| name | peer-review |
| description | Review another author's manuscript, paper, thesis chapter, proposal, or preprint as an external reviewer. Use when asked to evaluate novelty, significance, gap-contribution fit, claim-evidence adequacy, methods, evaluation, overclaim risks, structure, writing, required revisions, or recommendation without rewriting the manuscript or using private author context. |
| allowed-tools | Read, Glob, Grep, Bash, Edit, Write |
/peer-review - External Manuscript Review
Purpose
Produce a reviewer-style assessment of another author's work. This skill judges the manuscript as submitted, not as the author wishes it to be.
Use /argument-governance first when the review needs a formal gap-contribution or claim-evidence map.
Codex-Only Baseline
Complete the review with Codex using the supplied manuscript, supplements, rubric, and source anchors. Do not require Gemini, gemini-agent, a second model, or a subagent. If another reviewer tool is available, record its output as optional advisory context only.
If /argument-governance is unavailable in the user's environment, manually extract the same spine in the review report: problem, gap, contribution, main claims, evidence, boundary language, and reviewer risks.
Enhanced Advisory Mode
If the user explicitly provides or enables an API-key-backed model review, use it only after Codex has made a first-pass review from the supplied materials.
Rules:
- keep API keys in environment variables, never in review files
- send only user-approved manuscript or supplement excerpts
- label the external result as
advisory_external_review
- compare it against Codex's local findings
- include only grounded, source-checkable points in the final review
- do not treat the external model as a reviewer consensus, venue decision, or factual verifier
Core Rules
- Review only the manuscript and explicitly supplied supplementary materials.
- Do not use private project memory, prior chats, unstated author intent, or unpublished context as evidence.
- Separate reviewer judgment from factual verification.
- Do not rewrite the manuscript unless the user explicitly asks for revision suggestions.
- Attribute concerns to manuscript locations, sections, figures, tables, claims, or missing evidence.
- Be fair: identify strengths before high-level weaknesses, but do not soften required revisions.
- Do not infer venue-specific acceptance thresholds unless the venue or rubric is supplied.
- Do not treat an unavailable external review tool as a blocker.
Workflow
1. Establish Review Scope
Identify:
- manuscript path or pasted text
- article type or intended venue, if provided
- supplied supplementary materials
- whether the user wants a formal review, desk-reject triage, or improvement-oriented review
- whether reference or evidence checking is in scope
2. Extract The Claimed Paper Spine
From the manuscript only, identify:
- central problem
- claimed gap
- stated contributions
- main claims
- evidence offered for each claim
- limitations and boundary language
If this cannot be extracted, report that as a review finding.
3. Evaluate With The Reviewer Rubric
Read references/reviewer_rubric.md when producing a full review. Cover:
- novelty
- significance
- gap-contribution fit
- method or evaluation validity
- evidence adequacy
- claim-evidence balance
- related-work coverage
- overclaim and generalisation risk
- reproducibility or transparency
- structure and clarity
4. Write The Review
Use references/reviewer_report_template.md for formal reviews. For shorter triage, preserve the same categories but compress the prose.
Give required revisions as actions that the author could take:
- add or verify evidence
- narrow a claim
- move a claim from result to limitation
- clarify contribution
- separate background from validation
- add missing baseline, ablation, provenance, or reference checks
5. Optional Structured Outputs
When requested, create:
reviews/peer_review_report.md
reviews/reviewer_attack_matrix.csv
reviews/claim_evidence_findings.csv
These files are advisory review artifacts. They are not final evidence for the author's claims.
Recommendation Vocabulary
Use one of:
accept
minor_revision
major_revision
reject_resubmit
reject
no_recommendation
Use no_recommendation when the manuscript, venue, or review scope is too incomplete.
Output Pattern
## Peer Review
### Summary
### Strengths
### Major Concerns
### Gap-Contribution Fit
### Claim-Evidence Adequacy
### Method / Evaluation Concerns
### Overclaim And Boundary Risks
### Minor Comments
### Required Revisions
### Recommendation
Stop Conditions
Stop and report a blocker if:
- the manuscript or review target is missing
- the user asks for a review based on memory rather than supplied materials
- the requested factual verification requires sources that are not supplied and web/library access is prohibited
- the user asks you to fabricate reviewer consensus, citation support, or experimental findings