Paper Review

Overview

Use this skill to evaluate a paper as a reviewer would: identify evidence-bound weaknesses, rank fixes by risk and cost, prepare grounded rebuttals, and verify that promised revisions are actually traceable. Keep this skill separate from

paper-writing

paper-figures-tables

, and any external literature-management workflow.

Boundaries

Do not invoke external literature-management tools or separate review/rebuttal builders by default. Use them only when the user explicitly asks for that separate workflow.
Do not perform automatic citation retrieval or reference verification. Use the citation and evidence sources declared by the user or project; local
```
.bib
```
, manuscript text, and supplied notes are the default.
Do not invent experiments, numbers, p-values, baselines, reviewer comments, citations, links, or revision status.
Do not rewrite prose as the primary deliverable. Route substantial prose drafting to
```
paper-writing
```
.
Do not redraw or typeset figures/tables as the primary deliverable. Route artifact creation or revision to
```
paper-figures-tables
```
.
Do not submit reviews, rebuttals, or OpenReview/CMT/HotCRP responses for the user. Produce drafts and checks for user sign-off.
Do not treat local house policy as a rejection criterion when formally reviewing someone else's paper. Apply the policy readiness gate to the user's own manuscript workflows only.

Source Priority

When reviewing or drafting responses, use evidence in this order:

Core integrity constraints from the sibling
```
paper-policy
```
skill.
User-confirmed facts, experimental results, revision decisions, and author intent.
Verified venue or template requirements with source and freshness date.
The current manuscript, local LaTeX/PDF/source files, local tables/figures, and local
```
.bib
```
.
Reviewer comments and local rebuttal drafts.
Rules from explicitly activated policy sets and the skill references listed below.

If a likely needed citation is missing locally, use the manual handoff format in

references/citation-and-evidence-policy.md

. Do not search, fetch, or validate references unless the user explicitly asks for that separate task.

Mode Routing

Read

references/review-modes.md

for mode details, then load only the references needed for the request.

Pre-submission audit: read

policy-compliance.md

pre-submission-audit.md

quality-gates.md

, and

citation-and-evidence-policy.md

Red-team my draft / simulate reviewers: read
```
policy-compliance.md
```
,
```
reviewer-panel.md
```
,
```
issue-board.md
```
, and
```
quality-gates.md
```
; use policy as a diagnostic surface, not as proof of reviewer reaction.
Formal review of someone else's paper: read
```
reviewer-panel.md
```
,
```
pre-submission-audit.md
```
, and
```
quality-gates.md
```
; keep tone fair and evidence-bound.

Analyze external reviews: read

issue-board.md

rebuttal-strategy.md

, and

citation-and-evidence-policy.md

Draft or polish rebuttal: read

rebuttal-strategy.md

rebuttal-drafting.md

revision-plan.md

, and

quality-gates.md

Verify revised manuscript after rebuttal: read
```
policy-compliance.md
```
,
```
revision-plan.md
```
,
```
quality-gates.md
```
, and the relevant writing or figure/table handoff rules.

Default Workflow

Identify the mode, manuscript stage, venue if known, deadline pressure, and available inputs.
For the user's own audit or revision-verification workflow, resolve policy and run the read-only compliance assessment in
```
policy-compliance.md
```
.
Establish an evidence map: manuscript locations, local results, local
```
.bib
```
, reviewer comments, user-confirmed constraints.
Atomize failures and unresolved evidence into issue cards instead of free-form critique.
Classify each issue by severity, policy status, evidence anchor, affected claim, and required action.
Apply quality gates: provenance, coverage, commitment, tone, fairness, citation policy, readiness, and handoff routing.
Return the most actionable artifact for the mode: compliance audit, reviewer-panel report, issue board, rebuttal strategy, rebuttal draft, or revision checklist.

Required Review Discipline

Every criticism must point to a manuscript location, reviewer quote, local artifact, or
```
MISSING
```
marker.
Keep hard results in PASS, FAIL, UNVERIFIED, NOT_APPLICABLE, or WAIVED. Never convert missing evidence into PASS.
Record an agent semantic/manual FAIL only when the manuscript provides a precise artifact, locator, and contradictory evidence. Never use an agent record to assign PASS, WAIVED, or NOT_APPLICABLE.
Keep soft outcomes separate as APPLIED, ADAPTED, or SKIPPED; soft choices do not block submission readiness.
Separate
```
substance
```
problems from
```
misread-risk
```
problems. Do not recommend new experiments for wording problems that can be fixed by narrowing or clarifying a claim.
Diagnose concrete prose defects without using AI-detector, perplexity, authenticity, or human-likeness scores as compliance or readiness evidence; never infer AI authorship from style alone.
Compare every Anti-AI revision with its source for changes in claim strength, causality, scope, terminology, citations, values, and caveats.
When a characterized systematic error exists, verify the disclosed bias direction against the error mechanism and affected claims; require explicit indeterminacy when direction is unsupported.
When evidence sources have different roles, verify that validation, calibration, control, case-study, and exploratory sources never silently support stronger substantive claims.
Check whether the section and RQ order follows a coherent argumentative spine; treat this as adaptive structure, not a rejection criterion by itself.
For load-bearing threats, require an affected claim or RQ, a supported mitigation or explicit absence, and a residual boundary after mitigation.
Treat Related Work as a high-risk area. Enforce a comparison table only when
```
RELATED.COMPARISON_REQUIRED
```
is active; otherwise evaluate whether the comparison structure is adequate without imposing house style.
Enforce traditional concise headings only when
```
STRUCT.TRADITIONAL_HEADINGS
```
is active. In formal reviews of other work, criticize headings only when they cause a concrete clarity or venue problem.
For figures and tables, diagnose the issue and hand off to
```
paper-figures-tables
```
when creation, redesign, or LaTeX table work is needed.
For prose rewrites, diagnose the issue and hand off to
```
paper-writing
```
when drafting is the main task.
For rebuttals, answer every reviewer concern or explicitly mark it as deferred with a reason.

Scripts

Use
```
scripts/count_rebuttal_limit.py
```
when a rebuttal, author response, or per-reviewer reply has a character or word limit.
For own-paper compliance audits, use the sibling
```
paper-policy/scripts/assess_compliance.py
```
; it reads artifacts and evidence without mutating them.
For project-local first passes, inspect the sibling runner's section-aware
```
soft-review-worklist.yaml
```
and locator-rich unused-key report; neither output is compliance evidence or mutation authorization.

Reference Index

```
references/review-modes.md
```
: mode selection and output shapes.
```
references/policy-compliance.md
```
: policy resolution, evidence statuses, waivers, and submission readiness.
```
references/pre-submission-audit.md
```
: manuscript audit dimensions and severity levels.
```
references/reviewer-panel.md
```
: reviewer personas, fairness firewall, and formal-review mode.
```
references/issue-board.md
```
: atomic issue schema for audits and external reviews.
```
references/rebuttal-strategy.md
```
: strategy selection, reviewer intent, and evidence planning.
```
references/rebuttal-drafting.md
```
: author-response structure, tone, and length discipline.
```
references/revision-plan.md
```
: mapping rebuttal promises to manuscript edits.
```
references/quality-gates.md
```
: final gates before returning a review or rebuttal artifact.

references/citation-and-evidence-policy.md

: local-only citation and evidence policy.

paper-review

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content

Paper Review

Overview

Boundaries

Source Priority

Mode Routing

Default Workflow

Required Review Discipline

Scripts

Reference Index