain-reviewer in its dispatch prompt that the algebraic identities and comparative-static signs are being machine-verified separately, so it should focus on the conceptual obligations (assumption completeness, citation fidelity, backward logic) rather than re-deriving algebra — see the domain-reviewer "Math R0 Mode" preset.
Phase 4: Consolidate
If --no-synthesise: stop here and show every active reviewer's raw report.
Otherwise, invoke synthesise-reviews with every active reviewer's report as input. Output is a prioritised revision plan with:
Cross-reviewer agreement (claims raised by ≥2 reviewers — high confidence)
Single-reviewer claims (medium confidence)
Blindspot virtues (opportunities, not problems — sometimes the most valuable finding)
Recommended action queue with priority + estimated effort
Phase 5: Report
Save to reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD-cluster-report.md (scope = paper slug):
# Review Cluster Report — YYYY-MM-DD**Paper:**<path>**Compile status:**<PASS / WARN / FAIL>**Review packet:**<path, archive SHA-256, canonical PDF SHA-256>**Reviewers:**<activereviewerset; includeclarity-reviewerwhenrequested>## Summary- Major issues (M-tier): N
- Moderate (m-tier): N
- Minor (n-tier): N
- Blindspot virtues (opportunities): N
## Cross-reviewer agreement (high confidence)
| Issue | Severity | Flagged by |
|---|---|---|
| ... | M | paper-critic, domain-reviewer |
## Single-reviewer claims (medium confidence)
[Table by severity]
## Blindspot — virtues + missed opportunities
[Items from #4 sub-agent]
## Recommended action queue1. [Highest-priority]
2. ...
Cross-References
Skill / Agent / Rule
Relationship
pre-submission-report --parallel
Final-gate kitchen sink (14 checks) — this skill is the mid-draft analogue (4-agent core, optional 5th)
review-packet
Defines and optionally seals the common manuscript decision surface reviewed by every agent
synthesise-reviews
The merge step this skill invokes
strategic-revision
After this skill produces a synthesis, optionally hand it to strategic-revision --internal <synthesis-path> when interdependent issues need a DAG and critical path
This skill is an orchestrator in the REVIEW-STATE.md schema. As of the 2026-05-19 architecture change, the orchestrator (this skill) handles all stamping; sub-agents emit directives but do not call the helper themselves. Every active reviewer ends its final response with a review-state-stamp fenced block (see the installed shared resource _shared/stamp-directive-spec.md).
Required orchestrator behaviour
When constructing prompts for the active reviewer set, include this line in each:
Emit a review-state-stamp directive at the end of your final response per the installed shared resource _shared/stamp-directive-spec.md. Set trigger: review-cluster (or omit — this orchestrator overrides). Do not call the stamping helper yourself.
After all active reviewers return
For each sub-agent's return:
Write the agent's final response to a temp file (/tmp/review-cluster-<agent>.md).
If parse-stamp-directive.sh exits non-zero, log a warning ("Agent X return did not contain a review-state-stamp directive") and continue with the next agent — best-effort.
Verify the .md report file exists; reconstruct from return content if missing:
VERIFY=$(bash <skills-root>/_shared/post-dispatch-verify.sh \
--return-file /tmp/review-cluster-<agent>.md \
--project "$PROJECT_ROOT" \
--agent <agent>)
# $VERIFY is 'OK <path>' or 'RECONSTRUCTED <path>'.# Exit code 10 means reconstruction happened — append a marker to the notes# so review-recap shows this row was a recovery, not a real run.
If VERIFY starts with RECONSTRUCTED, append (report reconstructed by orchestrator — agent skipped Write) to the --notes value before stamping. This guards against the blindspot-class failure mode (agent claims to write but skips the call). See log/2026-05-21-blindspot-write-fix.md.
Stamp with the orchestrator's --trigger override (overriding whatever the agent emitted):
Every active reviewer's stamp lands in <project>/reviews/INDEX.md with the same orchestrator name and roughly the same Last Run timestamp, making the cluster visible at a glance. With --clarity, this includes the fifth clarity-reviewer row.
Why the orchestrator stamps (not the sub-agent)
Agents have inconsistent Bash tool grants at runtime (the 2026-05-19 harness investigation showed paper-critic and domain-reviewer self-report Bash unavailable despite YAML grants). The orchestrator always has Bash and always runs after the agents return. Moving stamping here decouples it from agent tool-surface uncertainty.
Schema: the installed shared resource shared/review-state-schema.md.
Stamp directive format: the installed shared resource _shared/stamp-directive-spec.md.
Anti-Patterns
Don't include referee2-reviewer in the cluster — that's the final-stage hostile review, not mid-draft.
Don't run cluster review on a broken build — phase-1 check should abort.
Don't auto-apply fixes from the synthesised report — the report is read-only output. User reviews and dispatches edit-agents (per subagent-write-guard.md) separately.
Don't run cluster review on every save — designed for milestone-driven iteration, not continuous integration.
