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

The main
```
.tex
```
file of the submission (the one with
```
\documentclass
```
).
```
\input
```
/
```
\include
```
files are followed automatically.
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).
Optional but strongly recommended: a compiled
```
.log
```
or
```
.pdf
```
next to the
```
.tex
```
(same basename) so the page-count risk check can run.

Process

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>
```
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.

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.

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.
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.
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.

preflight-check

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content